Annals of Shaving: Super Bowl XLVII Edition

[Chef Bill]

Part I

With Super Bowl XLVIII coming up this Sunday night, I hope this post will be of interest, especially to some of our international members who might not be familiar with the important relationship between shaving product advertising and American sports.

Back in the day, some of the biggest American football stadiums were called "Bowls" because of their elongated shape. Most have been replaced by modern facilities, but a few of the old ones, like the Yale Bowl, in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, California (below), are still in use.



The biggest annual college football championship games were traditionally named for the "bowls" in which they were played: the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl (Miami), and Cotton Bowl (Dallas). Over the years, almost all American football championships, college and professional, adopted "Bowl" as part of their name as a way to promote the game and enhance it's importance.

The first Super Bowl was held in January 1967, between the Green Bay Packers, 1966 season champions of the National Football League (NFL), and the Kansas City Chiefs, champions of the upstart the American Football League (AFL). The game was originally a made-for-TV "bragging rights" contest, and very few people believed that any AFL team could possibly be competitive with the best of the powerhouse NFL. All that changed in January, 1969, when Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeated the heavily-favored Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts in Super Bowl III.



The leagues remained separate for only one more year. After the 1970 Super Bowl, the NFL and AFL merged. Ever since, the Super Bowl matches up the champions of the NFL's National and American Conferences, which, with addition of some expansion teams, and a few swaps of teams from one conference to the other, basically mirror the old NFL/AFL alignment. The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched sporting events worldwide, perhaps second only to the World Cup.

So what's all that got to do with shaving? Most American stadiums, like many in other countries, are now named for corporate sponsors. Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts (opened 2002, capacity 69,000) is the home of the NFL's New England Patriots, who were Super Bowl champions in 2001, '03 and '04. Like the Jets, the Patriots were members of the old AFL, and were originally known as the Boston (home of Gillette) Patriots. In the Pat's early days, they shared Fenway Park with baseball's Boston Red Sox. Gillette Stadium is also frequently used for soccer matches, concerts, and other large events.







Maybe we should call it "The Shaving Bowl."

 

[Chef Bill]

Part II

Before they moved to Washington in 1937, the NFL Redskins played in Boston, where they were called the Boston Braves and later, the Boston Redskins. Here's a shot of the them in action at Fenway Park, with the Gem Blades sign in the background. Next to it is the famous "The Red Sox use Lifebouy Soap" ad. The wise guys' response to seeing it always was, "And they still stink."




A marching band takes the field at halftime of a college football game in Fenway Park, 1938.




I think it's interesting to note that until the 1960s, New York-based Gem had a much stronger advertising presence in Boston sports venues than locally-headquartered Gillette. Since the Red Sox sold slugger Babe Ruth to the N.Y. Yankees in 1920 (which many believe began "The Curse of the Bambino" - a streak of 86 years during which the Red Sox failed to win the World Series), New York-Boston rivalries have been among the most heated of any in American professional sports. Is it possible that it was really the blades, after all?

Here's the Babe (next to the "G" in Gem) leading the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox onto the field for the very first game at Yankee Stadium, April 18, 1923. Gem Razor billboards were a feature of the great ballpark until the 1960s. That razor certainly wasn't cheap - $3 in 1923 had the buying power of about $41 today.




A view of the Yankee Stadium bleachers, and Babe Ruth in right field near the end of his playing days, in 1934.



Not to be outdone by their arch-rivals in New York, the "Green Monster" wall of Boston's Fenway Park had this beautiful sign for Gem blades back in 1946...

 

[JerYnkFan]

I've seen photos of Ebbets Field that had GEM signs up. Might have been in the movie 42.

 

[Chef Bill]

Good catch JerYankFan!
There definitely were Gem signs at the Brooklyn Dodgers' Ebbets Field too. Here's a shot from 1956:




Also, there was a large Gem sign at the New York Giants' home, the Polo Grounds. This shot is from 1923, when the stadium was being expanded to compete with the Yankees' new home directly across the river. In later years, the park also had ads for Burma Shave.




