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Dry Sentiment: Protestant Activism Against Liquor Advertising, 1946–1958
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 April 2025
Abstract
This article examines a cohort of post–World War II temperance activists who attempted to legally curtail the circulation of advertisements for liquor, wine, and beer. These activists, who were primarily associated with Protestant church and lay organizations, pressured lawmakers to hold multiple Senate hearings for a series of bills that would prevent any media bearing enticements to purchase alcoholic beverages from moving across state lines. The proposed legislation not only threatened the growth of alcoholic beverage industries, it also took aim at the media makers and advertising firms that endorsed and benefited from the sale of liquor, wine, and beer. This article explores the under-studied archives of the mid-century temperance movement—including the transcripts of their Senate hearings, the minutes of their organizing meetings, the mail they sent to media makers, and their published pamphlets—to illuminate their antagonistic approach to the ballooning world of mass media. I argue that efforts to censure liquor advertising were efforts to discipline and censure the communications industry elites whose products increasingly defined daily life. While many histories describe the Christian actors who took mass media by storm, this article highlights those who situated themselves as a moral check on the perceived excesses of mid-century mass culture.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
References
Notes
1 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 2444, A Bill to Prohibit the Broadcasting over Radio and Television of Advertisements of Distilled Spirits for Beverage Purposes, and for Other Purposes, 82nd Congress, 2nd session, 1952, Statement of Norman Vincent Peale, Pastor, Marble Collegiate Church, New York City, 30.
2 The only other focused studies of the postwar temperance movement’s efforts to limit the circulation of liquor advertising are by the historian Pennock, Pamela E.. See Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950–1990 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; “The Evolution of U.S. Temperance Movements Since Repeal: A Comparison of Two Campaigns to Control Alcoholic Beverage Marketing, 1950s and 1980s,” Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 20 (2005): 14–65; and “‘The Number One Social Problem of Our Time’: American Protestants and Temperance Politics in the 1950s,” Journal of Church and State, 54, no. 3 (Summer 2012), 375–405. The present article builds on Pennock’s work by looking more closely at activists’ rhetoric, with a specific focus on their discussions of mass media.
3 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 265, A Bill to Prohibit the Transportation in Interstate Commerce of Advertisements of Alcoholic Beverages and for Other Purposes, 80th Congress, 1st session, 1947.
4 Mail from temperance activists to Time Inc., and Time Inc.’s records of the volume of this mail, can be found in box 411, folders 11 and 12, Time Inc. Archives, New-York Historical Society, New York.
5 Examples include Dochuck, Darren, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011), 180–85Google Scholar; Grem, Darren, Blessings of Business: How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 49–81 Google Scholar; Herzog, Johnathan, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Kruse, Kevin, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2016)Google Scholar; and McAlister, Melanie, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media and US Interests in the Middle East Since 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 43–83.Google Scholar
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11 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 265, Statement of J. Warren Hastings, Pastor, National City Christian Church, Washington, DC.
12 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 3294, A Bill to Prohibit the Transportation in Interstate Commerce of Advertisements of Alcoholic Beverages, and for Other Purposes, 83rd Congress, 2nd session, 1954, Statement of Glen Cunningham, Cedar Point, KS, 44.
13 Willard Edwards, “Call Vodka Worst Russ Menace,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 23, 1958, A4.
14 One of the most famous statements of this argument comes from May, Elaine Tyler, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 2008)Google Scholar. Other relevant titles include Holt, Marilyn Irvin, Cold War Kids: Politics and Childhood in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2014)Google Scholar; McEnany, Laura, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Weinstein, Deborah, The Pathological Family: Cold War America and the Rise of Family Therapy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013)Google Scholar. My thinking about media and morality in the Cold War era is especially informed by Strub, Whitney, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.
15 On the promotion of “tri-faith” discourses, see Schultz, Kevin M., Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Hold Postwar American to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; and Wall, Wendy, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. For critical appraisals of what those discourses were intended to achieve, see Gaston, , Imagining Judeo-Christian America: Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019)Google Scholar; and Stahl, Ronit Y., “A Jewish America and Protestant Civil Religion: Will Herberg, Robert Bellah, and Mid-Twentieth Century American Religion,” Religions 6 (2015): 434–50.Google Scholar
16 My research yielded no evidence that any Jewish groups ever took any interest in the campaign against liquor advertising. I found only one fleeting reference to Catholics’ involvement in broader temperance thinking, in a short New York Times column from 1947. The article summarizes a speech delivered at a meeting of the National Catholic Women’s Union in Chicago, in which the Chicago Archbishop Samuel Cardinal Stritch warned the assembled women against recreational drinking. See “Catholic Women Deplore Drinking,” New York Times, August 20, 1947, 18.
