The celebrity culture apparently was alive and well during the Great War, if this selection from the collection of regular contributor Cyril Mazansky is any indication. Just as today, celebrities of the day were used to help sell things. Today big contracts are involved, but I have a feeling that none of the parties shown below received big endorsement contracts for helping to sell cigarettes. Some of these images are excellent depictions of their subject, but in other cases—see Kaiser Wilhelm below—you have to wonder if the illustrator had ever seen a photo of the individual.
Click on Images to View Alone
I wonder if the celebrities got paid for having their picture used. Maybe it was more like a barter system where they could get cigarettes in return for using their image to sell a particular product. However, this is a fascinating historical insight on how celebrity endorsements and advertising correlated during the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother remembers as a little girl being patted on the head and the Kaiser said something like, "Pretty little girl.) This was prior to their immigration to the USA in 1911.
ReplyDelete