Assorted Japanese advertising and magazine images from the 1950s. You can used to be able to see hundreds more striking scans at the wonderful vintage website thatseurobeat, now sadly defunct.     

In this Japanese ad from the mid-eighties, Arnold Schwarzenegger shills for Go West brand coffee. We’ve been running across quite a few old Japanese ads lately, and you’d be surprised what sort of mundane products big stars were willing pitch in exchange for a wheelbarrow of yen. Of course, Arnold had already starred in unforgettably bad films like Hercules in New York and exposed his Schwarzenugget in that infamous what-the-hell-were-you-thinking nude photo, so selling canned coffee must have seemed like endorsing Fabergé eggs. But just like old nudes, old ads come back, and we’re happy to have found this one. We feel a theme emerging.     

A-list Hollywood celebrities have traditionally made a little extra coin by allowing their faces to be attached to products in Japan. With even a cursory web search you can find images of George Clooney and Cameron Diaz being used as shills for cars, booze, and stereo equipment. That kind of exposure would damage a star’s brand in the U.S., but in Japan no such consequences exist. Still, we didn’t realize just how far back the tradition went until we ran across these vintage ads for Opera lipstick. Unfortunately, our movie star recognition skills are a bit rusty today, which means we can only place Marilyn Monroe and Ingrid Bergman. Any ideas on the face in panel two? Shoot us an e-mail with the subject line: How on Earth can you fail to recognize... and tell us who she is.