September 7, 1964: The Daisy Spot Is Aired

September 7, 1964, 60 years ago: The most famous political advertisement ever runs. It only runs the once, but it was enough.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 scared the world. The following year, a public opinion survey showed that 90 percent of respondents believed that a nuclear war was possible, and 38 percent thought it was likely.

Having resolved the Missile Crisis without going to nuclear or any other kind of war, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev worked toward a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, that took effect in September 1963. This seemed like a big step forward. Then Kennedy was assassinated in November, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became President. A Democrat like Kennedy, he immediately took steps to run for a full term in 1964.

The Republican Party nominated Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona for President. An archconservative, he and his supporters didn't want Communism "contained" to where it already was, they wanted it "rolled back."

In hindsight, LBJ is considered -- not completely fairly -- the man who started the Vietnam War, but it was the Republican Administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower (with Nixon as Vice President) that started the U.S. role in what had been a civil war in Vietnam. Republicans supported that war all the way, to the point where, in 1992, Republican President George H.W. Bush ripped Democratic nominee Bill Clinton for having opposed the war, 17 years after the last U.S. troops left -- and it made Bush look ridiculous, and it was one of the reasons (although hardly the biggest reason) that Clinton won.

But in the Summer of 1964, most Americans weren't hearing much about Vietnam. Many couldn't find it on a map. It didn't look like it would be a major issue.

But Goldwater had been 1 of 14 Senators to vote against the Test Ban Treaty. And he gave an interview suggesting that he would give U.S. Army field commanders the right to use small, "tactical" nuclear weapons in combat. He went out of his way to say, "I don't think we would ever use them." But that's not what people remembered: They were too shocked at the suggestion to "see" the denial.

And so, the Johnson campaign took Goldwater's slogan, "In your heart, you know he's right," and twisted it. "Yeah, far right." "In your guts, you know he's nuts." And a campaign pin with a red button and a finger pointed right at it, with the inscription, "In your heart, you know he might."

The Goldwater campaign struck back, showing a group of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, until their voices are drowned out by a voice pretending to be Khrushchev: Of course, Khrushchev didn't say it in English -- as far as I can tell, he didn't speak it -- but the actor quoted him directly: "We will bury you" and "Your children will be Communists!"

So the LBJ campaign worked with the famed advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (now known as DDB Worldwide Communications Group) to make a devastating ad. Written by Tony Schwartz, it is officially titled, "Peace, Little Girl." It is on black-and-white film, and shows a 3-year-old girl, sitting in Highbridge Park in Upper Manhattan, with the Henry Hudson Parkway behind her. She's pulling the petals off a daisy, hence it became known as "The Daisy Spot" or "The Daisy Ad."

As she pulls the petals, and birds chirp, she counts, not quite right, and this was left in because it made her seem more innocent: "One, two, three, four, five, seven, six, six, eight, nine... " And then she runs out of petals, and says, "Nine" one more time. Then, a heavily-echoed adult male voice yells, "Ten!" And starts counting down. When he gets to eight, the girl looks up, as if she hears him. Her image freezes, and the camera zooms in on her right eye.

As her iris fills the screen, the countdown reaches, "Zero!" And there's a flash of light. It's a nuclear explosion. And the voice of LBJ is heard, saying, "These are the stakes: To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." The screen then goes black except for these words, in white: "VOTE FOR PRESIDENT JOHNSON ON NOVEMBER 3." And a 3rd male voice -- I can find no record of whose it was, and the LBJ Presdiential Library responded to my request by saying it was probably a Doyle Dane Bernbach employee -- says, ominously, "Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay at home."

The ad aired only once. The program chosen was The NBC Monday Movie, in this case a Biblical epic, the 1951 film David and Bathsheba, starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. (This was before ABC began showing Monday Night Football.) The time chosen was 9:50 PM, a time at which it would be expected that children would be in bed, so they would be less likely to be scared by it, but parents would still be watching, and would imagine their children in place of the little girl.

White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers later told LBJ, who wanted it shown again, that it accomplished its purpose in one showing. He was right: Goldwater had been gaining in the polls, but the ad finished him, even though it never even mentioned his name.

Republicans blaming the media for an election defeat, or for a bad poll that suggests an upcoming election defeat, began 2 years earlier, when Richard Nixon lost his election for Governor of California. But now, conservatives blamed the media for distorting what Goldwater meant by his statement on nuclear weapons: The common cry was, "Don't quote what he says, say what he means!"

Would such an ad running today work? Probably not: The huge number of channels available today would mean that fewer people would see it -- at first. But by the next morning, the news channels would have shown it, and, unlike in 1964, analyzed the hell out of it. This would include exposing its flaws, real and perceived. And somebody supporting the targeted candidate would be interviewed, explaining that it totally distorts the candidate's position.

But in 1964, with NBC having a much larger market share, and there being no CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc., the one-time showing, without quick comeback analysis, allowed the ad to make a far greater impression. And it totally worked: Goldwater was seen as a "mad bomber," while Johnson was seen as "the peace candidate."

On Election Day, November 3, Johnson set a new record with 61.1 percent of the popular vote. Goldwater won only 6 States: His home State of Arizona (barely), and 5 Southern States, not so much happy with him for having opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as they were angry with Johnson for supporting and signing it.

Few people yet realized just how deep America was into Vietnam's civil war. By the time the 1968 election cycle began in 1967, a joke was making the rounds: "I was told that if I voted for Goldwater, we would be at war, and there would be riots in the streets. Well, I voted for Goldwater, and we are at war, and we do have riots in the streets."

Johnston dropped out of the race for a 2nd full term in 1968, and died in 1973. Goldwater returned to the Senate in the 1968 election, and served 3 more terms, living until 1998. Tony Schwartz, creator of the ad, went on to create Presidential campaign ads for Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy. He also hosted a radio show on WNYC, New York City's public radio station, and lived until 2008.

The girl in the ad? Her name was Monique Corzilius, and she and her family lived in Pine Beach, on the New Jersey shore, across the Toms River from the town of the same name. Her mother took her into New York to audition for commercials. Most commercials from that era are forgotten, but the Daisy Spot lives on. Her parents were paid $105 for the ad -- a shade over $1,000 in 2022 money.

In 1975, the Corzilius family moved to Philippsbourg, France. In 1983, at age 22, Monique married Manuel Luiz, a Portuguese citizen, and they moved to Phoenix, Arizona -- ironically, Goldwater's hometown. She became a human resources supervisor at a bank, and claimed she never saw the ad until searching for it on the Internet in the 2000s.

In 2016, she appeared in a campaign ad for Hillary Clinton, showing Donald Trump acting like a lunatic on the subject of nuclear weapons. She said, "The fear of nuclear war that we had as children, I never thought our children would ever have to deal with that again. And to see that coming forward in this election is really scary." She even closed the ad with nearly the same words that the 1964 ad used: "Vote for Hillary Clinton on November 8th. The stakes are too high for you to stay home." This time, it didn't work, and Trump became President anyway.

As of September 7, 2024, she is still alive, age 63.