Elmer Bernstein's the Magnificent Seven by Mariana Whitmer

Author:Mariana Whitmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781442281806
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Using representations of the West as a marketing tool was hardly a new idea. Westerns were extremely popular in the 1950s and were a means of social, political, cultural, and literary discourse. Advertisers were quick to take advantage of the genre’s success. In his article on magazine advertising and the Western, Colin McArthur notes, “In the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s especially, as the Western established itself as Hollywood’s dominant genre, advertising made full use of its familiar iconography and its ready acceptability to the American public.”30 From Coca-Cola, to cereal, to whiskey, to bras, Westerns provided an abundance of ad imagery, particularly those ads which espoused the clean-cut moral values most often communicated in the genre. The Coca-Cola ad emphasized the relaxation that comes after a hard day of cow-punching; it labels the drink, “the traditional refreshment of all America . . . pure as sunlight.” Post’s Grape Nuts Flakes asserts that it is Hopalong Cassidy’s favorite cereal, and a provocative photograph of a woman clad only in a bra, cowboy hat, gloves, and gunbelt, claims, “I dreamed I was WANTED in my Maidenform bra.” The ads were clearly tailored for a variety of audiences, and their creative imaginings of the West inspired the Marlboro campaign as well.

The Marlboro Man went from being in a variety of different professions to just being the cowboy, but in the early 1960s he was still placed in urban but supposedly masculine locations, such as Wall Street or a football stadium. So when the voiceover proclaimed, “This is Marlboro Country,” it lacked believability. By resituating the cowboy in his real environment, the West, the ad focused the imagery and made the icon more believable. To add credibility, the agency decided to use real cowboys in the ads, rather than models. Further, changing the music from Marx’s corny jingle to Bernstein’s more forceful main theme further strengthened the impact of the masculine symbol.

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