(en bas de page se trouve un résumé en français)
[ last update: 07.14.2013 ]
The (new)
Cadillac Database©
Advertisements
Cadillac and La Salle
Index page
Return to The (New) Cadillac Database© Index Page
or select a group of ads from the table, below
(en bas de page se trouve un résumé en français)
When the Cadillac was first put on the market it created a sensation among dealers.It was the first machine offered at a moderate price, with power enough to carry a family. Dealers not not slow in "catching on". Not long before we got to turning them oput in quantities, our order book as full, our product sold, and dealers all over the country were trying to get the Cadillac. We failed to fully supply the demand, although we made and delivered over two thousand machines. This machine was put to all kind of test from Maine to California. It was raced against machines of several times its rated power, and pitted against cars of twice and three times its cost. In hill; climbing contests it proved to be among the very best and far superior to anything in its class. It did almost every conceivable "stunt" from climbing the U.S. Capitol1 steps to pulling a five-ton load of railroad steel up a 4% gradient at Canton, Ohio.The Cadillac motor is rated at less than most "10 HP engines", yet we find it delivers more power at point of contact than any 10 H.P. motor we have seen. It has done the work of a 10 H.P. stationary and with power to spare. No other machine made that we know of has shown greater actual power than it was rated at. The Cadillac has all the power necessary, if the operator is skilful enough to get all out of the engine there is in it.
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1 It was Cadillac engineer Alanson P. Brush who first demonstrated the climbing power of the Cadillac by driving a 1902 runabout up the steps of the Detroit County Court House. A man (with a few drinks under his belt) drove a 1903 runabout, with tonneau, up the U.S. Capitol steps in Washington, early in 1906. It was good publicity for the firm's products but they were careful not to mention the booze! [For more "feats" performed by early Cadillacs, go to this "Facts" page and look under "Reliability Trials"].
The above text is from a magazine advertisement published on February 11, 1904 in The Automobile, a trade journal from the earliest dayus of the horseless carriage.
From the earliest days of production, the manufacturers of the Cadillac and La Salle automobiles used the media to advertise their products. In this section you will find a list of some 2000 ads featuring Cadillacs since 1902 and La Salles since 1927.
Those listed on the "Wanted Ads" page are missing from The (New) Cadillac Database© and good photocopies or digitally scanned images are sought for reference.
Included in the list are some ads for products other than Cadillac or La Salle automobiles, where the advertisers have taken advantage of the Cadillac reputation to promote their own particular products.
The "Ads" section of The (New) Cadillac Database© was converted from my original Excel files by Ken Scherer, who also created the thumbnail links. Later I reviewed the layout and added also the background image, which is drawn from a contemporary advertisement for the 1998 Cadillac Eldorado model. For the time being, only the years up to and including 1980 are included. The most recent years (and a greater selection of images) will follow ...if I ever find the time.Only the ads of which the ID number is underlined and highlighted in blue currently are visible [click on those numbers to view the ad in question]. Regrettably, picture quality of illustrated ads sometimes is mediocre. Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner and most of my photography was done a few years ago with one of the first generation, low-resolution digital cameras. I hope gradually to replace the very poor images with better ones, but that won't occur until I have uploaded a few representative ads for the first 100 years of Cadillac production.
Images are available for almost all ads in the collection (2000+) but space constraints prevent ads being pictured full-size and in high definition; nevertheless, the combination of the description (below) and the medium-sized image [when available] should be adequate to help the ad collector determine if a particular ad is already in his/her collection or not.
Should any Database user require an image of a specific ad that is not yet on line, I shall gladly send it as an e-Mail attachment.
Evolution of Cadillac Advertising
It is interesting to note the evolution of Cadillac's advertising themes and its intended demographics.
What sold Cadillacs in the early years was the car's proven durability and reliabilty. From the twenties through the late sixties, you needed to "be somebody" (preferably with lots of money) if you were to aspire one day to owing the automobile Standard of the World. In the seventies, Cadillac's copy writers aimed at a much broader spectrum of potential buyers; in addition to quality, founded on years of Cadillac's occupying the pole position among US luxury car vendors, volume sales were now the company's new aspiration.
And what of today's Cadillacs? Well, if you look at the ad for the 2007 Cadillac DTS [an unfortunate acronym for someone like me whose late alcoholic father suffered from the DTs!], what seems to be most important is having a "nicely erquipped" car (whatever that means), with new-fangled gizmos like a "touch-screen, DVD-based, navigation [system] with voice recognition" and an "8-speaker, Bose sound system with CD/MP3 player."
Cadillac owners used to dream of places like Eldorado [a fabled land of untold riches], Biarritz [a vacation paradise on France's south-western Atlantic coastline, where Paris' nobility and aristocracy were wont to enjoy its temperate winters], Seville [capital city of Andalucia, in Spain; in the 16th century, already, Seville enjoyed the monopoly of all European trade with the New World], Park Avenue [the New York avenue that any Monopoly player worth his salt aspired to own!].
