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AUTOMOBILEENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
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market. Ransom Olds produced the first widely popular and inexpen-
sive model, his ‘‘curved dash’’ Oldsmobile, of which he made over
12,000 between 1901 and 1904. His small, lightweight, reliable
runabout took such a hold of the public’s imagination that a composer
commemorated it in a popular song, ‘‘In My Merry Oldsmobile’’:
Come away with me, Lucille,
In my merry Oldsmobile,
Over the road of life we’ll fly,
Autobubbling you and I,
To the church we’ll swiftly steal,
And our wedding bells will peal,
You can go as far as you like with me,
In our merry Oldsmobile.
As much success as the Oldsmobile enjoyed, it took Henry Ford,
a manufacturer from Dearborn, Michigan, to seize the idea of mass
production and use it to change the face of the automobile industry.
The Ford Model T—alternately dubbed the ‘‘Tin Lizzie’’ and the
‘‘flivver’’ by an enthusiastic public—first became available in 1908.
The car coupled a simple, durable design and new manufacturing
methods, which kept it relatively inexpensive at $850. After years of
development, experimentation, and falling prices, the Ford Company
launched the world’s first fully automated assembly line in 1914.
Between 1909 and 1926, the Model T averaged nearly forty-three
percent of the automobile industry’s total output. As a result of its
assembly-line construction, the car’s price dropped steadily to a low
of $290 on the eve of its withdrawal from the market in 1927. The
company also set new standards for the industry by announcing in
1914 that it would more than double its workers’ minimum wages to
an unprecedented five dollars per day. Over the course of the Model
T’s production run, the Ford Company combined assembly-line
manufacturing, high wages, aggressive mass-marketing techniques,
and an innovative branch assembly system to make and sell over
fifteen million cars. As a result, Henry Ford became something of a
folk hero, particularly in grass-roots America, while the car so well-
suited to the poor roads of rural America became the subject of its own
popular genre of jokes and stories. In 1929, the journalist Charles
Merz called the Model T ‘‘the log cabin of the motor age.’’ It was an
apt description, for more first-time buyers bought Model T’s than any
other type, making it the car that ushered most Americans into the
automobile era.
Between 1908 and 1920, as automobiles became affordable to a
greater percentage of Americans, farmers quickly abandoned their
prejudices against the newfangled machines and embraced them as
utilitarian tools that expanded the possibilities of rural life. The
diffusion of cars among rural residents had a significant effect on farm
families, still forty percent of the United States population in 1920.
Because automobiles increased the realistic distance one could travel
in a day—and unlike horses did not get so tired after long trips that
they were unable to work the next day—cars allowed farmers to make
more frequent trips to see neighbors and visit town. In addition, rural
Americans found a number of uses for the versatile, tough machines
on farms themselves, hauling supplies, moving quickly around the
farm, and using the engine to power other farm machinery.
As car sales soared before 1920, the movement for good roads
gained momentum and became a priority for many state legislatures.
Rural roads had fallen into a bad state of neglect since the advent of
the railroads, but early ‘‘Good Roads’’ reformers nevertheless met
stiff opposition to their proposed plans for improvement. Farmers
argued that expensive road improvement programs would cost local
citizens too much in taxes, and that good roads would benefit urban
motorists much more than the rural residents footing the bill. Reform-
ers had to wage fierce political battles to overcome rural opposition,
and succeeded only after convincing state legislatures to finance
improvements entirely with state funds, completely removing road
maintenance from local control. Resistance was not limited to rural
areas, however. Even within cities, many working-class neighbor-
hoods opposed the attempts of Good Roads advocates to convert
streets into arteries for traffic, preferring instead to protect the more
traditional function of neighborhood streets as social spaces for public
gatherings and recreation. In addition, special interest groups such as
street-car monopolies and political machines fought to maintain their
control over the streets. Only after the victory of other Progressive Era
municipal reformers did road engineers succeed in bringing their
values of efficiency and expertise to city street system management.
In the 1920s, car prices dropped, designs improved, roads
became more drivable, and automobiles increasingly seemed to
provide the key to innumerable advantages of modern life. To many
people, cars embodied freedom, progress, and social status all at the
same time. Not only could car owners enjoy the exhilaration of
speeding down open roads, but they also had the power to choose
their own travel routes, departure times, and passengers. Outdoor
‘‘autocamping’’ became a popular family pastime, and an entire
tourist industry designed to feed, house, and entertain motorists
sprang up almost overnight. Even advertising adapted to a public
traveling thirty miles per hour, led by the innovative Burma Shave
campaign that spread its jingles over consecutive roadside billboards.
One set informed motorists that ‘‘IF YOU DON’T KNOW / WHOSE
SIGNS / THESE ARE / YOU CAN’T HAVE / DRIVEN VERY FAR
/ BURMA SHAVE.’’ In a variety of ways, then, automobile engines
provided much of the roar of the Roaring Twenties, and stood next to
the flapper, the flask, and the Charleston as a quintessential symbol of
the time.
As an icon of the New Era, the automobile also symbolized the
negative aspects of modern life to those who lamented the crumbling
of Victorian standards of morality, family, and propriety. Ministers
bewailed the institution of the ‘‘Sunday Drive,’’ the growing tenden-
cy of their flocks to skip church on pretty days to motor across the
countryside. Law enforcement officials and members of the press
expressed frustration over the growing number of criminals who used
getaway cars to flee from the police. Even social critics who tended to
approve of the passing of Victorian values noted that the rapid
diffusion of automobiles in the 1920s created a number of unanticipated
problems. Rather than solving traffic problems, widespread car
ownership increased the number of vehicles on the road—and lining
the curbs—which made traffic worse than ever before. Parking
problems became so acute in many cities that humorist Will Rogers
joked in 1924 that ‘‘Politics ain’t worrying this Country one tenth as
much as Parking Space.’’ Building expensive new roads to alleviate
congestion paradoxically increased it by encouraging people to use
them more frequently. Individual automobiles seemed to be a great
idea, but people increasingly began to see that too many cars could
frustrate their ability to realize the automobile’s promises of freedom,
mobility, and easy escape.
