Burma-Shave: Remembering an American Icon

Back in the day, as I was growing up, my parents enjoyed road trips through the countryside. Nearly every family had the same tradition. Whenever a child spied Burma-Shave signs, he or she would exclaim, "Burma-Shave". Neither our children nor, certainly, our grandchildren are familiar with these signs.

Burma-Shave was a "brushless" shaving cream introduced in 1925 or so; by a company owned by Clinton Odell. The product originally was sold as a patent medicine, a liniment to ease aches and pains. Business was terrible and the Odell family, who lived in Minneapolis, repackaged the ointment, added a few ingredients and proceeded to peddle it as a shaving cream, one which could be used without a brush.

This was in an era where men who shaved did so with a straight razor, a shaving mug filled with a cake of soap and a fine bristle shaving brush. In fact, the quality of the shaving brush was a measure of the owner's position in the community!

Anyway, the Odell family was trying to make a living and trying to figure out how to advertise their new product in an era before radio or television and when newspapers were not read universally. One day, the story goes, Clinton's son, Allan, was on the road peddling the shaving cream to drug and grocery stores when he noticed a series of signs advertising a gas station down the highway. Each of the signs had two or three words, listing a facility or a service available at the establishment. Allan felt "compelled" to read each sign.

Allan thought this was a possible way to advertise Burma-Shave although the advertising professional said it would never work. But work, it certainly did!

As they were used, there were five or six red signs placed at intervals along the highway shoulder. The final sign said "Burma-Shave" and the preceding signs had one line of a five-line jingle. Within a few years, the advertising was successful beyond anyone's expectation; about 600 different jingles were used.

There were national competitions and, over the next years, the jingles covered a vast array of topics, some funny, some profound and some just extolling the quality shaves that would result from using the Odell family's product. Several of the product oriented verses:

Shave the modern way / No brush / No lather / No rub-in / Big tube 35 cents - Drug stores / Burma-Shave

and

Your shaving brush / Has had its day / So why not / Shave the modern way / With / Burma-Shave

Some were just fun:

Grandpa's beard/ Was stiff and coarse/ And that's what/ Caused his/ Fifth divorce/ Burma-Shave

Frank Rowsome Jr.'s book The Verse by the Side of the Road has a list of all of the jingles and they are gathered on the Burma-Shave website. The collection and a great history of the Burma-Shave story is recounted in a remarkable book by Bill Vossler.

By the 1950s, advertising in television had eclipsed the roadway signs. The Burma-Shave signs were not replaced rapidly and soon started to be forgotten. Moreover the Interstate Highway system allowed and encouraged the American public to drive too quickly to read small signs. Eventually, the Burma-Shave signs were a part of a past era.

The saga was over.