Listen to a radio commercial from 1961 that advertised what was then known as Sheraton Hotels — years before the lodging company was acquired by International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation in 1968, by Starwood Hotels and Resorts in 1998, and then by Marriott International, Incorporated in 2016.
Listen To a Sheraton Commercial From 1961
The commercial was aired on Friday, July 7, 1961 on WABC-770 AM in New York during the Dan Ingram program. Although Dan Ingram officially started his employment at WABC on Monday, July 3, 1961, his debut occurred anonymously on Friday, June 30, 1961 after stints at radio stations in New Rochelle in New York, Patchogue in New York, Bridgeport in Connecticut, New Haven in Connecticut, Dallas in Texas, and Saint Louis in Missouri. Dan Ingram — who spent almost 21 years at WABC and is considered by many people to be the greatest personality in the history of Top 40 radio — passed away on Sunday, June 24, 2018.
This video contains the audio of the radio commercial for Sheraton Hotels.
Although Sheraton Hotels was officially launched in 1937, its founders purchased the Continental Hotel in Cambridge in Massachusetts in 1933. The company was originally called Standard Equities Corporation as a result of combining International Equities Corporation with the purchase of Standard Investing Corporation in 1937. Ernest Henderson and Robert Moore — who were classmates at Harvard University — purchased the Stonehaven Hotel in Springfield in Massachusetts, which Sheraton Hotels & Resorts considers as its first hotel property…
…but the purchase of their third hotel property in 1939 became the namesake for the lodging company for a simple reason: the hotel property had a large sign on the roof which illuminated the name Hotel Sheraton, which was too expensive to change — so Ernest Henderson and Robert Moore decided to call all of their hotel properties by that name.
Sheraton had 60 hotel properties in 42 cities as of the airing of the aforementioned radio commercial on Friday, July 7, 1961, with its first international hotel property in Tel Aviv that opened during the prior year in March of 1961. Today, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts operates 431 hotel properties worldwide.
Final Boarding Call
I really enjoy listening to vintage radio commercials and advertisements in publications from decades ago, as they give an insight as to what the world was like back then — especially when the topic is all about travel…
Photograph ©2022 by Brian Cohen.