Despite these problems and a small group of naysayers, Ameri-
can popular culture adopted the automobile with alacrity. Tin Pan
Alley artists published hundreds of automobile-related songs, with
titles like ‘‘Get A Horse,’’ ‘‘Otto, You Ought to Take Me in Your
Auto,’’ and ‘‘In Our Little Love Mobile.’’ Broadway and vaudeville
AUTOMOBILE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
140
An example of the early automobile assembly line.
shows both adopted cars as comic props, a tradition the Keystone
Kops carried over into the movie industry. Gangster films in particu-
lar relied on cars for high-speed chases and shoot-outs, but even films
without automobile-centered plots used cars as symbols of social
hierarchy: Model T’s immediately signaled humble origins, while
limousines indicated wealth. In Babbitt (1922), Sinclair Lewis noted
that ‘‘a family’s motor indicated its social rank as precisely as the
grades of the peerage determined the rank of an English family,’’ and
in the eyes of Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The
Great Gatsby (1925), Gatsby’s Rolls-Royce represented the ‘‘fresh,
green breast of the new world.’’ Parents worried that teenagers used
automobiles as mobile bedrooms, a growing number of women
declared their independence by taking the wheel, and sociologists
Robert and Helen Lynd declared that automobiles had become ‘‘an
accepted essential of normal living’’ during the 1920s.
After the stock market crashed in 1929, automobiles remained
important cultural symbols. Throughout the Great Depression, cars
reminded people of the prosperity that they had lost. On the other
hand, widespread car ownership among people without homes or jobs
called attention to the country’s comparatively high standard of
living; in the United States, it seemed, poverty did not preclude
automobile ownership. Countless families traveled around the coun-
try by car in search of work, rationing money to pay for gasoline even
before buying food. Dorothea Lange’s photography and John Stein-
beck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) immortalized these migrants,
who became for many the symbolic essence of the decade’s economic
ills. Automobiles had become such a permanent fixture in American
life when the Depression hit that even in its pit, when the automobile
industry’s production had fallen to below a quarter of its 1929 figures,
car registrations remained at over ninety percent of their 1929
number. Even before the Depression began most Americans had
thoroughly modified their lifestyles to take advantage of what auto-
mobiles had to offer, and they refused to let a weak economy deprive
them of their cars. Tellingly, steady automobile use through the 1930s
provided an uninterrupted flow of income from gasoline taxes, which
the country used to build roads at an unprecedented rate.
The thousands of miles of paved highway built during the
Depression hint at one of the most profound developments of the first
AUTOMOBILEENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
141
half of the twentieth century: the extensive modification and rear-
rangement of the country’s built environment to accommodate wide-
spread automobile use. In urban areas, general car ownership under-
mined the centralizing influence of the railroads. Because businesses
could unload railroad freight into motorized trucks instead of horse-
drawn wagons, which significantly reduced their short-haul transpor-
tation costs, proximity to railroad depots became much less impor-
tant. At the same time, growing traffic problems in urban cores along
with a more mobile buying public made relocating to less congested
areas with better parking for their customers an increasingly attractive
option for small-volume businesses.
Although cities continued to expand, Americans used their cars
to move in ever-growing numbers to the suburbs. As early as the
1920s suburban growth had begun to rival that of cities, but only after
World War II did American suburbs come into their own. Beginning
in the mid-1940s, huge real estate developers took advantage of new
technology, federally insured home loans, and low energy costs to
respond to the acute housing shortage that returning GIs, the baby
boom, and pent-up demand from the Depression had created. Devel-
opers purchased large land holdings on the border of cities, bulldozed
everything to facilitate new standardized construction techniques,
and rebuilt the landscape from the ground up. Roads and cars, of
course, were essential components of the suburban developers’
visions. So were large yards (which provided the social spaces for
suburbanites that streets had once supplied for urban residents) and
convenient local shopping centers (with plenty of parking). Even the
design of American houses changed to accommodate automobiles,
with more and more architects including carports or integrated
garages as standard features on new homes.
In rural America, the least direct but most far-reaching effects of
widespread car ownership came as rural institutions underwent a
spatial reorganization in response to the increased mobility and range
of the rural population. In the first decade or so of the century,
religious, educational, commercial, medical, and even mail services
consolidated, enabling them to take advantage of centralized distribu-
tion and economies of scale. For most rural Americans, the centraliza-
tion of institutions meant that by mid-century access to motorized
transportation had become a prerequisite for taking advantage of
many rural services.
At about the same time suburban growth exploded in the mid-
1940s, road engineers began to focus on developing the potential of
automobiles for long-distance travel. For the first several decades of
the century, long-distance travelers by automobile had to rely on
detailed maps and confusing road signs to navigate their courses. In
the 1920s, limited-access roads without stop lights or intersections at
grade became popular in some parts of the country, but most people
judged these scenic, carefully landscaped ‘‘parkways’’ according to
their recreational value rather than their ability to move large numbers
of people quickly and efficiently. By 1939, however, designers like
Norman Bel Geddes began to stress the need for more efficient road
planning, as his ‘‘Futurama’’ exhibit at the New York World’s Fair
demonstrated. Over five million people saw his model city, the most
popular display at the exhibition, which featured elevated freeways
and high-speed traffic coursing through its center. Impressed, many
states followed the lead of Pennsylvania, which in 1940 opened 360
miles of high-speed toll road with gentle grades and no traffic lights.
