Description
Book SynopsisThe popular image of a mid-century ad woman is of a feisty girl beating men at their own game, a female Horatio Alger protagonist battling her way through the sexist workplace. But before the fictional rise of Peggy Olson or the real-life stories of Patricia Tierney and Jane Maas came Jean Wade Rindlaub: a female powerbroker who used her considerable success in the workplace to encourage other women--to stick to their kitchens. The Angel in the Marketplace is the story of one of America's most accomplished advertising executives. It is also the story of how advertisers like Rindlaub sold a postwar American dream of capitalism and a Christian corporate order. Rindlaub was responsible for award-winning, mega sales-generating advertisements for all things domestic, including Oneida Silverware, Betty Crocker Cake Mix, Campbell's Soup, and Chiquita Bananas. Her success largely came from embracing, rather than subverting, the cultural expectations of women. She believed her responsibility
Trade Review“Wayland-Smith’s lively history tells the unusual story of pioneering adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub, who climbed the ladder from secretary to executive in the mid-twentieth century. Wayland-Smith insightfully shows how Rindlaub touted motherhood, home, love, and Christian service as the cornerstones of the free market and free world, but how late in life she became a campaigner for social justice.
The Angel in the Marketplace illuminates one woman’s journey from advocating traditional notions of women’s place and the benefits of capitalism to questioning the underlying message of the ads she produced.” -- Kathy Peiss, author of Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture
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The Angel in the Marketplace is a deeply researched history of the American advertising industry told through the life of Jean Wade Rindlaub. It is a portrait of a prolific lady and her eye-catching ads that promoted cutlery, makeup, soaps, and cake mixes to Americans. Wayland-Smith captures the synergy between corporate capitalism and Christianity that animated the world of Madison Avenue ad women and men of the twentieth century. This talented writer delivers sharp analysis of consumer culture from colorful stories of ‘copy’ she has excavated from the archives.” -- Michelle Nickerson, author of Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Odd Adman Out: Who Was Jean Wade Rindlaub?
Chapter 1: A Tale of Two Gospels
Chapter 2: The Angel in the Marketplace
Chapter 3: A Clean Rinse and a Fresh Start: The Magic of Soap
Chapter 4: Of Makeovers and Movie Stars
Chapter 5: Community Is Correct
Chapter 6: Back Home for Keeps
Chapter 7: Believe in Betty Crocker
Chapter 8: The “New Togetherness,” or How Adwomen Learned to Man Up
Chapter 9: The Liking of Ike: Television, Anticommunism, and Magical Thinking
Chapter 10: The Power of Positive Thinking
Chapter 11: Chiquita Banana and the Politics of Kitsch
Chapter 12: A Second Look at the Second Sex
Epilogue: The Service Ideal, Revisited
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
