“I scared them away, I guess- I don’t think they got anything,” Max supposedly told the police that night, but the Tribune claimed that his story soon changed, and that Hirsch later notified the cops that $20,000 worth of furs had indeed gone missing. The furrier’s vigilant commitment to security had perhaps been warranted, after all. One October evening, after coming home for a brief dinner with his wife and kids, Max Hirsch returned to the store to find “furs lying on the floor, a muff in the alley, bars wrenched off the basement window, and the door leading from the basement broken with an ax,” according to the Tribune. In 1919, when Ben was 9, his father took to sleeping in the store every night as a way to deter burglars-reflecting perhaps on the nature of the neighborhood and/or the anxiety of the shopkeeper. Clark Street, right across from the Hirsch family home at 831 W. His dad Morris Hirsch (aka Max Hirsch) was a tailor and furrier by trade, and sold minks out of a small storefront in Lake View at 3165 N. He was my role model because he was so supportive and worked so hard, with honesty and integrity, and brought me along.” - Sondra Hirsch Healy, Turtle Wax executive and daughter of founder Ben Hirschīenjamin Franklin Hirsch was born in Chicago in 1910 a first generation Jewish American and eldest son to an Austrian father and Russian mother. “My father was an entrepreneur, a dreamer. from a $500 investment into one of the largest and best known auto care brands in the world.Īs the 34-foot electric rotating terrapin in the top hat would suggest, humbleness didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. But competing products like those sold by crosstown rivals Simoniz could already produce a protective sheen quite effectively.įor Hirsch, it was a promotional savvy and love of showmanship that really provided the separator in his industry, helping turn Turtle Wax, Inc. Sure, the car polish itself-which Hirsch first cooked up in the early 1940s-did a nice job helping grease monkeys see their own reflections in the fins of their T-Birds. But it was, in many ways, emblematic of what set Turtle Wax inventor and company president Ben Hirsch apart from most of his contemporaries. This, ladies and gentlemen, was not the sort of gaudy spectacle one would generally expect from a “humble family business” still in its foundational years. The sensational turtle is a new Chicago landmark, visible for miles.” “When, finally, the lights of the astonishing ‘Turtle in the Sky’ were turned on,” according to the The Herald newspaper of Crystal Lake, Illinois, “thousands of balloons were released in a glorious, colorful, bewildering cloud from the windows of the building on which it stands. The beloved singer and actor Jimmy Durante was supposed to flip the switch to illuminate the sign that day, but after the event promoters found him passed out in his room at the Drake Hotel with a collection of chorus girls, they thought better of it. There’s never been anything like it before!”Īt the official dedication of the reptilian monstrosity on June 15, “a thrilling motorcade of famous celebrities wound through the Loop and out to ‘Turtle Square,’ stopping traffic and attracting thousands of spectators to whom were thrown 50,000 little turtles”. “Red will forecast warmer weather blue, cold weather white, rain or snow and green for no change. made from 3,200 square feet of fiberglass and 15,000 pounds of structural and fabricated steel, rising the equivalent of 7-1/2 stories above the roof” of the 10-story office building.Īdorned with a top hat and proudly holding up a man-sized bottle of car wax in his outstretched left hand (upper foot?), this “super turtle” also rotated 360 degrees on a steel column told the time and magically changed color to communicate impending variances in the local weather. On June 4, 1956-just five years after the first bottles of Turtle Wax “Miracle Auto Polish” hit the consumer market-Chicago workmen began installing a new, ludicrously enormous advertisement for the product, situated atop the roof of the Wendell State Bank “Flatiron” Building at the intersection of Madison, Ogden, and Ashland Avenue.ĭescribed by one newspaper as “an amazing sign that has no counterpart in the whole United States,” the $200,000 electrified structure-built by the Victor Sign and Display Co.-depicted “a giant turtle 34 feet high. Made By: Plastone Company / Turtle Wax, Inc., 4100 W. Museum Artifact: Turtle Wax “Hard Shell Finish” Auto Polish and Turtle Wax Furniture Polish Set, 1950s
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