By 1943, a variety of automobile-related interest groups joined
together to form the American Road Builders Association, which
began lobbying for a comprehensive national system of new super-
highways. Then in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed a
committee to examine the issue of increasing federal road aid—
headed by a member of the General Motors board of directors. Two
years later, Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highway Act, commit-
ting the federal government to provide ninety percent of the cost of a
41,000-mile highway system, the largest peacetime construction
project in history.
The new interstates transformed the ability of the nation’s road
system to accommodate high-speed long-distance travel. As a result,
the heavy trucking industry’s share of interstate deliveries rose from
about fifteen percent of the national total in 1950 to almost twenty-
five percent by the end of the decade, a trend which accelerated the
decentralization of industry that had started before the war. Suburbs
sprang up even farther away from city limits, and Americans soon
began to travel more miles on interstates than any other type of road.
The new highways also encouraged the development of roadside
businesses that serviced highway travelers. A uniform highway
culture of drive-in restaurants, gas stations, and huge regional shop-
ping malls soon developed, all of it advertised on large roadside
billboards. Industries designed to serve motorists expanded, with the
motel industry in particular growing in lock-step with the interstates,
taking advantage of the same increase in family vacations that caused
visits to national parks to double over the course of the 1950s.
While car designers in the 1950s subordinated all other consid-
erations to style and comfort, engineers focused on boosting accelera-
tion and maximum speed. With eager enthusiasm, Americans em-
braced the large, gas-guzzling, chrome-detailed, tail-finned automobiles
that Detroit produced. Teens in particular developed an entire subcul-
ture with automobiles at the center. Cruising the local strip, hanging
out at drive-in restaurants, drag-racing, and attending drive-in movies
all became standard nationwide pastimes.
Yet trouble brewed beneath the surface of the 1950s car culture,
and in the 1960s and 1970s a number of emerging problems drove
home several negative unanticipated consequences of universal car
ownership. Safety concerns, for example, became increasingly im-
portant in the mid-1960s since annual automobile-related deaths had
increased from roughly 30,000 to 50,000 between 1945 and 1965.
Environmental damage, too, became an issue for many Americans,
who focused on problems like air pollution, oil spills, the tendency of
heavy automobile tourism to destroy scenic areas, and the damaging
effects of new road construction on places ranging from urban
neighborhoods to national wilderness preserves.
In both cases, concerned citizens turned to the government to
regulate the automobile industry after less coercive attempts to
address problems failed. In 1965, Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed
galvanized popular concern over motor vehicle safety. Congress
responded in 1966 with the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle
Safety Act, which required a number of safety features on all models
beginning in 1968, despite auto industry protests that regulations
would be expensive and ineffective. Within two years of the imple-
mentation of the law, the ratio of deaths to miles driven had declined
steeply, injuring Americans’ trust in the good faith efforts of industry
to respond to consumer concerns without active regulation. Similarly,
since repeated requests to manufacturers throughout the 1950s to
reduce emissions had failed, California required all new cars from
1966 on to have emissions-reducing technology. Other states fol-
lowed suit, discounting the car industry’s claims that once again
solutions would be slow to develop, expensive, and difficult
to implement.
AUTRY ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
142
The most significant example of cultural backlash against the
problems of widespread dependence on automobiles came during and
after the Arab oil embargo of 1973, when the price of crude oil
increased over 130 percent in less than three months. Around the
country, lines of cars snaked out of gas stations, where pump prices
had doubled nearly overnight. Recriminations and accusations about
why the country had become so dependent on foreign oil flew back
and forth—but the major result was that American manufacturers
steadily lost market share after 1973 to small foreign imports that
provided greater fuel-efficiency, cheaper prices, and lower emissions
than Detroit models. Domestic full- and mid-size automobiles, once
the undisputed champions of the United States, lost a substantial
portion of their market share through the 1970s. By 1980, small cars
comprised over 60 percent of all sales within the country.
The widespread cultural discontent with dependence on cars
lasted only as long as the high gasoline prices. Rather than making
changes that would decrease reliance on automobiles, the country
addressed new problems as they arose with complex technological
and regulatory fixes. Oil prices eventually fell to pre-embargo lows in
the 1980s, and by the late 1990s cheap fuel helped reverse the
decades-long trend toward smaller cars. Large sport utility vehicles
with lower fuel efficiency became increasingly popular, and some-
what ironically relied heavily on ‘‘back-to-nature’’ themes in their
marketing strategies. Despite substantial advances in quality and
responsiveness to consumers, American manufacturers never re-
gained their dominance of the immediate postwar years. At the end of
the twentieth century, however, the American car culture itself
continued to be a central characteristic distinguishing the United
States from most other countries around the world.
—Christopher W. Wells
F
URTHER READING:
Berger, Michael. The Devil Wagon in God’s Country: The Automo-
bile and Social Change in Rural America, 1893-1929. Hamden,
Connecticut, Archon Books, 1979.
Flink, James J. America Adopts the Automobile, 1895-1910. Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1970.
———. The Car Culture. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1975.
Jennings, Jan, editor. Roadside America: The Automobile in Design
and Culture. Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University Press, 1990.
Lewis, David L., and Laurence Goldstein, editors. The Automobile
and American Culture. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan
Press, 1983.
