One morning when I was a first- or second-grader in Mascouta, Illinois, our teacher announced a special recess. We spilled out onto the school grounds, along with kids and teachers from all the other classes, just as a little car towing a little trailer drove in through the gate and stopped in the middle of the playground. And then, thrill of thrills, as electric speakers on top of the trailer belted out “Call for Philip Mooooris,” out popped the Philip Morris Midget!
TV was still new enough in 1953 that not everyone had one, but even if you didn’t have a set at home you’d have watched TV at a friends’ home and you’d have known who the Philip Morris Midget was. Philip Morris sponsored I Love Lucy, after all, the biggest show on TV, and their commercials ran every few minutes. Yeah, Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody would have been nice, but hey, this was right up there . . . a genuine famous person, right there in front of us!
We called him the Philip Morris Midget, but actually he was the Philip Morris Bellhop, and on TV he was always strutting around inside a fancy hotel lobby with a pack of cigs on a little silver salver, piping out “Call for Philip Mooooris!” The actor who played the bellhop, Johnny Roventini, was in fact a midget (and also, in fact, an actual bellhop!), and everyone called him the Philip Morris Midget. Midgets were still a great curiosity in the land then, and people weren’t squeamish about staring at them.
And stare we did. I don’t remember much of Mr. Roventini’s act, but I do recall that he had a little pony in the trailer, which he brought out and rode around, and at the end of the act he passed out sample packs of Philip Morris cigarettes to all of us, which we were supposed to take home to our moms and dads. And we did, we little ones anyway . . . maybe some of the 5th and 6th graders smoked ’em after school, but I remember taking my sample pack home to mom, just as proud as I could be.
And all of this, though you may not want to believe it, was perfectly normal, and perfectly okay, in 1953. Jesus, do I sound like Paul Harvey, or what? Shoot me now, please.