While I was writing about bourbon for Gourmet’s March 2009 issue, this handsome gentleman watched over me. His presence wasn’t random. About a year ago, a box arrived at my front door. It contained some of my father’s papers—letters, scrapbooks, photos—and an oversize file with the name Kenneth Rodewald on it. I knew that Kenneth was my paternal grandfather because I’d met him once, in the early ’80s. We didn’t have a lot to say to each other, although it turned out we had both been bartenders. At the time, I had no idea he’d also had a modeling career, and I’d never seen this oddly hypnotic Ancient Age advertisement. But there, in the box, was his unmistakable face.
Had I known when I met him, I certainly would have asked how he came to be part of the campaign. It appears to have originated in 1956 (a 1958 Time magazine article on the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency mentions the slogan; oddly enough, at the time my maternal grandfather was a VP at one of DDB’s main competitors, Grey Advertising, but that’s another story), but I don’t think Kenneth appeared until 1962, and the ad doesn’t seem to have run after ’63 (I’ve seen the same ad with two other white-haired, buzz-cut fellows holding a shot of bourbon). I’d like to think Kenneth would have been amused to learn that, despite having spent little more than 20 minutes together, we shared something: Apparently we both have bourbon in our blood.
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