Rae, John Bell. The American Automobile: A Brief History. Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Rose, Mark H. Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989.
Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1990.
Scharff, Virginia. Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the
Motor Age. New York, Free Press, 1991.
Sears, Stephen W. The American Heritage History of the Automobile
in America. New York, American Heritage Publishing Compa-
ny, 1977.
Wik, Reynold M. Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America. Ann Arbor,
University of Michigan Press, 1972.
Autry, Gene (1907-1998)
Famous as the original ‘‘Singing Cowboy,’’ Gene Autry rode
the range in the tradition of Tom Mix—clean living, honest, and
innocent. He established the singing cowboy stereotype (continued
by Roy Rogers, who inherited Autry’s sobriquet): that of the heroic
horseman who could handle a guitar or a gun with equal aplomb. A
star of film, radio, and television, Autry was probably best known for
his trademark song, ‘‘Back in the Saddle Again,’’ as well as for many
more of the over 250 songs he wrote in his lifetime.
Born in Texas, Autry moved to Oklahoma as a teenager, and
began working as a telegrapher for the railroad after high school.
While with the railroad, he began composing and performing with
Jimmy Scott, with whom he co-wrote his first hit, ‘‘That Silver-
Haired Daddy of Mine,’’ which sold half a million copies in 1929 (a
record for the period). The same year, he auditioned for the Victor
Recording Company in New York City but was told he needed more
experience. He returned to Tulsa and began singing on a local radio
program, earning the nickname ‘‘Oklahoma’s Yodeling Cowboy.’’
Columbia Records signed him to a contract in 1930 and sent him to
Chicago to sing on various radio programs, including the Farm and
Home Hour and the National Barndance. He recorded a variety of
songs during the 1930s, such as ‘‘A Gangster’s Warning,’’ ‘‘My Old
Pal of Yesterday,’’ and even the labor song ‘‘The Death of
Mother Jones.’’
In 1934, Autry began appearing in films as a ‘‘tuneful cow-
puncher’’ and made numerous highly successful pictures with his
Gene Autry
AVALONENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
143
horse, Champion, before he retired from the film industry in the
1950s. His debut film was In Old Santa Fe, in which he made only a
brief singing appearance, but reaction to his performance was favor-
able and it got him a lead role in the 13-part serial Phantom Empire.
His first starring role in a feature film followed with Tumblin’
Tumbleweeds (1935), and he became not only Republic Pictures’
reigning king of ‘‘B’’ Westerns, but the only Western star to be
featured on the list of top ten Hollywood moneymakers between 1938
and 1942. Autry’s pictures are notable for the smooth integration of
the songs into the plots, helping to move the action along. Some of his
films were even built around particular songs, among them Tumblin’
Tumbleweeds, The Singing Cowboy (1937), Melody Ranch (1940)
and Back in the Saddle (1941).
After serving as a technical sergeant in the Army Air Corps
during World War II, Autry returned to Hollywood to make more
films. From film, Autry made the transition into both radio and
television programming. He hosted the Melody Ranch show on radio
(and later on television), and he was involved with numerous success-
ful television series, including The Gene Autry Show (1950-56) and
The Adventures of Champion (1955-56). A masterful merchandiser,
he developed a lucrative and hugely successful lines of clothes, comic
books, children’s books, and toys, while at the same time managing
and touring with his own rodeo company. In addition to his country
songs, Autry wrote numerous other popular songs, including ‘‘Frosty
the Snowman,’’ ‘‘Peter Cottontail,’’ and, most famously, the endur-
ing ‘‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’’ Thanks to his financial
success, Autry was able to buy the California Angels baseball team
and served as a vice president of the American Baseball League for
many years.
Like Tom Mix before him, Autry’s public image stressed strong
morals and honesty, and fueled the romantic image of the American
cowboy. His ten-point ‘‘Cowboy Code’’ featured such sincere advice
as ‘‘The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take
unfair advantage’’; ‘‘He must not advocate or possess racially or
religiously intolerant ideas’’; ‘‘He must neither drink nor smoke’’;
and ‘‘The Cowboy is a patriot.’’ Gene Autry was elected to the
Country Music Hall of Fame 1969, 29 years before his death at the
age of 91.
—Deborah M. Mix
F
URTHER READING:
Autry, Gene. The Essential Gene Autry. Columbia/Legacy Rec-
ords, 1992.
Autry, Gene, with Mickey Herskowitz. Back in the Saddle Again.
Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1978.
Rothel, David. The Gene Autry Book. Madison, North Carolina,
Empire Publishing, 1988.
Avalon, Frankie (1939—)
During the late 1950s, as record producers and promoters rushed
to capitalize on the potent youth market, they aggressively sought out
clean-cut young males to mold into singing stars. Seeking to fill a void
that had been created in part by the absence of Elvis Presley, who was
then a G.I. stationed in Germany, they purposely toned down the
controversial aspects of the new musical form, rock ’n’ roll. Unlike
Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello
Presley, who emoted a powerful sexuality, the manufactured teen
idols elicited a friendly, non-threatening demeanor. The engaging
Frankie Avalon, whose skinniness prompted comparisons to an
earlier generation’s teen idol, Frank Sinatra, perfectly filled that bill.
As he once explained, ‘‘I was one of those guys who there was a
possibility of dating . . . I had a certain innocence.’’
A native of South Philadelphia, Francis Thomas Avallone was
just eleven when he talked his father into buying him a thirty-five-
dollar pawn shop trumpet (after seeing the 1950 Kirk Douglas movie,
Young Man with a Horn). Avalon went on to appear in local talent
shows, including the program TV Teen Club. The show’s host, Paul
Whiteman, christened him ‘‘Frankie Avalon.’’
