I presume she was well paid to do the commercials. And that they had her sign some sort of copyright agreement before they signed her on.
“I presume she was well paid to do the commercials. And that they had her sign some sort of copyright agreement before they signed her on.”
Well,,,I wouldn’t presume that, knowing what happened to all the Blues artists from the 30’s to the 60s!
I assume that they had a contract and paid her to use her image. If they come up with a contract, the lawsuit will be tossed out of court.
It’s not the relatives of the lady from the commercials that are suing. These people say that their relative is who the character from the commercials was based on, and that she wasn’t compensated.
Forget my previous comment, I was confused, the lady from the commercials is the same one that they based the character off of.
Pay for doing commercials in the 50s isn’t comparable to later years. She probably got a pittance. Now, if they used her recipe and had a contract, the company should be OK, if not, there’s probably a good settlement in store for those young men and other relatives. Quaker Oats (and other publicly traded, consumer oriented companies) can’t take too much bad publicity.