Queen of Sheba, Reddy Kilowatt and Miss Wiggles
A century of ads in The Vancouver Sun reveal some surprises and glimpses of early Vancouver
A few weeks ago my friend Dave Chesney sent me an email with some startling information: a Hank Williams timeline said the king of country music played Vancouver on Sept. 13, 1949.
“Could this be true?” asked Chesney, a hardcore country and western fan. “I’ve never heard from any old- timers that Hank played Vancouver.”
Neither have I, and over the years I think I’ve talked to every old timer in the Lower Mainland. So I went down to The Sun’s library, pulled out some microfilm and lo and behold there was an advertisement for Ernest Tubb and the “One and Only Grand Ole Opry” at the Exhibition Gardens.
Fourth on the bill — below Tubb, Minnie Pearl and Bob Brasfield, but above Cowboy Copas and Lazy Jim Day — was Hank Williams. Tickets were $ 2 and $ 2.50, and there were two shows, at 7: 30 and 9: 30 p. m.
Hank’s Vancouver appearance came during one of the hottest periods of his brief career, the year he became a star with classics like Lovesick Blues, Wedding Bells, Lost Highway, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry and My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It.
Unfortunately, The Sun didn’t send a reviewer. But thanks to a tiny ad, we know he was here — or at least booked to play. ( Hank drank, so he didn’t always make his shows.)
Going through the ads is one of the great joys of reading old newspapers. You get a real glimpse of the culture through advertisements — the kind of stores that were around, the prices, the latest trends. Sometimes the ads give you a better sense of an era than the paper’s stories.
The same week Hank Williams played Vancouver, for example, two other musical legends — Rudy Vallee and Cab Calloway — were playing at the Commodore Ballroom and the Palomar Supper Club.
There was also dancing at the Howden Ballroom on Granville and at the Embassy Ballroom on Davie. If you wanted entertainment at home, there was a big ad for an RCA Victor record player that played RCA’s new 45 r. p. m. records, which came in six colours.
Radios and gramophones ( record players) were big in The Sun’s early days. The Oct. 26, 1935 Sun carried four pages of radio ads for Frost’s department store featuring Art Deco wonders like an RCA Victor “Globe Trotter” radio, which was equipped with “Magic Eye, Magic Brain and Metal Tubes.”
Forst’s also sold Rogers radios, the first incarnation of the Canadian company that now is a cable TV and cellphone giant ( the Forst’s ad said the deluxe Rogers model “STARTS itself, STOPS itself and tells the time”).
As lovely as the Forst’s ads were, though, my favourite radio ad ran on Nov. 2, 1929, when the Hudson’s Bay Company was selling a nine- tube highboy console radio called The Dictator. Yes, dictator, a word we now normally associated with ruthless tyrants like Benito Mussolini and Josef Stalin.
Department stores like The Bay, Woodward’s, and Eaton’s took out multi- page ads in The Sun for decades, along with local retailers like Army & Navy, Wosk’s and Spencer’s. Scanning them gives you a pretty good idea of the cost of living.
On July 27, 1928, The Bay’s “Economy Floor” was selling 3,500 cups and saucers at five cents apiece. Women’s “sport girdles” were $ 1, as were boys flannelette pyjamas. Seven years later, on Oct. 19, 1935, The Bay was selling a chesterfield suite ( including an overstuffed sofa and two chairs) for $ 98.50.
The logos were nifty, too. In the 1920s, the Woodward’s logo was a stylish scroll with the legend “we sell everything” on top and “the best for less” on the bottom.
The best old logo was for the Don’t Argue tobacconist’s shop — a guy in a bowler hat shoving another guy in the face.
Going through the old papers for The Sun’s 100th anniversary, I stumbled across all sorts of unusual ads.
Prohibition came into effect in B. C. on Oct. 1, 1917, and in the days leading up to it The Sun was filled with ads for stores offering drinkers a last chance to stock up.