A meeting with singer Al Martino led to an introduction to a New
York talent scout, who in turn arranged an audition with Jackie
Gleason. After appearing on Gleason’s TV show, additional national
shows followed, as did a contract with an RCA subsidiary label. For
his first two records—the instrumentals ‘‘Trumpet Sorrento’’ and
‘‘Trumpet Tarantella’’—the performer was billed as ‘‘11-year-old
Frankie Avalon.’’ He was twelve when he became the trumpet player
for the South Philadelphia group, Rocco and the Saints, which also
included Bobby Rydell on drums. As a member of the Saints, Avalon
AVEDON ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
144
performed at local clubs, on local television, and even toured Atlantic
City. The talented trumpeter also sometimes doubled as the group’s
singer. As a result of one such performance he caught the attention of
Bob Marcucci and Peter De Angelis, owners of Chancellor Records.
In 1958 Avalon signed a contract with their label, and went on to be
managed by Marcucci, who also handled Fabian.
Though his first two Chancellor records were unsuccessful,
Avalon enjoyed a hit with his third effort, ‘‘Dede Dinah,’’ which he
performed while pinching his nose for a nasal inflection. Though the
record went gold, it was with the 1959 ‘‘Venus’’ that Avalon enjoyed
his biggest success. Recorded after nine takes, and released three days
later, it sold more than a million copies in less than one week.
Along with other heartthrobs of the day, Avalon became a
frequent guest artist on American Bandstand. And like his teen idol
brethren, including Philadelphia friends Fabian and Rydell, he headed
to Hollywood where he was given co-starring roles alongside respect-
ed veterans. In Guns of the Timberland he shared the screen with Alan
Ladd; in The Alamo he joined an all-star cast, led by John Wayne.
In the early 1960s, Avalon used his affable, clean-cut image to
clever effect as the star and a producer of the Beach Party movies, in
which he was sometimes romantically teamed with another former
1950s icon and close friend Annette Funicello. Made by the youth-
oriented American International Pictures, the movies were filmed in
less than two weeks, on shoestring budgets, and featured a melange of
robust young performers, musical numbers, surfing, drag racing, and
innocuous comedy. Despite the preponderance of bikini-clad starlets,
the overall effect was one of wholesome, fun-loving youth. But in
fact, the young people of the decade were on the verge of a counter-
culture revolution. When it happened, Avalon, like many others who
got their start in the 1950s, was passé.
He attempted to change his image by appearing in low-budget
exploitation movies such as the 1970 Horror House. But despite his
rebellion at what he once called ‘‘that damn teen idol thing,’’ it was
precisely that reputation that propelled his comeback. In the 1976
movie version of Grease, which celebrates the 1950s, Avalon seem-
ingly emerges from heaven to dispense advice in the stand-out
musical number, ‘‘Beauty School Dropout.’’ Avalon’s cameo ap-
pearance generated so much attention that he went on to record a
disco-version of ‘‘Venus.’’ He further capitalized on his early image
with the 1987 movie, Back to the Beach, in which he was reunited
with Funicello.
Avalon, who is the father of eight and a grandfather, has also
capitalized on his still-youthful looks to market a line of beauty and
health care products on the Home Shopping Nework. In addition, he
performs in the concert tour ‘‘The Golden Boys of Rock ’n’ Roll,’’ in
which he and Fabian and Rydell star.
—Pat H. Broeske
F
URTHER READING:
Bronson, Fred. The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. New York,
Billboard Publications, 1988.
Miller, Jim, editor. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock &
Roll. New York, Random House, 1980.
Whitney, Dwight. ‘‘Easy Doesn’t Do It—Starring Frankie Avalon.’’
TV Guide. August 21, 1976, 14-17.
Avedon, Richard (1923—)
Richard Avedon added new depth to fashion photography begin-
ning in 1945. His fashion photographs—in Harper’s Bazaar, 1945-
66, and in Vogue, 1966-90—were distinctive in expressing both
motion and emotion. Avedon imparted the animation of streets,
narrative, and energy to the garment. His most famous fashion image,
Dovima with Elephants (1955), is an unabashed beauty-and-the-beast
study in sexuality. By the 1950s, Avedon also made memorable non-
fashion images, including a 1957 portrait of the Duke and Duchess of
Windsor in vacant melancholy, 1960s heroic studies of Rudolf
Nureyev dancing nude, and 1960s epics of the civil rights movement
and mental patients at East Louisiana State Hospital. Although
Avedon’s photographs moved away from fashion toward the topical,
social, and character-revealing, the common theme of all his photog-
raphy has been emotion, always aggressive and frequently shocking.
—Richard Martin
F
URTHER READING:
Avedon, Richard. An Autobiography. New York, Random House, 1993.
Evidence, 1944-1994 (exhibition catalogue). New York, Whitney
Museum of American Art/Random House, 1994.
The Avengers
The Avengers (which appeared on ABC from 1961 to 1969) has
the distinction of being the most popular British television series to
run on an American commercial network, and was the first such series
to do so in prime time. Sophisticated, tongue-in-cheek, but never
camp or silly, The Avengers was also one of the first and best of the
soon-to-be-popular television spy series, and varied in tone from
crime melodrama to outright science fiction. Every episode starred
John Steed (Patrick Macnee), an urbane British intelligence agent
who heads a mysterious elite squad known as the Avengers, so named
for their propensity to right wrongs.
