The Glamour In Spark Plugs


I don’t know what Madeleine Carroll has to do with spark plugs, and I wonder if she would have appreciated being linked with them here, since chances are she never had occasion to change one, and probably understood neither their function or application. The tie-in was for her latest Selznick-International release, The Prisoner Of Zenda. That would make it 1937. The Auto-Lite people must have rightly assumed that a full-length color portrait of Madeleine would be more arresting to readers than the mere facsimile of an otherwise undistinguished spark plug. Stars were put forth to sell everything in those days. I never see celebrity endorsements anymore. I understand big names peddle all sorts of product in Japan, but nothing stateside. Is this a lost art?