Great Moments in Advertorial History

I’m wrapping up an essay on the history of the first lady memoir (and wishing I had about a million more words for this topic), but I had to stop and share this ad. It ran in the November 15, 1949 edition of the New York Times (along with a bunch of other newspapers), and it champions a forthcoming issue of McCall’s.

The ad is visually arresting—not only in its own terms, but also in its similarity to the slippery Gawker-like campaigns you see all over the web today.

Here’s a detail of the top:

Here’s the first paragraph of the ad:

In her final chapter of “This I Remember,” in the December issue of McCALL’S, Mrs. Roosevelt reveals with absorbing clarity, candor and love the little-known and widely disputed facts about her husband’s final illness and death. Everyone must surely read these historic words with reverence, admiration and intense interest.

Here’s a description of the magazine more generally (ellipses in the original):

HOW TO RUN A HOME . . . How to be personally attractive . . . yes, all this, and engrossing fiction, too, make today’s McCALL’S the extremely well-read and well used magazine it is.

The last bit of faux-handwritten marginalia is McCall’s slogan from this period: “Now read by women in 4,000,000 homes!”