Contributing Artists
In the following table are listed many of the artists responsible for the stylish advertisements published by the Cadillac Motor Car Division in newspapers and magazines, nationwide, from the earliest part of the century until the mid-sixties. At that point in time, photography took over from the paint brush and pen. I believe it was, in fact, an industry requirement because the manufacturers had gone completely overboard; the cars that the buying public were viewing on the showroom floors had little in common with the artists' renditions in both factory marketing literature and advertisements. There had to be a limity imposed on artistic license!
Many of the signatures on these old ads are totally or partially illegible. The names I have shown in italics are my best guess in such instances.
Artists Year(s) BARCLAY, Unison 1926 BÉNIGNI, L. [French and U.S. ads] 1929 BORZOI Henry (???), "Window ads" in Country Life and The Sportsman 1929-30
BOSE, Neal [similar to Pierre Brissaud themes, or possibly copy?] 1930 BRISSAUD, Pierre [see CLC, 4/91, p.7] 1929-30 CHARLESON [?] (La Salle) 1936 CLELAND, T.M. 1928 DOHANOS, Stevan La Salle 1939 FANNELAS (La Salle) 1931 FAWCETT, Robert (La Salle 1931, Cadillac, 1932) 1931-1932
FRED [?] La Salle 1939 GANNAN [?] La Salle 1929 GARDNER, Donald 1923 GODWIN, Frank (?), Karl (?) 1918 GRAFSTROM ? [La Salle] 1936 HARPER, George 1925 HAYDEN, Hayden 1926 HORTER, E.A. 1929 JB (???) 1925 KARL, J. [?] La Salle 1929 LEMON [?] La Salle 1929 LEONARD [?] La Salle 1930 LIDOV, A. ? MARTY, A.E. (French ads) 1929 McCLELLAND, Barclay1 1928-29 McMEIN, Neysa 1924 MIZEN, Fred 1918-25 MONIQUE or MOURGUE 1929 QUAIL, Frank 1924 QUAIL, Frank, Jr. [son of above?] (different signatures) 1936 RE-MY [?] La Salle 1928 RICHARDS, Walter 1939 SAKHNOFFSKY, Alexis De [La Salle ad] 1934 SAMULA, I. 1933 SAW [?] [La Salle ads] 1933 SCHMIDT [?] 1919 SMITH, Irwin 1937 TAUCKE, G. 1926 TIMMINS, H.L. 1925 TYLER, W. [?] 1919 URBAN, Joseph 1929 VICKERY, John 1943-45 WHITCOMB, J. 1940 WILSON, Edw. A. [La Salle ads] 1937 1 He also drew ads for the Fisher Body Co.
A sampling of the work of J. Karl
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Contributing Jewelers
In the following table are listed many of the jewelers who contributed their talents and their wares to the successful Cadillac ad campaigns of 1949 through 1957 as well as 1960 through 1962.
Jewelers CARTIER LAYKIN & Cie MAUBUSSON STARR & GORHAM TRABERT & HOEFFER VAN CLEEF & ARPELS WARREN, Chas. H. & Co. WINSTON, Harry
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Contributing Fashion Designers
In the following table are listed many of the fashion designers who also contributed their talent and their fashion statements to some successful Cadillac ad campaigns of the fifties and sixties
Fashion Designers ARDEN, Elizabeth BALMAIN, Pierre BENDEL, Henri BERGDORF GOODMAN1 BERHANYER, Elio CASSINI, Oleg CARNEGIE, Hattie CARTER, John CHAPMAN, Ceil1 DERBY, Jane DIOR, Christian DUSKIN, Nan GALANOS GARNETT, Eleanora GATHE GRAY, Amelia HULITAR, Philip IRENE LANVIN-CASTILLO LOUISE, Jean MAGNIN, I. NEIMAN MARCUS1 SAKS 5th [or FIFTH] AVENUE1 SAARMI [Count] SCAASI SIMONETTA SMALL, Edith TRAVILLA1 TRIGERE, Pauline1
Gowns for mother and daughter by Jane Derby
Places of Interest The Imperial Palace, Tokyo [1928-29] La Scala Opera House, Milan [1928-29] Norrbro Bridge, Stockholm [1928-29] Paris Opera, Grand Prix Ball [1929] White House, Washington, D.C. [1929] Del Monte Lodge [1958] Greenbrier Hotel, West Virginia [1959] [ many more to be listed... ]
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1 Thanks to the perspicacity of Database user, James R. King, I was able to correct the spelling of many of the fashion designers mentioned here [I had copied these names from ads of the time but I guess either they were mis-spelled in these ads or my eyesight is not what it used to be!]For the record:
- Bergdorf Goodman [not Gomman] - Andrew Goodman was one of the founders of the store - it still exists on 5th Avenue in New York
- Ceil Chapman (not Cecil) - she was a New York rather than Hollywood designer but was a favorite of Marilyn Monroe. One of Ceil Chapman's dresses for Marilyn Monroe sold for $100,000 at auction - this was the fairly recent auction where many of Marilyn's old gowns were sold. I believe there was another Ceil Chapman gown that sold for $30,000 or so.
