(Jewish Group) It was the most successful Jewish ad campaign of all time -- but who was the model?
You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s rye bread ads.
Duane Blue Spruce of the Laguna and Ohkay-Owingeh Pueblo tribes keeps a copy of a Levy’s ad pinned to his office wall at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Lower Manhattan, where he works as a facilities planning coordinator.
Blue Spruce, 60, would seem to be an unlikely admirer of the ads featuring non-Jewish New Yorkers of all ethnicities and ages happily feasting on rye. The posters, which ran in New York City from 1961 into the 1970s, look more like kitsch decoration behind a deli counter than wall art for a Native American museum administrator. But Blue Spruce is more interested in the model in this particular ad than the iconic tagline: “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye.”
The model is an older Native American man. He squints out from under a cowboy hat with a feather sticking out. He’s just had a bite of a sandwich and is starting to crack a smile like a blissful tribal elder.
Another Levy’s Fan: Malcolm X asked to have his picture taken with a Levy’s Rye Bread ad.
A New Kind of Campaign: Before diversity became a corporate buzzword, the campaign run by the firm Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) was one of the first to be racially inclusive.
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Long article, but well worth the read.