You may recall that I stumbled down a rabbit hole of Willys ads some months ago; if you haven’t, I strongly recommend scanning the images I found. James Sessions was a talented artist.
My father has a collection of publications dating back to the late 1800s, and among them are some Life magazines from WWII. On my travels yesterday I dropped in and took a brief look.
I haven’t yet found a Willys ad; I’d really like one of the Sessions’ pieces framed. But there were no shortage of interesting ads.
(There was also an interesting story about Congress’ powers relative to the president; 75 years later, we’re still talking about that, and I suspect—hope—that in 75 years we’ll still talking about it.)
Before I dive into the ads, a particularly poignant piece.
For anyone unfamiliar with Pyle, he was one of the most famous war reporters, and beloved by the U.S. soldiers for his propensity for being in the heat of the action, so much so that in September of 1944 he returned home out of sheer exhaustion.
This was in Life magazine, October 1944. In January he headed for the Pacific front, and in April he would die on Okinawa, victim to a machine gun.
On to the ads.
What could be a more powerful American duo than Coke & Jeep?
And airplanes. Lots and lots of airplanes.
And, the rest, including a cartoonish Jeep-a-like that will haunt my nightmares.
