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I was flipping through the November 1950 issue of Marvel Science Stories this afternoon (as one does on a lazy Saturday), and while the content by the likes of A. E. van Vogt, Gardner F. Fox, and A. Bertram Chandler was intriguing, what interested me most was the back cover ad.
“Most Bald People Could Have Saved Their Hair Had They Acted in Time,” we’re told, with random italicization that doesn’t seem to make any sense. But what’s fascinating is the identity of the celebrity endorser doing the telling—”Rocco, Personal Barber of the late Thomas A. Edison.”
That’s right—the barber to the inventor known as the Wizard of Menlo Park claimed that a formula called Sayve is “the best Science can do to SAVE YOUR HAIR.”
One question, though.
If the product being touted does such a good job of saving hair, and if Rocco was Edison’s personal barber … then why did Edison look like this?
Edison’s noggin doesn’t leave me with much confidence in either Sayve as a hair-restorer or Rocco as a barber!
How did the adman—who in the face of that face decided Rocco and his Edison connection made for good copy—miss that?
Jeff
I was just reading a book by Paul Auster in which he mentions Rocco as having been his barber as kid. I met maybe 20 years ago a woman who said her brother used to go to Edison’s barber which had to have been the same guy. Auster goes on to say that his father had briefly been employed by Edison until terminated when Edison discovered he was a Jew — this is somewhat consistent with the known antisemitism of Edison and his pal Ford although Ford did employ Jews in blue collar jobs; I also read that Edison had advised Ford to tone down his antisemitism.