Racist Laxative Ad (Dec, 1937)
Source: American Magazine ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1937
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Tags: laxative
Setting aside the ridiculously stereotyped language of the porter, a laxative to cure a cold? Really?
She caught cold on her honeymoon
BRIDE: Wouldn’t you know? I’m catching cold! Guess I’ll arrive saying, “Califordia, here I cub.”GROOM: What you need — pronto — is a laxative and something to help counteract acidity. If only…
PORTER: Pahdon me, fo’ overhearin’ yo’, but Sal Hepatica does BOTH dose things. It’s a min’ral salt laxative and it helps Nature counteract acidity, too. Las’ trip a doctah tole me.
GROOM: Well, honey, here’s California. Got everything?
BRIDE: Everything except that cold. Lets tip that porter double for telling us about Sal Hepatica. Lucky for me he had Sal Hepatica on board!
A COLD COMING? DO 2 THINGS:
1. Cleanse the intestinal tract.
2. Help Nature counteract acidity.
Sal Hepatica does BOTH!
Yeesh, if something like this was printed today Reverend Al would have a heart attack!
Comment by Thundercat — October 2, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
In that case, let’s print it!!!
Comment by Firebrand38 — October 2, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
A feeble attempt to explain how this sounded to me:
(Over-the-top exaggerated Uncle Remus voice):Pahdon me, fo’ overhearin’ yo’, but Sal Hepatica does BOTH dose things. It’s a min’ral salt laxative (switches to James Earl Jones-esque professional-pitchman voice); and it helps Nature counteract acidity, too. Um, uh, I mean- Las’ trip a doctah tole me.
You think with a name like “Sal Hepatica” they’d use offensively exaggerated, stereotypical *Italians*, though….
Comment by nlpnt — October 2, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
You know, the whole laxative thing to fight a cold is stupid, but I just can’t join in the self-righteous uproar over this. Even setting aside that stereotypes don’t appear out of thin air, when Snoop Dog appears in a commercial babbling about “fo’ shizzle, ma nizzle”, and Sean “Puffy” Combs aka P-Diddy appears in a Burger King commercial and says that he’s “hongry” I suppose that doesn’t count as ridiculously stereotyped language for some reason?
By the way, never mind the 1930’s but in 1960’s New Jersey I could find folks that really did talk like that.
Comment by Firebrand38 — October 3, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
The biggest problem is stereotypes arise from reality, whether it’s a good or bad stereotype. Some people speak perfect english, some don’t, in every race. Portraying life accurately should not be a bad thing. Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t have this odd urge to pretend that we’re all living in harmony when we’re not.
But yeah… they could’ve left out the million apostrophes from the porter’s dialog. hahah
and who knows, we’re hardly so advanced in 2007 that we know cleansing the intestinal tract DOESN’T help the body cure a cold. We’ve recently discovered that a great portion of the immune system works withing the colon. So there.
I love this site by the way =)
Comment by Chris — October 16, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
Well, if you have a cough, and you’ve taken laxatives, you might be afraid to cough, so that’d work!
Comment by Will S. — October 21, 2007 @ 10:51 pm