Topic starter
05/12/2006 1:43 pm
There is a Santa Fe firm called CleanAIR Systems that uses, in its trade journal ads, a photograph of the Louisville waterfront with Str "Belle of Louisville" front and center.
Weren't there a handful of GM print ads in the mid-'70s that featured the "Delta Queen"?
05/12/2006 3:01 pm
Keith to Keith: Yes, I know just the ads you are referring to that featured the DQ. One, that frequently appeared in magazines, was a great color photo of a couple standing next to their brand new car, parked on the river bank, as the DQ steams by with her calliope tooting away.
05/12/2006 3:44 pm
Keith,
The ad is the for the General Motors 1972 Chevy Nova, I have a copy in my collection somewhere. The DELTA QUEEN is downbound in the background and the scene looks to be on the Upper Ohio.
If I remember right, the colour of the car was the Chevrolet ubiquitous Sea Foam Green. That colour semed to fit in whee with the differing green hues of the back ground and off set the car to the DELTA QUEEN. Cars are my other hobby.
~Travis~
05/12/2006 4:12 pm
Here is a rather bad scan of that ad we were talking about for the 1972 Chevrolet Nova...I stand corrected, it is not SeaFoam Green. It's blue. See what happens when you trust memory?
05/12/2006 4:13 pm
don't know what went wrong here....I think I copied something wrong. Sorry!
Topic starter
05/12/2006 4:19 pm
Yep, Travis, that's the one I remembered, but I thought the Nova was orange!
Cars are my other hobby, too - we'll have to talk sometime.
05/12/2006 4:21 pm
Keith,
Yes we will. Are you going to be at the Howard Holiday Open House this weekend?
~Travis~
Topic starter
05/12/2006 4:42 pm
Yes, I hope to be at the Howard this Sunday.
05/12/2006 5:19 pm
A tobacco company here at Louisville came out with a new and immediately forgotten brand of cigarettes. Their advertising firm chartered the Belle of Louisville for four hours. The idea was to show a paddlewheel, have a pack of cigarettes fade in, then paddlewheel and package would begin to turn. We went up and down the waterfront for two hours, stopping, starting, stopping, starting the engines for dozens of television shots. Then the entire camera crew came aboard bearing lunch for everyone and we went for a ride up the river. The ad was never shown in Louisville; I suspect it was never shown at all. It was an eight-passenger excursion.
05/12/2006 5:23 pm
On another occasion a shaving lotion firm provided about a thousand rubber duckies. One duckie had a hundred dollar bill in it. The rest had lotion samples. Up the river we went flinging rubber duckies overboard, followed by fully a half-hundred motorboats chasing those duckies. Motorboaters are never prudent around a steamboat, but on this occasion they were downright rash, riding within a yard of the paddlewheel on sides and rear. That stunt was not repeated.
05/12/2006 6:26 pm
Back in the mid-sixties, The George Wiedeman Brewing Co. of Newport, Kentucky had "The Olde Riverboat Captain" as the beer's spokesman. There were a couple of different TV commercials each one featured the BELLE of LOUISVILLE. One had shots of of an early Kentucky Derby Steamboat Races with the DELTA QUEEN, and the other commercial had a blacksmoking BELLE landing and rousters rolling off kegs of, you guessed it, Wiedeman Beer. I still remember the associated jingle that went along with the commercials. "There'll be Wiedeman, Wiedeman Beer. It satisfies a thirst monumental and sincere. There'll be Wiedeman, Wiedeman Beer. The boats are long gone, but their beer is still here!" The ironic thing is, both the BELLE and DQ remain while Wiedeman barely exist as a brand of Heilman Brewing Co. of LaCrosse, WI.
06/12/2006 12:06 am
Dear steaboating colleagues:
Steamboat advertising is interesting. When Betty Blake first joined GREENE LINE STEAMERS and the DELTA QUEEN she worked morning, noon and night on promos to get the image of the boat out nationally and internationally. I can't recall the exact year when Betty signed with TIMEX watches
The boat warmed up rolling the weel, backed out and headed under the Suspension Bridge. I don't know what happened to the TIMEX or if the ad ever made it to TV or magazines. I looked and looked but personally never saw it around here. Somebody in the 'know' opined the watch was washed off by the increasing wheel wash. Another thought the continual roll of the wheel was over kill and the watch just wound too tight. Anybody out there ever remember seeing it? [Not the TIMEX in the river but the commercial?]
Another big promo back in the Letha Greene days as CEO was her appearance on national TV standing on one of the DQ's higher priced cabins with the bath visible just over her shoulder. Beds freshly made, snowy towels on the racks etc. She held a roll of what I think may have been CHARMIN toilet tissue. Letha was a natural and her lovely voice and professional appearance made a hit.
Cheers,
R. Dale Flick