Which way is the endorsement?

Rob Lowe’s latest little podcast discusses the increasing need for side-gigs as the entertainment industry fades into AI oblivion. An actor’s main asset is his face. (Or her tits, but Lowe didn’t say that.) When an actor wants to argue with a director, his main case is “It’s my face up there.”

Lowe mentions a number of classic stars who moved into endorsements after their career was tired. He included James Mason, the “ultimate English gentleman”, who endorsed Studebakers and Thunderbird wine, “the favorite wine on Skid Row.”

One of Pat Foster’s Studie books includes two James Mason ads.

Supposedly Mason’s automotive stable includes both Rolls and Alvis along with Studie, thus providing three endorsements for the Hawk. If you own a Hawk you’ll be sipping tea with English gentlemen and the Hawk will share racing stories with the Alvis.

Significantly, the ads for the perfectly beautiful ’53 coupe didn’t include any stars. In that case the car would be endorsing the actor, which is not an appropriate position for a top star.

For me the endorsement in these ads was inverse. I didn’t recognize Mason as an actor, and the first picture didn’t identify him. He looks like some engineers I’ve worked with, so I figured he must have been a Studie engineer sharing the spotlight with his proud achievement.

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Random alt-history thought on the Hawk. It was introduced in 1956 after the merger with Packard. The vertical grille “should” have been given to the Packard brand. Before the merger Packard had been considering a retro return to verticalish grilles, with a HORRIBLE concept car called the Predictor. It was worse than an Edsel. With a little modification of the grille itself, the Hawk could have been an attractive lower and wider version of the last genuinely vertical Packard front end. Call it the Caribbean for continuity. And then the same Hawk front clip could be placed on the long-wheelbase sedan body to make a Packard sedan, which would have been more respectful to Packard tradition than the ’57 Packardbaker or the HORRIBLE ’58.