Life — June 1935 — page 4: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Penn Maryland Blended Whiskey Advertisement This is a 1933 whiskey advertisement by cartoonist O. Soglow titled "Gentlemen Prefer Blends." The six-panel comic shows a rotund man with a beehive-shaped head representing different whiskey blends, interacting with various women in different poses and situations—dancing, gesturing, sitting passively. The joke plays on the 1925 Anita Loos novel/film "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," substituting "blends" (whiskey blends) for "blondes." It suggests that men prefer blended whiskey just as they prefer blondes—presented here through the women's varied, somewhat objectifying poses around the central male figure. The advertisement ran post-Prohibition repeal (note the 1933 copyright), marketing Penn Maryland whiskey through humor and sexual innuendo typical of the era's advertising approach.