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| advertisment, November 24 1923 |
This post has even less to do with the building of Ottawa than the last, but when one finds such a gem of advertising, sharing is mandatory. Like the previous, it appeared in Ottawa Citizen without any mention of a local retailer. Both ads would have been produced and placed directly by the manufacturers.
The name "Campana's Italian Balm" caught my eye because my mother bought little glass bottles of the stuff back in the 1960s. Light to the touch, semi-opaque and off-white (like pearl jam, if you'll excuse the term) with a delicate floral scent (rosewater?), Italian Balm was a strikingly effective moisturizer. The catch-phrase "Use only a drop — spreads widely" comes to mind, though I'm not sure if that was in fact Campana's.
The precious tone of the ad may be contrived, but it works for me. Having personally dropped a lemon meringue pie a floor, I can attest to having said "fuck" loudly, after which I stormed about, giving everyone "thundercloud looks".
Marie's odd turn of phrase "I feel like about a million marks" may refer to hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic (which see) and could be translated as "I feel as worthless as a sack of turds" — a timely and clever subversion of "I feel like a million bucks!" The date of the ad lines up nicely with the German financial crisis of the 1920s.
This short, uncredited piece appeared in the Citizen some two months before Campana's advertisment...
We should remind ourselves that this article predates Hitler's appointment to Germany's chancellorship by nearly a decade. And their name notwithstanding, the Nazis were not socialists in any current, kumbaya sense of the word. As to the shopworn quip that "at least Hitler made the trains run on time", I'd be curious to know what role the above-described, pre-existing bureaucratic bloat did or didn't play in the matter.
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| German boys are seen putting devalued marks to good use. |
There is a curious historical link between Italian Balm and Amelia Earhart. If you're interested in forensic chemistry and how cosmetics degrade over time (separate, go rancid, oxidize, turn a funny colour), check out this document... "Were materials from the 1934 bottle of Campana Italian Balm a spectral match to white, sticky residue removed from the artifact found on Nikumaroro in 2007 (Artifact 2-8-s2a)?" (link to pdf) or just Google "amelia earhart italian balm". When you run into Alex Jones, you've gone far enough.
Italian Balm was developed in Canada. American marketing by the by "The Campana Company" of Batavia Illinois began circa 1926...
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| a 1941 Campana/RKO cross-promotion |
