Stripper's Guide: Selling It: Horrible Husbands of the Forties

Friday, May 24, 2024

Selling It: Horrible Husbands of the Forties

If the Ivory Soap ad writers were correct it was utter hell to be a housewife in the 1940s. Imagine this: a wife with the perfect hourglass figure, a face that Hollywood starlets would envy, a boundless desire to please her husband, and a work ethic for housework that borders on the monomaniacal. And yet, her husband can see only that her hands are a bit red and rough from doing the dishes with strong washday soap (whatever that is). And not only does hubby notice only this tiny flaw in his goddess of domesticity, but he is repulsed, disgusted, and downright nasty in his reaction to this imperfection.

These ads shouldn't have been hawking dish soap. They should have been touting divorce attorneys.

Ivory Soap used the "red 'n' rough" terminology in their ads for years, but the version in which Red and Rough become actual characters seems to have been limited to these ads by Paul Fung, which ran from about March to June 1944.

Labels: Marketing Madness

# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM

Comments:

Fung did a lot of ad comics. He even had a series where he brought back Dumb Dora to sell Ry-Crisp about 1943-4.

# posted by

Mark Johnson : 5/24/2024 6:29 PM

Limited run, of course, by the untimely death of Fung Sr.

# posted by

Ger Apeldoorn : 6/16/2024 12:35 AM

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My name is Allan Holtz. I am a comic strip historian, and author of "American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide." This blog is my outlet for all manner of interesting, oddball and rare material related to comic strip history. It is also a forum where others interested in comic strip history are encouraged to participate through the comments, or even by contributing articles. Have some information about a strip or cartoonist you'd like to share? I'd love to hear from you! You can post a comment on any post (click on 'Post a Comment' at the end of any post), or email me (see below). Note: All images on this blog are thumbnails - click on the images to see full size readable versions. Some browsers may require you to click on the image a second time to see the image at absolute full size (not reduced to fit your screen).

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