- Neiman [not Neimann] Marcus - Neiman was the married name of Miss Marcus
- Saks 5th [not Vth] Avenue - is also spelled Saks Fifth Avenue
- Travilla [not Travila] - William Travilla, now deceased; he designed Marilyn Monroe's clothes in most of her early 50s movies including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
- Pauline Trigère [not Trighere] is very well known in fashion circles - she was recently in Metropolis (a design magazine) in an article about creative people who are in their 90s; she is still active but has retired from designing clothes; ad 1076 in the listing ("Pueblo by Taos Indians") is a 2-page ad featuring a model wearing a Pauline Trigère ensemble.
Sources of Cadillac and La Salle ads
Here is a list of the magazines and newspapers in which I found most of the ads in the collection. An abbreviation of the titles is given in the first and third columns (only the abbreviations will appear in the actual ad listings).
Abbrev. Name Abbrev. Name A&D Art and Decoration IND Independent AFD American Funeral Director L Life AHB Australian Home Beautiful LD Literary Digest AM American Motorist LK Look ANJ Army and Navy Journal LPI Le Patriote Illustré [Belgium] AR Automobile Revue [Switz.] M Motor ASIA "Asia" magazine MAD Mad Magazine1 AT Automobile Topics MCL McLure's ATM Atlantic Monthly MUN Munsey's Magazine AUT The Automobiley NB Nation's Business BHG Better Homes and Gardens NG National Geographic C&S Casket & Sunnyside NW Newsweek CEN Century NY New Yorker CO Current Opinion P Punch COL Collier's PEO :People COS Cosmopolitan PPB Pennsylvania Punch Bowl CG (The) Country Gentleman [PR] [in book by Peter Ruch] CL Country Life SA Scientific American CR (The) Crest [Cadillac in-house magazine] SCR Scribner's DMN Detroit Motor News SEP Saturday Evening Post ESQ Esquire SMI Smithsonian FOB Forbes SNP Sun News Pictorial Melbourne, Australia FOR Fortune SPRT (The) Sportsman H Home SUN Sunset magazine HB House Beautiful TM Time HBZ Harper's Bazaar TT Table Talk HIC Hearst's International Cosmopolitan TTT Tower Town Topics, Chicago HG House and Garden ULT Ultra HOL Holiday USN U.S. News HM Harper's Magazine VF Vanity Fair HR Hot Rod VO Vogue HW Harper's Weekly WWA World's Work Advertiser GH Good Housekeeping ILL L'Illustration (France) ILLi L'Illustrazione Italiana (Italy) 1 Mad magazine ran a spoof of the 1961 Cadillac ads on its rear cover, in September, 1965
Notes for Users
1. I have tried to divide up the ads into logical groups, for example the single-cylinder models, the early four-cylinder models, the new four-cylinder Model "Thirty", the V8 Types 51 through V-63, the V8 Series 314 through 355, the V12s, the V16s, etc. Basically, however, they are listed in chronological order by year and actual month or date when known. Please click on a box, in the table below, to view the list of ads available for your preferred Cadillac model year(s).
2. The individual listings lists include the following columns: (1) the number of the ad in my collection1 , (2) an indication whether it is a B&W image [blank box] or in full color [box marked "C"], (3) the year, month or precise date of publication of the ad, when such is known, (4) the title or headline on the ad or the introductory words of the promotional text, (5) an indication of the Cadillac or La Salle model(s) displayed [if any], (6) the source of the ad when such is known (abbreviation). In the last column are the numbers of any footnotes; these are explained at the foot of each listing.
3. Advertisements in a language other than English are listed in italics. Many La Salle ads include a title in a foreign language (usually French); the titles of these ads also are shown in italics.
4. Only a representative selection of images of ads in the collection is currently on line; where the number of the ad (in the LH column) is highlighted and underlined, clicking on that number will bring up an image large enough to see the essential graphics. Space limitations prevent my displaying larger, high-resolution images enabling users to read the actual text of each ad (better a small image, even of poor quality, than no image at all, right?)
5. Don't be fooled by the poor quality of some of the images: the ORIGINAL ads in the collection all are EXCELLENT. I photographed the earliest selections with one of the first Olympus digital cameras I bought in PA, back in 1997; image quality, therefore, is not up to today's standards.
6. The La Salle automobile, built by Cadillac from 1927 up to and including 1940, was also the object of an equally impressive advertising campaign. Click here for a listing of the La Salle ads in the collection.
7. Note that there is an interesting Article on Cadillac advertisements in the magazine "MOBILIA", for February 1994, by Ken Ruddock of "Memory Lane Automobilia", Shartlesville, PA.
Typical La Salle ad of 1933
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1 The ad listings were prepared already in 1983-84; new additions since that time are given a letter, "a", "b", "c", etc. to avoid breaking the original numerical sequence.
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Cadillac Advertisements
(main sub-sections)
The Pre-WW2 Period
(1902-1945)
La Salle Advertisements
1927 through 1940
Montage, with sample ads and a 1:18 scale toy
from my former collection
Return to The (New) Cadillac Database© Index Page
© 1996, Yann Saunders and the Cadillac-LaSalle Club, Inc.
[ Background image: 1998 ad for the Eldorado model ]This Web page was prepared by Ken Scherer, USA and subsequently modified and updated by Yann Saunders
