The first Friday in August is International Beer Day, and has been since 2008. Unlike most of the internet holidays that get posted here, this one was not founded by a trade association or industry group, but by an individual, Jesse Avshalomov, with a professional background in marketing. The holiday was then adopted and popularized by local bars in his hometown of Santa Cruz, California and has since been embraced by the industry in cities worldwide.
Until we log out for the day, we're limiting our part in the festivities to this ca. 1950 commercial for Leisy's Light beer, the most popular beer in Cleveland.
The commercial was made by Cinecraft Productions, a Cleveland production company founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty (Buehner) Culley (1914-2016). The company, which still operates today, specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations, work that currently allows it to proclaim itself the “country's longest-standing corporate film & video production house.”
This commercial is part of Hagley Library's collection of Cinecraft Productions films (Accession 2019.227). This collection includes motion pictures, still images, scripts and related production documents from the company's founding into the early 1980s with the bulk covering the 1950s to the 1970s. The collection has not been digitized in its entirety but we are currently making frequent additions; click here to view it online now in our Digital Archive.