First example of product placement in a film

Cafe Society
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While having a loverly time over at this thread on product placement, I started to wonder how long this practice had been going on. Is there product placement in Casablanca or All About Eve that I was simply not aware of, or is this a fairly recent phenomenon? I was under the impression that the practice started with junk food junkie E.T., but Bond films were cited as examples, and they significantly predate the home-phoning Bug Eyed Monster.

I want to concentrate on feature films in this thread, as we are aware that the line between entertainment and advertising broke down on TV a long time ago (or perhaps never existed at all). However, if you have some interesting early TV product placement stories or info, I’m not gonna cry foul. Let’s also try to distinguish between paid product placement (the type I’m most interested in) and real products that were used to enhance the realism of the film, but for which the producers recieved no payment.

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One of the earliest was Love Happy, the Marx Brothers’ last film together (no one counts The Story of Mankind, for good reason).

They ran out of money to make the film, so the producer went to several companies and offered placement. The final chase scene has Harpo on a rooftop, and climbing on several company logo signs (e.g., Mobil Oil).

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There was also product placement in The African Queen. Bogey’s preferred brand of whiskey was featured.

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Joe Adamson, in Groucho, Harpo, Chico and sometimes Zeppo calls the product placement something about as common at the time as the “Irish measles”, so there may be earlier examples but not very many.

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Does “as common as irish measles” mean it was common or uncommon?

ascenray. did the production recieve money from the whiskey company? What kind of hooch was it?

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“Irish measles” means unheard of.

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Thank you! Ignorance fought!

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To help explain the reference, “German measles” is an archaic term for rubella.

On-topic: I’ve heard somewhere or other that Buick donated all vehicles used in Gold Diggers of 1935.

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According to this article The New York Times:

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Ok, I’m gonna show my age (Or lack therof) here.

1.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (The first Movie) the Pizza Delivery down the sewer probably had Dominos and Pizza Hut in a bid war. Dominos won. (And yet delivered the pizza vertically… That doesnt quite work well). Yet Pizza Hut seemed to be the most all over TMNT back in the day.

2.E.T. I’ve read time and time again that M&M/Mars Declined to have ET eat M&Ms. Reeses Pieces got it (Which I think differs from the novel) and well… to say the least I think it was one of M&Ms worst moves.

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Dragwyr, I opened the thread and planned to mention that article. How is it that it doesn’t require payment to read an article from February? Anyway, as the article mentioned, TCM was running a series about product placement in the movies. I saw a short that showed a very old film (early 1900’s?) of women doing laundry. There was a box of detergent that was prominently displayed in the film, and was believed to be one of the first uses of product placement (if not the first ever). I don’t have anything more than a vague memory of the details of the film. I think it was from Ireland? but maybe not.