Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Fake Products and the Movies That Loved Them - New York Times


I remember every one of the movies in this wonderful article from the New York Times about the movies' take on advertising. The 1950's in particular produced some wonderful satires on marketing and consumer culture, partly as a way for the movies to fight back against their new rival, television. The one film left out of this terrific list is "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" the most outrageous of the bunch, starring Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield.

2 comments:

David Apatoff said...

I agree, Nell! Movies back then had leading men like James Garner, rather than droopy looking jamokes like James Spader, Peter Gallagher, Nicolas Cage, George Segal or that guy from Shopgirl.

Middento said...

Heh, you'll be amused that I'm forcing my students to read a book on 50s male stars. Alas, the only movie from the period that we're concentrating on is Picnic, although I'll be showing many clips of good ol' Rock Hudson for good measure.