 Being a celebrity endorser isn't what it used to be. If you want a brand to hire you to influence the masses these days, it helps if you're gorgeous, under 24, or a Kardashian. But back in the era before social media, endorsers were, well, more varied. Film aficionados know that Orson Welles was a brilliant actor and writer. He was also the director who gave the world Citizen Kane. But by the late 1970s, Welles' imperious demeanor and blown budgets had made him persona non grata in Hollywood. This turn of events led the great author to take the job of endorsing winemaker, Paul Masson. Adweek enthused about the huge campaign for the brand, which was looking to improve its bargain bin image. And by most accounts, Welles pulled it off, but he was obviously miserable doing it. And outtakes that later became internet legend, a smoldering leery Welles staggers through his lines, drunk on something. Maybe Paul Masson, Shebley? In 1992, Clarell needed a glamorous, but not quite natural blonde to endorse its Ultras hair color brand. So it turned to Ivana Trump. You might not remember Ivana. She was the president's first wife, a one-time check model he cheated on with Marla Maples and then divorced. The Trump split was tabloid fodder and was barely five months old when the TV spot-starring Ivana began airing. Adweek called the heavily accented Ivana, Part Ja Ja, Part Drill Sergeant Barbie. Georgia's hair is the best revenge. So let's say it's 1981 and you're selling a TV called the Star System. Who are you going to hire to pitch the thing? An astronaut? No, silly. You hire someone who's an astronaut on TV. That's how Mr. Spock, sorry, Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock on the original Star Trek series, became a pitchman for Magnavox. Nimoy wasn't exactly eye candy, but his authoritative baritone was just the thing. Magnavox Star System Color Television. You was the achievement from the mind of Magnavox. Nimoy was Magnavox's choice because of his association with scientific technology and futurism, Adweek wrote. The single most reliable electronic system in Magnavox history, Star System, the eternal Magnavox. During the conservative 1980s, there wasn't much explicit talk about sex, unless it was a story about the AIDS crisis on the nightly news. The colorful exception was a four foot seven woman with a squeaky voice and a sociology degree named Dr. Ruth Westheimer. With her heavy German accent and fearless candor, Westheimer dispatched sex advice on her own radio and TV shows. And by 1988, she'd landed a gig as a product endorser for Candies, a low price shoe brand. What was the connection? As Adweek reported, Westheimer's message was basically that a young lady can feel a lot better about herself by putting on the right pair of sexy shoes. Odds are that message wouldn't fly today, but it was nervy for the time, just like Dr. Ruth. Thank you very much, Teddy, for calling. Thanks for your open-mindedness, Ruth. We love you. Thank you. Bye-bye. In 1989, Harry Helmsley ran some of the swankest hotels in New York. But instead of having a celebrity endorse properties like the Helmsley Palace, the job went to a highly unusual and ultimately terrifying candidate, his wife, Leona. She called herself the Queen of the Palace, but her employees cooked up a more incriminating moniker, the Queen of Mean. Few customers at the time knew what a terror the implacable chain-smoking Leona was to work for, but Adweek Readers knew. In the summer of 1989, we excerpted the memoirs of Leona's personal advertising representative, the legendary Jane Moss. Who wrote, Leona gave me many things, including a crisis of confidence.