Posted 3 years ago
fortapache
(3289 items)
Now who is the celebrity seen in photo #3? I think it is Clark Gable. The Adam Hat Company was around from 1924 to sometime in the 1950s when they were purchased by another company and faded away. This matchbook is from the days when everyone smoked and wore hats. I thin k the height of the hat era was the 1930s. Based on my knowledge of TV and movies hats were going out in the 1950s and pretty much gone by the end of the 1960s. Anyway the artwork on this looks 1930s although it could be 40s or 50s.
The ashtray is a depression glass MacBeth Adams made in the 1930s which is perfect for this vintage matchbooks.
Very cool! Sure looks like Clark Gable to me as well.
Nice match book ( striking )
Interesting..here's some history and the story behind the celebrity photos..
https://bernardhats.com/hat-companies/adams-hats/
Thank you very much Scott. Pretty sure that is him.
Thank you very much Vynil. I am detecting a pun.
Thank you very much Dave. You did better research than I did.
fortapache, Cool. :-)
Yeah, I would say that the hat-wearing era was over by the end of the sixties -- except for some old people, who continued to wear them out of habit and conformity to the norms of their generation. I think I read somewhere that the wearing of hats died out because of the amount of time people spent on foot outdoors was greatly reduced.
I'm afraid that I have to register a dissenting opinion on the celebrity picture. I could be wrong, but it just doesn't look like Clark Gable to me. It does look familiar, and it'll bug me until I can figure out who it evokes for me.
Here's an Adam Hat matchbook where the owner didn't know who the celebrity was (I think it's Douglas Fairbanks Jr.):
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/adam-hats-match-book.44766/
Here's another where the owner doesn't ever try (I'm pretty sure it's George Raft):
https://www.ebay.com/itm/163796271877
And here's one where they show you the six choices (JACK HALEY LEFTY GOMEZ PHIL BAKER BOB HOPE JACK DEMPSEY CARL HUBBELL):
https://www.ebay.com/i/19328637733
I wouldn't known three of the six from a hole in the ground, but it sure ain't Jack Haley or Bob Hope. I had to look at pictures of Jack Dempsey, because while I definitely knew who he was, I wasn't all that familiar with his face. It's not Dempsey; the nose is all wrong.
Oops sorry about that. I think I screwed up the link on that last one, and now I can't find that eBay listing again. >8-0
Anyway, I found a large-ish cache of Adam Hat celebrity matchbooks, and through that, I came up with a candidate for the celebrity in yours:
https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-cards/lots/c-1933-adams-hat-stores-matchbook-cover-complete-set-20-plus-hubbell-ad-with-hubbell-dempsey-and-bob-hope/a/151829-44061.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Archive-ThisAuction-120115
The celebrity I think might be depicted in your Adam Hat matchbook? Leo Carillo:
https://www.regisautographs.com/product/leo-carrillo-2/
I still have my Dad's fedora. My Dad lived 1915-1998. I wore it for awhile, but my sweat is very discoloring, maybe because I always wear sunscreen, so I retired it, though I still miss wearing it. I wonder if it could be cleaned or if hatters are extinct?
BTW, I don't think it is Clark Gable, either.....
Thank you very much keramikos for your research As much as I like old movies I am not all that good on the ID thing. I'll check out the links some more tommorrow.
Thank you very much kwqd. Any guesses on who it is?
fortapache, You're welcome. :-)
I am by no means an expert, but I do watch a lot of vintage movies.
The person in the picture struck me as familiar-looking, but I couldn't immediately put a name to them. Then I saw that listing of a trove of old Adam Hat matchbooks, and when I saw Leo Carillo's name, it clicked.
There does appear to be a suggestion of a mustache in the Adam Hat celebrity picture, and while Carillo doesn't have one in the particular picture I linked, he frequently did sport one.
Carillo led a long and interesting life:
https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/archives/la-me-leo-carrillo-19610911-story.html
I realized that the link I messed up the other day probably was missing only the last digit, so how hard could that be to figure out, huh?
Voila, here it is (the celebrity choices are JACK HALEY, LEFTY GOMEZ, PHIL BAKER, BOB HOPE, JACK DEMPSEY, and CARL HUBBELL):
https://www.ebay.com/i/193286377332
Thanks keramikos. Looks like I will not win an Adam hat.
Just realized the Adam Hat and Adams ashtray thing that I did. That was an accident.
K-Mik... thats only IF the person is on the list. If they were and you guessed correctly, then you won a hat.
"Each matchbook in the series had a celebrity photo, and six names below the photo. If one of those names was the celebrity in the photo, then that was a winning matchbook."
fortapache, Yeah, that plurality issue can trip people up, including me. Per the article dav2no1 linked earlier, the name of the company was "Adam Hats Corporation."
dav2no1, They stacked the deck a bit, didn't they? It wasn't enough to be able to identify the celebrity in the picture, the depicted celebrity's name had to appear among the six listed.
kwqd, Hatters are still around, although they aren't as plentiful as they used to be:
https://www.millinersguild.org/guild-news/2020/8/1/the-care-and-cleaning-of-vintage-hats
https://www.millinersguild.org/katie-props-allen
Ya know, I thought about this a bit more, and realized that they weren't stacking the deck unfairly with those requirements of both celebrity picture identification and the celebrity's name being in the name list.
In 1942, people went to the movies and sporting events all the time. The celebrities depicted would have been as familiar to the general public as their own family. Adam Hats would have gone broke giving away hats.
In that picture of the collection of Adam Hats celebrity matchbooks at that sports site, it sure looks like Bob Hope in the bottom row second from right, but I don't see his name in the list.
Here is the Adam Hats Lofts apartment building in Dallas, TX:
https://www.adam-hats-lofts.com/
They did a nice job converting the roof top into a usable space, too:
Adam Hats Lofts
2700 Canton St, Dallas, TX 75226
https://goo.gl/maps/R9Gm4UrcwJQx1QQc7
Those are pretty cool apartments, large too.
Thank you very much Ms.CrystalShip. Not so much anymore.
YAY made it to #1!