Westport native whose image was the Gerber Baby dies at 95
TAMPA, FLA. — The Connecticutborn woman whose face became the enduring logo of the Gerber baby products brand has died at 95 years old.
Ann Turner Cook was born in Bridgeport in 1926 and spent her early childhood in Westport. That’s where her family’s next-door neighbor, artist Dorothy Hope Smith, drew a sketch of her that later won a nationwide contest Gerber was holding to market baby food.
Gerber announced her death in an Instagram post on Friday.
“Many years before becoming an extraordinary mother, teacher and writer, her smile and expressive curiosity captured hearts everywhere and will continue to live on as a symbol for all babies,” the post said.
Cook later moved with her family to Florida, where she would remain for the rest of her life. She graduated from the University of Florida in Orlando.
Cook had a long career as an English teacher at the Hillsborough High School in Tampa and later became a prolific mystery novelist.
Hope Smith submitted the drawing of Turner Cook in 1928 as part of Gerber’s contest to find a baby to represent its advertising campaign.
“Artist Dorothy Hope Smith entered her simple charcoal sketch of a touslehaired, bright-eyed cherub of a baby with endearing pursed lips,” according to Gerber. “In her entry, Smith noted that she would finish the sketch if she won. Her drawing competed with elaborate oil paintings, but the judges fell in love with the baby face Smith drew, and when they chose it as the winner, they insisted that the simple illustration remain a sketch.”
The image was so popular that Gerber adopted it as its official trademark in 1931, using it on its packaging and advertisements.
With the identity of the face behind the iconic logo a longtime secret, speculation ran rampant for decades about who the Gerber baby could be. Many people guessed it may have been movie star Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Sen. Bob Dole. and Jane Seymour, according
to Gerber.
Cook’s name was released in the late 1970s.
She told the Tampa Bay Times in a 1992 interview that though she did not receive royalties from the image, she had been given a one-time payment of $5,000 in 1951.
The money was enough for a down payment on Cook and her husband’s home in Florida, as well as a car.
“All babies are appealing,” Cook told the Associated Press in a 1998 interview. “The reason that drawing has been so popular is the artist captured the appeal that all babies have.”