In 1948, almost all of the Polo Grounds' in-park advertising was removed, with the exception of a huge Chesterfield Cigarettes billboard in center field (cigarette advertising is now prohibited in major league baseball and football stadiums). Chesterfield paid a premium to exclude all other advertising from the ballpark, even for non-competing products. While some purists may have preferred it that way, the general opinion of the Polo Grounds was that for most of the Giants' last 10 years there it was monotonous and bland.




For the benefit of our international friends who don't follow American baseball closely, and some of our younger members here, New York had three major league baseball teams until 1958 - the New York Yankees in the American League; and the New York Giants, and Brooklyn Dodgers in the National League.

One full episode of Ken Burns' television documentary "Baseball" was devoted to New York's domination of the sport. Since 1901, the Yankees were American League Champions 40 times, and won the World Series 27 times; the Giants were National League Champions 17 times from 1888 to 1954, and won the World Series five times; and the Dodgers were National League Champs 12 times from 1890 to 1956, and won the World Series once. In 27 of the 38 seasons between 1920 and 1957, at least one the New York teams was in the World Series; and there were 13 "Subway Series" between two New York clubs.

The Giants and Dodgers moved to San Francisco and Los Angeles respectively after the 1957 season. In 1962, the New York Mets were formed to bring National League baseball back to the city.

The Mets played their first two seasons at the old Polo Grounds, while their new ballpark, Shea Stadium, was under construction next to the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. Shea Stadium was demolished after the 2008 season, and the Mets now play at CitiField (foreground), which was built immediately adjacent to the Shea site.

 

[Chef Bill]

This shot shows just how close Yankee Stadium (foreground) and the Polo Grounds were to each other.

The Polo Grounds was torn down after the 1963 season. Besides a plaque and a rusty old staircase that led down from a hill above it, there's hardly a trace of the old ballpark left. The low-income housing development to the right was expanded into the site after the stadium was demolished. In Brooklyn, a housing development also occupies the site where Ebbets Field once stood.





And of course, even "old" Yankee Stadium is no more. It was replaced by "new" Yankee Stadium, just to the north of it, at the start of the 2010 season. The old site (left) is now a park.




Frank Sinatra said it best...

 

[Chef Bill]

The Brooklyn Dodgers' captain, Pee Wee Reese, their great catcher Roy Campanella, and infielder Don Zimmer in a 1950s TV ad for the Gillette Super Speed. Reese and Campanella are in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Campanella was seriously injured in a car accident in the late 1950s and his career was tragically cut short. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair, but he was a great ambassador for baseball and loved by millions of fans. Reese became a successful businessman and television commentator. Zimmer played for various teams until the mid-1960s, and then became a very popular coach and manager. Even in his 80s, he is still active in the game.

 

[d3c4dent]

Thank you, Bill - you're a talented storyteller. I have been following the NFL since 2006, but its history never occured to me. Yet, from here, the middle of Europe, it's not even that trivial to follow. Anyway, I enjoyed this quite much!

 

[Metal241984]

Very interesting read, thanks.

 

[Chef Bill]

Thanks d3c and Metal - I appreciate it!

 

[Chef Bill]

In the early '70s, before she was one of Charlie's Angels, and long before she became a movie star, Farrah Fawcett was a relatively unknown model and actress in TV commercials. "Broadway" Joe Namath was coolest football player of his day, a swinging bachelor who led his underdog New York Jets to victory in Super Bowl III (1969) over the heavily-favored Baltimore Colts. Here they are together, "getting creamed" for Noxema...

 

[Chef Bill]

Here's Joe again, going all the way for "the great smell of Brut"...

 

[Chef Bill]

Broadway Joe again. What a lucky guy!

 

[Chef Bill]

And of course, the ladies cheer for guys who take it off with Noxema!

 

[lowjax]

Thanks for the great posts, Chef Bill. I love sports, sports history, and shaving; so this is a really fun thread for me to read.

 

[Chef Bill]

Thanks lowjax - it was fun researching and writing it!

 

[MrLara]

I really enjoy reading stuff like this, thank you very much for sharing.

 

[Chef Bill]

Thanks George! Glad you liked it!

 

[SteveE1959]

Really good Chef.

 

[Toothpick]

wow. This is one heck of thread! Love it!

 

[econjoe]

Thanks for taking the time to write this thread! It's a great read.