The first four seasons of the show were not run in the United
States, but were videotaped and aired only in Britain. The series began
as a follow-up to Police Surgeon (1960), which starred Ian Hendry as
a doctor who helped the police solve mysteries. Sydney Newman, the
head of programming at ABC-TV in England, wanted to feature
Hendry in a new series that would pair him as Dr. David Keel with a
secret agent, John Steed, in a fight against crime.
Patrick Macnee had had a successful acting career in Canada and
Hollywood, but when he returned to England, he was unable to find
work as an actor. An old friend got him a position as an associate
producer on The Valiant Years (1960-63) about Winston Churchill,
and Macnee soon found himself producing the entire show. He
planned on remaining a producer when he was asked to star in The
Avengers (on which he initially received second billing) and asked for
a ridiculously high salary, expecting the producers to reject it. When
they didn’t, Steed was born.
Though he initially used a gun, Macnee quickly altered the
character, which he saw as a combination of the Scarlet Pimpernel, his
father, Ralph Richardson, and his C.O. in the Navy. As the series went
on, Steed appeared more and more as a well-dressed, upper crust fop
with more than a soupçon of charm, dash, and derring-do. Apart from
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his fighting skills, with the third season his chief weapon became his
umbrella, which he used variously as a camera, a gas projector, a
sword case, and a tape recorder.
After two seasons, Hendry bowed out and Honor Blackman was
hired to be Steed’s first female sidekick, anthropologist Cathy Gale,
whom Blackman modeled after Life magazine photographer Marga-
ret Bourke-White with a dash of Margaret Mead. Initially, Gale was
given a pistol which could be hidden in her make-up kit or under her
skirt, but it was eventually decided this was too unwieldy. Miniature
swords and daggers were briefly tried when Leonard White urged that
Blackman take up judo seriously and arranged for her to be trained by
Douglas Robinson.
The action-oriented series required that Blackman have at least
one fight scene in every episode, and Blackman soon became adept at
judo. White wanted Cathy to be pure, a woman who fought bad guys
because she cared so much about right and justice, as a contrast to
Steed’s wicked, devilish, and saucy nature. Blackman added to the
character by dressing her in leather simply because she needed clothes
that would not rip during the fight scenes (at the beginning of the
series, she once ripped her trousers in close-up). Because the only
thing that went with leather pants were leather boots, she was given
calf-length black boots and inadvertently started a kinky fashion
trend. (In fact, Macnee and Blackman released a single celebrating
‘‘Kinky Boots’’ on Decca in 1964).
However, after two years, Blackman likewise decided to call it
quits to concentrate on her movie career (she had just been cast as
Pussy Galore in Goldfinger [1964]). The surprised producers searched
frantically for a replacement, at first choosing Elizabeth Shepherd,
but after filming one-and-a-half episodes she was replaced by Diana
Rigg, who played Mrs. Emma Peel (named after the phrase ‘‘M
Appeal’’ for ‘‘Man Appeal,’’ which was something the character was
expected to have). Rigg and Macnee proved to have tremendous
chemistry and charm together, with their sexual relationship largely
left flirtatious and ambiguous. Rigg, like Blackman, played a tough,
capable female fighter who possessed both high intelligence and
tremendous sex appeal. Her outlandish costumes (designed by John
Bates) for the episodes ‘‘A Touch of Brimstome’’ and ‘‘Honey for the
Prince’’ were especially daring (and in fact, ABC refused to air these
and three other episodes of the British series, considering them too
racy, though they later appeared in syndication).
The two years with Diana Rigg are universally considered the
best in the series, which ABC in the United States agreed to pick up
provided the episodes were shot on film. Albert Fennell now pro-
duced the series and served as its guiding light, with writers Brian
Clemens and Philip Levene writing the majority and the best of the
episodes. These new shows became more science-fiction oriented,
with plots about power-mad scientists bent on ruling the world, giant
man-eating plants from outer space, cybermen, androids and robots,
machines that created torrential rains, personalities switching bodies,
people being miniaturized, and brainwashing. The fourth season and
all subsequent episodes were filmed in color.
Commented Clemens about the series, ‘‘We admitted to only
one class—and that was the upper. Because we were a fantasy, we
have not shown policemen or coloured men. And you have not seen
anything as common as blood. We have no social conscience at all.’’
Clemens also emphasized the Britishness of the series rather than
trying to adapt it to American tastes, feeling that helped give the show
a unique distinction.
Rigg called it quits after two seasons, and she also joined the
Bond series, having the distinction of playing Mrs. James Bond in On
Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). The series limped on for a final
season with Steed’s new partner Tara King (played by Linda Thorson),
also known as Agent 69, who always carried a brick in her purse. The
last season also introduced us to Mother (Patrick Newell), Steed’s
handicapped boss, and his Amazonian secretary Rhonda (Rhonda
Parker). The running gag for the season was that Mother’s office
would continually turn up in the most unlikely of places and the plots
were most often far-fetched, secret-agent style plots.
The series later spawned a stageplay, The Avengers on Stage,
starring Simon Oates and Sue Lloyd in 1971, a South African radio
series, a series of novel adventures, a spin-off series, The New
Avengers (starring Macnee, Gareth Hunt, and Joanna Lumley) in
1976, and finally a 1998 big-budgeted theatrical version starring
Ralph Fiennes as John Steed and Uma Thurman as Emma Peel. The
latter was greeted with universally derisive reviews and was consid-
ered a debacle of the first order as it served to remind everyone how
imitators had failed to capture the charm, wit, escapism, and appeal of
the original series, which has long been regarded as a television classic.
—Dennis Fischer
F
URTHER READING:
Javna, John. Cult TV: A Viewer’s Guide to the Shows America Can’t
Live Without!! New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1985.
