Item Condition: **NOTE** : PAGES MAY SHOW AGE WEAR AND IMPERFECTIONS TO MARGINS, WITH CLOSED NICKS AND CUTS, WHICH DO NOT AFFECT AD IMAGE OR TEXT WHEN MATTED AND FRAMED.
DATE OF THIS ** ORIGINAL ** ADVERTISEMENT / ADVERT / AD:
DATE PRINTED ON ITEM: 1912
GREAT DECOR / ART FOR: HOME OFFICE BUSINESS SHOP STORE CASINO LOFT STUDIO GARAGE SHE SHED The Kelly-Springfield Tire Company was an American manufacturer of tires for motor vehicles. It was founded in Springfield, Ohio by Edwin Kelly and Arthur Grant in 1894. It was acquired in 1935 by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, who maintained it as a subsidiary until 1999 when it was integrated into Goodyear North America. It continues today as a major brand under Goodyear. The company was sold to the McMillin group in 1899 for $1 million. Arthur Grant received $166,000 in stock and $33,000 in cash for his share of the company. The McMillin group renamed the new company Consolidated Rubber Tire Company and it continued under that name until 1914. The name Kelly-Springfield Tire Company was given to the New York City sales subsidiary in 1911. Consolidated's name was changed in 1914. "The" was added to the front of the name in 1932 and it became The Kelly-Springfield Tire Company. Manufacturing was done at a plant in Akron, Ohio, and another plant was bought in Wooster, Ohio, in 1915 and used until 1921. The growth of the company continued until the president, Van Cartwell, decided to build a new plant in Cumberland, Maryland. An agreement was signed on November 4, 1916, details of which called for the city of Cumberland to provide a free 81-acre (33 ha) site and $750,000 toward construction of the plant. The city of Cumberland also agreed to make improvements for roads, water and sewerage lines and other essential construction. In turn, once operating, the plant began to employ over 3,000 people and had a production capacity of five times the production capacity of the company until that point. The first tire was built on April 2, 1921. The Kelly Springfield Tire Company was sold in 1935 to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and Edmund S. Burke became president. He served as president from 1935 until 1959. The company operated as a wholly owned subdivision. The company continued to grow until 1962 when it added a new plant in Tyler, Texas. Another plant was built in 1963 at Freeport, Illinois, and the third plant in 1969 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. After 66 years of operation, the Cumberland plant was closed in 1987. In that same year the Lee Tire and Rubber Company came under the control of Kelly-Springfield. In November 1987 the corporate offices were moved to a new facility on Willowbrook Road in Cumberland. The original plant site was returned to the city. In 1994 the Kelly-Springfield Tire Company celebrated 100 years. At that time it was the oldest tire company in the United States. In the 1990s, Kelly-Springfield was absorbed by parent company Goodyear and moved its corporate headquarters to Akron, Ohio.
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SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS/DESCRIPTIVE WORDS: Ah, Miss Miles, that evasive enigma of Marxian lore. All that is widely known about her was summed up by Groucho Marx in 1973: "She was used in ads for the Springfield Tire Company, and her face was all over the place. Lotta Miles wasn't her real name, but they called her that because of the tires. She was beautiful, really beautiful."
Her real name was Florence Reutti, and she was born on December 18, 1893 at 559 Main Street, Buffalo, New York. Her father, Joseph Reutti, had managed the Hamilton, Ohio branch of the American Malting Company, then moved to Buffalo to run a mercantile house. Florence's older sister, Henrietta, was a popular Buffalo singer and "pianologuist," who drafted Florence into show business, casting her in amateur vaudeville shows to benefit the local mission, and so on. By 1914, Henrietta was embroiled in a very juicy scandal involving an heir and his mother, and Florence was seeking professional work as a performer and model.
Shortly thereafter, she began posing for Kelly Springfield Tire advertisements, which identified her as Lotta Miles. However, she was neither the first nor the last Kelly Springfield girl, and they were all called Lotta Miles -- though our Miss Reutti was alone in the temerity to continue using the name. The original Lotta Miles was Jean Newcombe, who went on to a long career in Broadway musicals. A later Lotta Miles, post-Reutti, was Norma Shearer. Fuzzy dates, rerun ads, artists' renderings, and a basic physical resemblance among all the Lotta Mileses, make identifying Florence Reutti in Kelly ads more difficult than it should be. At any rate, she had probably assumed the role by the time a 1916 item in Photoplay included Lotta Miles, along with Cleopatra, Xantippe, and Eva Tanguay, on a list of "Notable Women of History."
Miss Lotta Miles was a campaign front woman for Kelly Tires, a rubber tire company founded by Edwin Kelly and Arthur Grant in 1894 out of Springfield, Ohio. Originally named Rubber Tire Wheel Company, Kelly’s business sold solid-rubber carriage and buggy tires. The company was sold to the McMillin group in 1899 for $1 million and was renamed Consolidated Rubber Tire Company. As the automotive industry began to emerge, the McMillin group shifted focus to producing pneumatic (air filled) automobile tires around 1908, and added a line of tires called “Kelly-Springfield” around 1911. They also poured a lot of money into a campaign featuring Miss Lotta Miles - a stylish woman who drove motorized vehicles while holding on to her fashionable headwear. This was a more invigorating deviation from the current trend of the time that was the Gibson Girl. Let’s get into who Miss Lotta Miles was, and her impact on one of the oldest American-made tire brands.
The first Lotta Miles was an aspiring Broadway performer named Jean Newcomb. Jean had successfully landed as Ada Stirling’s understudy for the role of Georgina in “Over Night” (January, 1911) by Chicago-born playwright Philip Bartholomae. Later the same year, Newcomb landed another understudy gig with The Red Window (November, 1911). Being cast as Miss Lotta Miles between those two plays changed the game, and Newcomb didn’t work on stage again until What It Means to a Woman (November 1914), leading to a long and successful career as Broadway performer until the 1930s.
The largest, and most complex Miss Lotta Miles came with Florence Reutti who was pulled into show business in the 1910s thanks to her older sister, Henrietta. Henrietta met Walter J. Hanson, son of Aimee Hanson, the niece of industrialist Leland Stanford and wife Jane… the founders of Stanford University. Aimee Hanson was convinced her son, Walter was ensnared by the gold-digging seduction of a vaudeville floozy. After Harriet and Walter eloped to get married, elder Mrs. Hanson tried to have her son committed for incompetence, she cut off his annual allowance, and attempted to have their marriage annulled.
While Walter was disposed until the courts determined his competence, Henrietta filed a separate lawsuit against Mother Hanson, providing enough scandal to overshadow the career of Henrietta Reutti Hanson in show business. This pushed Florence Reutti into the spotlight, and in 1914 she was cast as the next Miss Lotta Miles. It’s understandable that even as new women modeled for Kelly-Springfield, Florence Reutti continued to use the pseudonym “Lotta Miles” for the rest of her career. Even after she married Raymond Anthony Court, Florence used a variety of names including Florence Court, Carlotta Miles, and numerous other variations. The advertising campaigned launched Florence’s acting career on Broadway starting with the comedy musical Fifty-Fifty, LTD. (1919) that had former Lotta Miles Jean Newcombe playing the part of Minerva Crosby.
ILLUSTRATOR/ARTIST: B/W ILLUSTRATION OF THE KEELY SPRINGFIELD GIRL - BEAUTIFUL WOMAN SITTING ON A TIRE LIMOUSINE NEW YORK CITY TRAFFIC ILLUSTRATION COUPE SEDAN LIMOUSINE OPEN AND CLOSED CARS
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