17 Discussions of anti-Catholicism and early twentieth-century temperance appear in McGirr, Lisa, The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2015)Google Scholar; discussion of Prohibition and antisemitism is central to Davis, Marni, Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition (New York: New York University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
18 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 2444, Statement of J. Warren Hastings, Pastor, National City Christian Church, Washington, DC, 276.
19 “Dear Mr. Luce:—,” March 27, 1947, box 73, folder 1, Henry R. Luce Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
20 Davis, Jews and Booze, 105.
21 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 265, Statement of Mel Greenthal, Secretary, Wisconsin State Council of Brewery, Soft Drink and Distillery Workers, Milwaukee, WI, 100.
22 See, for example, the Catholic Church’s role in cinema censorship during the first half of the twentieth century, documented in Walsh, Frank, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, and, later, white evangelicals’ response to the legalization of pornography, described in Strub, Perversion for Profit.
23 Martin Abramson, “The Bone Drys Are Busy Again,” Cosmopolitan, February 1956, 110–13.
24 For more on the Methodist Building, see Kurt F. Adams, “‘How Firm a Foundation’: The Methodist Building and Constructions of Public Protestantism, 1916–1936” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2017).
25 Pennock, “Evolution of U.S. Temperance Movements,” 20.
26 Pennock, “Evolution of U.S. Temperance Movements,” 19.
27 This summary of the NPTC’s activities is based on the National Temperance and Prohibition Council Files, found in box 1, Wilbur Emery Hammaker Papers, 1947–65, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (hereafter NTPC Files).
28 C. P. Trussell, “32 Witnesses Urge Congress Ban All Liquor Ads in Interstate Media,” New York Times, January 13, 1950, 12; “Drys Attack ‘Ads’ Promoting Liquor,” New York Times, May 13, 1947, 50.
29 “Minutes of the Meeting of National Temperance and Prohibition Council, January 21, 22 and 23, 1953,” NTPC Files.
30 William M. Freemen, “News of the Advertising and Marketing Fields: The Holiday Whiskey Drive,” The New York Times, November 6, 1955, F10; “Liquor Industry Distills New Ad Plans as It Starts to Shed Long-Standing Taboos,” Printers Ink, November 7, 1958, 9–10.
31 Quoted in “Beer Invades the Home,” Christian Science Monitor, June 1, 1948, 1, and later in Larry Wolters, “Brewers Tips on Video Lines Draw Attacks,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 25, 1953, B1.
32 “W.C.T.U. Marches on Pasadena Bars,” Life, May 29, 1947, 38–39.
33 Abramson, “The Bone Drys Are Busy Again,” Cosmopolitan, February 1956, 110.
34 This summary of the NPTC’s activities is based on the NTPC Files. For discussions of temperance organizing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Murdock, Catherine Gilbert, Domesticating Drink: Women, Men and Alcohol in America, 1870–1940 (Baltimore,: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; McGirr, The War on Alcohol; Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner, 2010); and Schrad, Mark Lawrence, Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
35 For another example, see “Grandmas at Bars,” The New York Times, May 21, 1946, 13.
36 Frances Willard, “Temperance and Home Protection – 1876,” Iowa State University Archives of Women’s Political Communication, Accessed June 22, 2023. https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2020/11/04/temperance-and-home-protection-1876/.
37 Murdock, Domesticating Drink, 30.
38 For discussions of temperance and women’s suffrage, see Murdock, Domesticating Drink, 9–41; McGirr, War on Alcohol, 53–58; Okrent, Last Call, 61–75; and Schrad, Smashing the Liquor Machine, 358–94.
39 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 265, Statement of Reverend O. R. Miller, President, National Civic League, Albany, NY, 61.
40 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 1847, Statement of R. H. Sherwood, Physician and Surgeon, Niagara Falls, NY, 54.
41 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 3294, Statement of D. C. Emanual Carlson, Executive Director, Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, Washington, DC, 14.
42 “Advertising Here up 28%,” New York Times, October 9, 1946, 40.
43 Fox, Stephen, The Mirror Makers: A History of Advertising and Its Creators (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 172.Google Scholar
44 “Huge Rise Is Seen for Advertising,” New York Times, October 20, 1955, 51.
45 “Report of Committee Against Liquor Advertising of the National Temperance and Prohibition Council to the Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., January 11–13, 1949,” NTPC Files.
46 “Outdoor Advertising Seen Gaining,” New York Herald Tribune, July 9, 1947, 31.
47 “Direct Mail Advertising up 13%,” New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1951, 18.
48 “New Packaging Concepts Sell, Resell and Satisfy Consumers,” Printer’s Ink, November 21, 1958, 21–27.
49 Harold Isaacs, “Market Research Helps Chart Course for Business … Spectacular Growth Highlights Need for Standards,” Newsweek, March 29, 1948, 70–71.