Macnee, Patrick, and Marie Cameron. Blind in One Ear: The Avenger
Returns. San Francisco, Mercury House, 1989.
Macnee, Patrick, with Dave Rogers. The Avengers and Me. New
York, TV Books, 1998.
Rogers, Dave. The Complete Avengers. New York, St. Martin’s
Press, 1989.
Avery, Tex (1908-1980)
Tex Avery, one of the most important and influential American
animators, produced dozens of cartoon masterpieces primarily for the
Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer (MGM) studios from
the 1930s to the 1950s. Frenetic action, perfect comedic timing, and a
never-ending stream of sight gags characterize his short, animated
films. He is credited with providing the most definitive characteriza-
tion of Bugs Bunny and creating such classic cartoon figures as
Droopy, Chilly Willy, Screwy Squirrel, and Red Hot Riding Hood.
Avery was most intrigued by the limitless possibilities of animation
and filled his work with chase sequences, comic violence, and
unbelievable situations that could not be produced in any other
medium. Avery’s manic style was best described by author Joe
Adamson when he stated, ‘‘Avery’s films will roll along harmlessly
enough, with an interesting situation treated in a more or less funny
way. Then, all of a sudden, one of the characters will lose a leg and
hop all over the place trying to find it again.’’
Born Frederick Bean Avery on February 26, 1908, in Taylor,
Texas, a direct descendant of the infamous Judge Roy Bean, Avery
hoped to turn his boyhood interest in illustration into a profession
when he attended the Chicago Art Institute. After several failed
attempts to launch a syndicated comic strip, he moved to California
and took a job in Walter Lanz’s animation studio. Avery’s talent as an
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146
animator led him to join the Warner Brothers studio in 1935. There, he
became a leading member of a unit including now legendary anima-
tors Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett. From their dilapidated headquar-
ters on the studio lot, which they dubbed the Termite Terrace, the
young artists set about creating a new cartoon sensibility which was
more adult, absurd, and filled with slapstick. Avery and his crew’s
characters were more irreverent than those of their Disney competi-
tors and the cartoons themselves were marked by direct addresses to
the audience, split screen effects, and abrupt changes in pacing. Avery
also insisted that their films acquire a more satiric tone so as to
comment on contemporary popular culture. An early example of this
satire is found in I Love to Singa (1936), which features ‘‘Owl
Jolson’’ in a take-off of The Jazz Singer. Avery constantly reminded
his viewers of the illusionary nature of animation. Unlike Disney,
which was known for its spectacle, Avery’s Warner Brothers films
highlight their unreality. This abundant self-reflexivity is considered
an early example of animated postmodernism.
Avery’s talent also extended into the area of characterization.
He, along with Jones and Clampett, refined an existing character
named Porky Pig and transformed him into the first popular Looney
Tunes character of the 1930s. In a 1937 cartoon called Porky’s Duck
Hunt he introduced Daffy Duck, who became so popular that he soon
earned his own cartoon series. Avery’s greatest contribution to
animation, however, was his development of Bugs Bunny. A crazy
rabbit character had appeared in several Warner cartoons beginning in
1938, but with few of the later Bugs personality traits. Animation
historians regard Avery’s 1940 cartoon A Wild Hare as the moment
Bugs Bunny was introduced to America. Avery had eliminated the
earlier rabbit’s cuteness and craziness and, instead, fashioned an
intelligent, streetwise, deliberate character. It was also in this cartoon
that Avery bestowed upon Bugs a line from his Texas childhood—
‘‘What’s up, doc?’’—that would become the character’s catchphrase.
Avery’s style became so important to the studio and imitated by his
colleagues that he became known as the ‘‘Father of Warner
Bros. Cartoons.’’
Despite all his success at Warner Brothers, Avery’s most crea-
tive period is considered to be his time producing MGM cartoons
from 1942 to 1954. In these films he dealt less with characterization
and concentrated on zany gags. This fast-paced humor was developed
to accommodate Avery’s desire to fit as many comic moments as
possible into his animated shorts. The MGM films feature nonde-
script cats and dogs in a surreal world where anything can, and does,
happen. The 1947 cartoon King-Size Canary is regarded as Avery’s
masterpiece and reveals the lunacy of his later work. The film features
a cat, mouse, dog, and canary each swallowing portions of ‘‘Jumbo-
Gro.’’ The animals chase each other and grow to enormous heights.
Finally, the cat and mouse grow to twice the earth’s size and are
unable to continue the cartoon. They announce that the show is over
and simply wave to the audience. Avery once again revealed the
absurdities inherent to the cartoon universe.
In 1954, Avery left MGM and began a career in commercial
animation. He directed cartoon advertisements for Kool-Aid, Pepsodent,
and also produced the controversial Frito Bandito spots. Indeed, his
animation has been enjoyed for more than half a century due to its
unique blend of absurdity, quick humor, and fine characterization. He
inspired his peers and generations of later animators to move their art
form away from the saccharine style embodied by Disney. He
revealed that animation is truly limitless. Because of his ability to
create cartoons with an adult sophistication mixed with intelligent
and outlandish humor, he has often been characterized as a ‘‘Walt
Disney who has read Kafka.’’
—Charles Coletta
F
URTHER READING:
Adamson, Joe. Tex Avery: King of Cartoons. New York, De Capo
Press, 1975.
Schneider, Steve. That’s All Folks!: The Art of Warner Bros. Anima-
tion. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1988.