But it wasn’t the last chance — for some reason you could order booze from other provinces until April 1, 1918. So Gold Seal liquor took out an ad on March 19, 1918 noting you could order liquid sunshine from their Calgary or Regina office, and pick it up in Gastown.
“The only way in which liquor can thereafter be got is by securing a prescription and getting the supply at a drugstore,” the ad read. “Lay in a reasonable supply for medicinal purposes, household or social use.”
With that kind of hype, who could resist picking up a gallon of Carnot Freres Cognac for $ 9?
Thank goodness prohibition ended in 1923. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the ad for B. C. Bud beer that ran on Sept. 28, 1932. “Drink B. C. Bud for health,” read the ad, which claimed a “prominent professor “named Gaentner called beer “liquid bread.”
Other ads aren’t quite so funny. On Nov. 3, 1918, Tom the Tailor was offering “nose and mouth protectors” to keep you “safe from the influenza” that was killing millions of people around the world. Lord knows if it worked, but for 35 cents it was worth a try; 700 would die from the Spanish flu in Vancouver.
People must have had terrible teeth in early Vancouver — there are lots of ads from dentists. The most famous early dentist was Painless Parker, whose motto was “if it hurts, don’t pay me.”
Many homes were heated with coal. The B. C. Electric company had a “coke department” which offered the “solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low- ash, low- sulphur bituminous coal” for $ 10.75 a ton. ( Thanks to Wikipedia for the coke description.)
B. C. Electric coke also had the advantage of being “ovenized,” although the Dec. 7, 1934 ad using the term doesn’t say what ovenized means. B. C. Electric’s Reddy Kilowatt mascot is depicted at the top of the ad, alongside Superman- style lettering advertising that coke is “highest in usable heat.”
The 1930s ads are simply beautiful. There is a gorgeous Tip Top Tailors ad from Oct. 19, 1934, featuring three streamlined male figures in slouch hats, protected against the cold by their British woollen overcoats. The Art Deco look lasted into the early 1940s. On May 16, 1942, there was a stunning B. C. Electric ad featuring a sky filled with the 100 fighter planes that could have been purchased with the $ 3,221,179 B. C. Electric paid in taxes in 1941.
The most colourful ads were for movies, both in terms of images and come- on lines. A classic was Sept. 6, 1934, when Jean Harlow was vamping it up in The Girl From Missouri at the Orpheum.
“Her most glorious romantic TRIUMPH!” the ad reads. “Harlow days are here! Gayety ... thrills ... glamorous romance ... such as only the blond bombshell can bring to the screen!”
The silent movie ads are breathtaking. On Jan. 1, 1922, the William Fox spectacular Queen of Sheba was at the Rex. It featured a cast of 10,000, including “2,000 beautiful dancing girls” and climaxed with a “terrific death- defying chariot race.”
Tickets to the “biggest picture in the world” and “world’s greatest love- romance” were only 35 cents for matinees, 50 cents at night. Oddly, although Betty Blythe’s photo was prominent in the ad, the name of the actress who played the Queen of Sheba was omitted. The film was apparently quite risqué, but just how risqué we may never know: no print is known to survive.
The early theatres had glorious logos — in 1922, the Allen boasted it was “The Theatre Beautiful.” After the Allen chain went kaput, it became the Strand. A July 28, 1928, Pantages ad is beautifully framed, while the Capitol ad the same day trumpets the theatre’s house band, Calvin Winter and the Capitolians.
It’s also cool to look up the ads for nightclubs in the 1960s. On Sept. 17, 1965, Frankie Laine was playing The Cave, Tommy Edwards was at Isy’s, and there were “sensational go- go girls” at the Torch Cabaret.
The Smilin’ Buddha had The Kingsmen, the Seattle band that recorded the immortal Louie Louie. But they weren’t the headliner — that was Miss Wiggles, a “marvel in motion” who “dances on her head.”
A break dancing go- go girl in 1965? Nobody would have believed it, if not for an old ad in The Vancouver Sun.