Digging up history - the companies behind the cards

[ZachS]

As a few of you here already know, I've been attempting to compile data for a website that covers Louisiana type cards. I wanted to cover more than just the cards themselves so I've been researching the companies that actually distributed these cards with their products. While researching L. Frank & Co., manufacturer of Tango Eggs, I ended up writing back and forth with a local historian. She recently sent me an excerpt from an interview she did a while back with Mr. Philip Frank, a direct descendant of the original owner. In the interview he reveals that the name Tango Eggs came about simply because the dance was popular at the time.

She's supposed to be reaching out to Mr. Frank to see if he would like to discuss his family's business with me. Has anyone else ever had an opportunity to hear some first-hand accounts from people directly associated with the companies that produced and/or distributed the cards we chase after today? I'd love to hear some more stories.

Here's the excerpt:

LAD—“So that there was no one person who was like, “Well, we’re gonna use a rose and that sort of thing?”

PFF—“No. The thing about the rose that’s the, you bring these things back that I haven’t thought about. Back in the 20s or 30s, we had a brand of egg called the “Tango,” which was the “Tango Eggs,” because the Tango was a popular dance back then, and I actually had some of the little posters that we used back then. And then the Tango went out of fashion and my grandfather, Charles Frank, Sr., said you know, “We need something that’s gonna last,” and he came up with the name “American Beauty.”

LAD—“Ok.”

PFF—“And he was quite a character. Every single day, he wore an American Beauty rose in his lapel. That one picture you see of him there’s an American Beauty rose in his lapel, and that’s sort of how we started with the American Beauty brand and then just continued and again, an easy thing to remember.”

LAD—“Right, gotcha. I wondered ‘cause I mean I’ve heard of the American Beauty rose and I saw it on the signage, I’m like, “Hmmmm.”

PFF—“Yeah, well, that’s where it came from. You know to put the two together. We had trade marks on ‘em. We only had one issue, I think, many years ago. There was a company in St. Louis that had an American Beauty pasta. And they wanted us to stop using American Beauty but I don’t think it went anywhere because we were different geographically and it was a different product and they had never sold pasta under American Beauty in this market. There was several reasons if I remember correctly, it never went anywhere. So we sort of maintained that trade mark. Now when we sold the business to Caro PFG, they weren’t really interested in my opinion, in the retail business. They were more into the food service side, so over the next couple of years and I left the company, they really just lost total interest in the American Beauty family of products in the grocery stores. And it ended up, butter I think today is the only product that’s still available under the American Beauty brand. Whereas at one time, when I was working here, we probably had about 20, 25 different products under that brand.”

NOTE: Tango hit America c. 1914/5, crossover in 1921/Valentino