Avon
American cosmetic and gift company Avon Products, Inc. is
known for its eye-catching, digest-sized catalogs shimmering with
fresh-faced models wearing reasonably priced makeup and advertis-
ing costume jewelry, colognes, and an array of other items. Their
goods are backed by a satisfaction guarantee and delivered by a
friendly face, usually female, who earns or supplements an income by
the commission received. Avon’s retail concept, symbolized by the
direct-sales ‘‘Avon lady,’’ is a cherished part of American culture,
and now, a recognized addition to countries around the globe as well.
In the 1990s, Avon was the world’s top direct-sales cosmetics firm,
with a total work force of 2.6 million in over 130 countries, producing
sales of $4.8 billion ($1.7 billion in the United States alone). Ninety
percent of American women have purchased Avon products in their
lifetime, most likely because of the convenience, price, and quality,
but perhaps also due to the history of female fraternity and
empowerment that Avon promotes. The company’s overwhelmingly
female employee base and tradition of visiting customers in their
homes allowed women control of their own earnings long before it
was widely accepted.
Avon was founded in 1886, and Mrs. P.F.E. Albee of Winches-
ter, New Hampshire, originated the idea of going door-to-door to push
her wares. The company offered a money-back guarantee on their
products and the salespeople nurtured relationships with customers,
minimizing the need for advertising. The company prospered with
their pleasant, neighborly image and low-cost, dependable products.
However, in the 1970s and 1980s Avon’s fortunes declined when a
number of unsavvy business moves hurt sales and provoked an
exodus of salespeople. At that time, the company also suffered from
its outdated approach: Women were no longer waiting at home for the
doorbell to ring; they were at work all day. In 1993, Avon began
boosting morale and incentives for salespeople, then updated its
image, and in 1998 launched a $30 million advertising campaign. The
company recruited a bevy of new representatives who would sell in
offices and other business settings, and they focused on a more
desirable product line. In addition, Avon reached out overseas,
prompting women in South American, Russia, Eastern Europe, and
China to sign up as salespeople. In fact, the number of Avon
representatives in Brazil—478,000—is more than twice that of Bra-
zil’s army, with 200,000 soldiers. Avon’s strategies sharply increased
profits and swelled its stock.
Though the cherished but politically incorrect term ‘‘Avon
lady’’ is not quite accurate—two percent of the force is male—the
company still primarily consists of women selling cosmetics to
female friends, family members, neighbors, and coworkers, with 98
percent of its revenue coming from direct sales. Avon used the slogan
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Dan Aykroyd (center) with Jane Curtin (left) and Laraine Newman (right) in the popular Conehead skit on Saturday Night Live.
‘‘Avon calling!’’ accompanied by a ‘‘ding-dong’’ doorbell noise
when it was known mainly for reaching clients at home before the rise
of women in the work force. However, the company in 1996 sold
about 50 percent of its goods in the workplace, and branched out to
offer a more extensive line of gifts for time-constrained working
women. Although Avon has traditionally carried skin care and other
hygiene products as well as cologne and jewelry for women, men, and
children, in the 1990s it expanded its selection greatly to become a
convenient way to shop for knick-knacks, toys, clothing and lingerie,
books, and videos.
Though management ranks were off-limits to women until
roughly the 1980s, Avon has quickly risen to become known for its
respected record in the area of female promotions. In 1997, however,
some were rankled when Christina Gold, president of North Ameri-
can operations, was slighted for a promotion to CEO in favor of an
outside male candidate. She later resigned. Despite this incident,
Working Woman magazine still called Avon one of the top female-
friendly firms in 1998 due to its largely female employee base and
number of corporate women officers. Overall, only three percent of
top executives at Fortune 500 companies in 1997 were women. At
Avon, on the other hand, over 30 percent of corporate officers are
women, and four of the eleven members of the board of directors are
women. Avon also has a good record of promoting women, with more
women in management slots—86 percent—than any other Fortune
500 firm. The company is also heavily involved in supporting
research for breast cancer.
—Geri Speace
F
URTHER READING:
Morris, Betsy. ‘‘If Women Ran the World, It Would Look a Lot Like
Avon.’’ Fortune. July 21, 1997, 74.
Reynolds, Patricia. ‘‘Ding Dong! Avon Lady Is Still Calling.’’ Star
Tribune. September 9, 1996, 3E.
Stanley, Alessandra. ‘‘Makeover Takeover.’’ Star Tribune, August
21, 1996, 1D.
Zajac, Jennifer. ‘‘Avon Finally Glowing Thanks to Global Sales—
And New Lip-Shtick.’’ Money. September 1997, 60.
Aykroyd, Dan (1952—)
Actor and writer Dan Aykroyd achieved stardom as a member of
the original Saturday Night Live (SNL) ‘‘Not Ready for Prime Time
Players.’’ During his tenure on SNL, he created some of the show’s
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classic skits and impersonations. He also memorably teamed up with
SNL’s John Belushi to perform as Elwood ‘‘On a Mission from God’’
Blues, one half of the ‘‘The Blues Brothers’’ band. Aykroyd is one of
the busiest actors on screen. Since SNL, Aykroyd has appeared in
more than twenty movies, including Ghostbusters (1984), which he
also wrote, Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and two movies based on the
SNL act, The Blues Brothers (1980) and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998).
He also stars, as an ex-biker priest, in the TV sitcom Soul Man, and
fronts a successful syndicated series, Psi Factors. Additionally, he is
also a highly productive writer, continuing to pen some of Holly-
wood’s most successful comedies.
—John J. Doherty
F
URTHER READING:
‘‘Aykroyd, Dan.’’ Current Biography Yearbook. New York,
Wilson, 1992.