1959 Rockwell Illustration for Parker 61

I came across a very small repro­duc­tion of this adver­tise­ment while read­ing David and Mark Shep­herd’s Park­er ‘51’. Although the Park­er 61 foun­tain pen is men­tioned only briefly in their book about the icon­ic ‘51’, the use of Nor­man Rock­well illus­tra­tions in Park­er’s adver­tise­ments was too impor­tant to ignore even if they were for the «wrong» pen. The 61 is one of my favorite pens, and I dare­say I like mine bet­ter than my ‘51’. With a lit­tle search­ing, I found a copy of the Sat­ur­day Evening Post from Octo­ber 1959.

I’m real­ly enjoy­ing all the adver­tise­ments in the Post. Adver­tis­ing in the late fifties was so clever! I sup­pose there’s a down­side to that, as the adver­tise­ments don’t dis­ap­pear into our con­scious­ness the same way that mod­ern ads do. There’s always a sense of the adver­tis­er’s voice and the agen­da is nev­er hid­den. The clev­er­ness comes in how we’re manip­u­lat­ed to buy the prod­ucts that are adver­tised, not so much in dis­guis­ing the fact that we’re manip­u­lat­ed. It’s easy to see why Show­time’s Mad Men is doing so well.

There’s so much going on in this ad in par­tic­u­lar. A lot of these fac­tors enter into mod­ern adver­tise­ment as well, but I think that the extra time it takes to illus­trate an adver­tis­ment allows for greater nuance than we nor­mal­ly see. Every aspect of Rock­well’s paint­ing is tar­get­ed direct­ly at the consumer.

First, look at the sym­me­try of the col­or block­ing. The girl with blue-black hair is oppo­site the red­head, and wear­ing a red blouse while the red­head wears blue. Our blonde’s blouse is yel­low, keep­ing all the atten­tion right on her while our eye orbits her going back and forth from red to blue and back.

Our girl is pret­ty and whole­some-look­ing, just how every dad sees his daugh­ters, right? It’s so easy to imag­ine being proud of that lit­tle girl, off to col­lege and away from home for the first time. But there’s more to it than that. See her friends? Her friends are pret­ty, too, but not as pret­ty as she is. She is pop­u­lar, and at the upper ech­e­lons of her social clique. Her friends envy her, and not just because Dad­dy sent a nice pen.

Her raven-haired bespec­ta­cled friend is hap­py for her. Look at the joy and won­der on her face as she wish­es that her Dad­dy would send her some­thing that nice. It’s easy to imag­ine that this girl fol­lows our blonde around try­ing to be as much like her as pos­si­ble. «Our» daugh­ter is looked up to and admired by her peers.

The red­head is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Her smile is much less enthu­si­as­tic, and look where her eyes are point­ed. She’s not look­ing at the blonde, nor even at the Park­er 61. She’s look­ing over at the girl in the glass­es. She’s not just jeal­ous of the blonde, she’s try­ing to play it cool and not let on how much envy she has. Fur­ther, she’s a bit annoyed at how much atten­tion her oth­er friend is dish­ing out on the blonde. Not only is our girl admired, we see, but she is envied for her popularity.

Note also, that our blonde’s left hand ring fin­ger has an engage­ment band. The red­head­’s ring fin­ger is bare, and I think that we can assume that the oth­er girl is not engaged. «Guys don’t make pass­es at…» right? Some­thing we know in the real world not to be true, but in the make-believe world of adver­tis­ing I think it’s safe to assume that our black-haired friend will die and old maid despite hav­ing quite the pret­ty face.

Final­ly, read the ad copy and see what it says about dear old Dad. My favorite is how Dad’s boss some­times bor­rows Dad’s Park­er 61. Here the copy­writ­ers have snuck in some infor­ma­tion about Dad’s social and pro­fes­sion­al sta­tus. Dad is the guy we all would like to think we are. He’s an every­day guy, a work­er among work­ers, but he’s close enough to the top that he shares his pen with his boss. And of course Dad­dy is rec­og­nized by those around him as a man with extra­or­di­nary taste in pens. Oth­er­wise, would­n’t the boss have his own Park­er 61?

Decon­struct­ing the ad in such an ana­lyt­i­cal mat­ter feels a lit­tle cyn­i­cal. I hunt­ed this ad down because I found it to be charm­ing and sweet. The manip­u­la­tive hooks of the adver­tis­ing mate­r­i­al make it more so to me, not less. By point­ing out these things I’m try­ing to high­light the virtues of the ad, not any flaws. It’s well thought-out and clever with a depth that betrays the sac­cha­rine-glazed veneer. A very nice piece of Park­er ephemera.