Paid to Make You Like IKE

Not many people know what Bob Montgomery did beyond his film career. The truth is, life didn't stop for him at the film studio.

I ran across some some interesting text from The Direct Persuaders, a book by Vance Packard:

As the 1956 campaign got under way, party spokesmen made it clear that the days of whistle stops and torchlight parades were dead. The President himself stated he was going to rely on mass communication, and his press secretary mentioned that everybody had a lot of ideas on how to gear the 1956 campaign to the new age we are in, "the electronics age." Primarily this meant television—which had brought a new kind of persuader-consultant into the party councils: the TV adviser and make-up consultant. When in the spring the nation was intensely curious to know whether President Eisenhower would or would not run again in view of his illness, the tip-off came when reporters saw Robert Montgomery, the President's TV adviser, walking into the White House the day before an announcement was expected. This could only mean the President was going on the air, which probably meant he was going to run. The hunch was correct. After that appearance, incidentally, Mr. Montgomery received a scolding from TV columnist Harriet Van Home, of the Republican newspaper The New York World Telegram and Sun. She mentioned that Mr. Montgomery, "whose NBC show is also a B.B.D.&O. enterprise," was on hand to advise the President on lighting, make-up, and delivery. Then she stated:

Now I am going to be presumptuous and make a few suggestions to Mr. Montgomery. First, Mr. M., those pale-rimmed spectacles must go. They enhance the natural pallor that comes to every man after forty winters have besieged the brow. Also, pale rims tend to "wash out" when worn by anybody of fair coloring. Second, both lighting and make-up -- if, indeed, the President permitted the pancake touch-up he submitted to so reluctantly at the Chicago convention -- seemed to be aimed at making Gen. Eisenhower look pale. A man just back from a Southern vacation should look tanned, Mr. Montgomery, and the lighting should play up this healthy glow. [The President had been in Georgia to recuperate.]