A Jane Asher Mystery: The Case of the Young & Rubicam EAL Ad, 1967

Young & Rubicam did a somewhat dubious ad for Eastern Air Lines in 1967. It was of a familiar genre of the period: these are the rejects from our stewardness program, that's how selective we are. 

Everyone's eye is inevitably drawn to the front-and-center model, who is quite unmistakably Ali MacGraw. She's even wearing the sort of clothes Ali MacGraw would wear, which makes me think Eileen Ford told her this wasn't a fashion assignment, she should just dress as her normal self. So here's her normal self in her normal clothes.

Then, just to Ali's left (our right) we have a roundfaced redhead in a prim navy sack dress, and this is most likely Jane Asher. Jane was a classically trained actress best known for being Paul McCartney's longtime girlfriend. Also known for being sister of Peter Asher, of the folk-rock duo Peter & Gordon. Here she would be 20 or 21; she turned precisely 21 in Denver, Colorado, on April 5, 1967. Paul flew out to Denver just for the birthday, and there were news photos of her blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. (There are lots of photos of Jane with cakes. Hold that thought.)

The birthday cake.

On a Facebook advertising group, I've read repeated, heated arguments about this ad, about how it's "sexist" (very anachronistic criticism) and doesn't have any fat people or coloreds. And then there are people who deny that this could be Jane, because (they say) Jane was an actress, not a model, and she was in England, staying close by Paul. Also, they say, this photo doesn't look like her. Here's a detail:

But a little research proves that Jane was indeed in North America for much of 1967. Sol Hurok had engaged the Bristol Old Vic company for a six-month tour in America and Canada. After touching down in Boston in January at the Shubert Theatre, the company arrived in New York in February 1967, for a three-week engagement at City Center. Jane starred in the second-week production, Romeo and Juliet. Then on to Philadelphia, Ottawa, Vancouver, Dallas, Denver... Forty cities in five months, folks!

Back in those days we had a lot of English performers doing extended tours in North America. The reason wasn't the rock 'n' roll "Brit Invasion" or anything tawdry like that. There were Shakespearean actors like Jane, and film stars like Peter O'Toole and Terence Stamp, and I believe a lot of writers and academics too. They would come to America and Canada for up to six months (an easy visa) because that way they could paid in dollars, in a non-Sterling zone, and spend and invest it however the hell they pleased.

If you were like Jane and coming over with a theatrical company, you couldn't bring more than £50 out of the UK. Oh, you could visit Bermuda, sure, or any other Sterling-zone area, and bring in all the cash you wanted, but that zone was rapidly shrinking. If you wanted money to spend in most of the world, you needed to be paid in dollars or deutschemarks or francs or whatever. If you wanted to tour for months and make Shakespeare profitable, you needed to do it in North America.

Jane in Denver, April 1967

So in February-March 1967, I figure Jane was getting perhaps $100 a week, net of room and board at the Hotel Warwick and local 55th Street creperies. And then she picked up a little more—$1000?—from Young & Rubicam for doing this ad. Perhaps the thought at Y&R was that everyone would recognize Jane Asher as one of the stewardess rejects, and the ad would "go viral" as we started to say in the 1990s: become a cult piece. But actually the ad got little reaction, and I can't find a single news mention of Jane appearing in an Eastern Air Lines advertisement.

Some of the foregoing is guesswork on my part. I really need to confirm the facts with Jane Asher and the Young & Rubicam archives.

I used to see her around my neighborhood in Chelsea (London) many years ago. While not forsaking acting entirely, Jane had gone into the cake business. She had a little shopfront on Chelsea Green. She's one of those lucky women who are cute to begin with, but just get better looking with age, as the baby fat slowly drops off and rehapes itself.