50 For more on motivation research, see Samuel, Lawrence R., Freud on Madison Avenue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).Google Scholar
51 Pennock, Advertising Sin and Sickness, 32–33.
52 “New Pabst Drive Called Largest for Any Brewer,” Advertising Age, April 19, 1948, 6.
53 “Calvert’s Gets a Hand,” Printer’s Ink, November 14, 1956, 67.
54 Pennock, Advertising Sin and Sickness, 30.
55 Lynn Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001) 2.
56 See, for example, Colomina, Beatriz et al., eds., Cold War Hot Houses: Inventing Postwar Culture, from Cockpit to Playboy (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Spigel, , Welcome to the Dreamhouse Google Scholar; Wilson, Kristina, Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021).Google Scholar
57 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 1847, Statement of Caradine R. Hooton, Youth Pastor, Methodist Church, Washington, DC, 70.
58 Memo to Messrs. Black, Heiskell, Linen and Luce, May 8, 1946, folder 8, box 411, Time Inc. Archives.
59 “Lord Calvert … for Men of Distinction,” Life, July 11, 1955, 133.
60 “Report of the Committee Against Liquor Advertising of the National Temperance and Prohibition Council,” January 21–23, 1953, NTPC Files.
61 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 3294, Statement of Dr. Gordon Edmund Jackson, Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Education, United Presbyterian Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA.
62 Rile, John W. and Marden, Charles F., “The Social Pattern of Alcohol Drinking,” Quarterly Journal of Studies of Alcohol 8, no. 2 (September 1947), 265–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
63 Strauss, Robert and Bacon, Selden D., Drinking in College (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 46–50.Google Scholar
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65 “Minutes: Annual Meeting National Temperance and Prohibition Council Held in the Chapel of the Methodist Building, Washington, D.C., January 28-29-30-31, 1952,” NTPC Files.
66 Gusfield, Joseph R., “Social Structure and Moral Reform: A Study of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,” American Journal of Sociology 61, no. 3 (November 1955), 221–32.Google Scholar
67 J. Maurice Trimmer, “How to Refuse a Cocktail,” Christian Century, April 16, 1947.
68 Pickett, Some Notes on the Alcohol Problem, 101.
69 See NTPC Files.
70 “A Protest and Appeal Campaign!,” folder 10, box 411, Time Inc. Archives.
71 “Does Luce’s $12,7000,000 Intake from Liquor Render Him Immune to Decency and Conscience?,” Union Signal, December 10, 1949, folder 12, box 411, Time Inc. Archives.
72 “Gentlemen: this letter is not written for publication…,” February 10, 1950, folder 12, box 411, Time Inc. Archives.
73 Rostkoff, Lori, Love on the Rocks: Men, Women, and Alcohol in Post-World War II America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 194–242.Google Scholar
74 Murdock, Domesticating Drink, 42–69, 88–113; Rostkoff, Love on the Rocks, 206–10.
75 For analysis of the prevalence of drinkware in advice for young brides, see Wilson, Mid-Century Modernism, 161–75.
76 DeVoto, Bernard, The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 28–29.Google Scholar
77 “Brewers Trade Is Optimistic on New Year: Lahey Puts Expansion Total at $100,000,000,” New York Herald Tribune, January 1, 1950, B5.
78 “Beer Sales Set New High Here in Year,” Washington Post, June 20, 1952, 30; “Brewers’ Sales in Home Reach Peak in 1951,” New York Herald Tribune, June 21, 1952, 27.
79 “Dawson’s Ale, Beer About to Promote Low Caloric Content,” Daily Boston Globe, April 1, 1952, 2; “Breweries Advised to End Calorie Ads,” New York Times, June 21, 1955, 23.
80 Clementine Paddleford, “Conference Produces Flood of New Recipes,” New York Herald Tribune, October 7, 1954, 12; Mary Mead, “Food Editors Taste Exotic Treats,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 9, 1954; “Brewer’s East Indian Dinner Menu,” Washington Post, October 8, 1954, 59.
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82 “Liquor Industry Distills New Ad Plans as It Starts to Shed Long-Standing Taboos,” Printers Ink, November 7, 1958, 9–10.
83 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 265, Statement of Henry M. Johnson, President, National Temperance and Prohibition Council of Louisville, KY.
84 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 3294, Statement of Mrs. Albert F. Leonhard, President, Pennsylvania Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Pittsburgh, PA, 48.
85 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on S. 3294, Statement of Caradine R. Hooton, Executive Secretary, Board of Temperance, The Methodist Church.
86 This insight is drawn from Pennock, “‘The Number One Social Problem of Our Time.’”
87 “National Temperance and Prohibition Council Minutes, January 18, 19, 20, 1956,” NTPC Files.