Peace, little girl

1964 1 minute Directed by Sidney Myers

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About Peace, little girl

Three-year-old Monique Corzilius stands in a meadow, pulls petals off a daisy, and counts them wrong. After she reaches nine, a man's voice counts backward from ten, as at a missile launch. The picture zooms into her right eye until the pupil fills the frame, then cuts to a nuclear blast and a mushroom cloud. Lyndon Johnson's voice says the stakes are a world in which all of God's children can live, or the dark. White letters on black tell viewers to vote for President Johnson on November 3, and Chris Schenkel reads that line, adding that the stakes are too high to stay home.

Cast & crew

More about Peace, little girl

Doyle Dane Bernbach made the spot for Lyndon Johnson's 1964 campaign. Tony Schwartz designed the sound. It ran once, on September 7, 1964, during NBC's Monday movie telecast of David and Bathsheba. Barry Goldwater is never named.

Themes

  • A child counting daisy petals
  • A countdown that replaces her voice
  • The blast cut against Johnson's line about the stakes
  • Daisy ad
  • 1964 election
  • nuclear countdown
  • Lyndon Johnson
  • Monique Corzilius

Background

The spot aired in the 1964 race between Johnson and Barry Goldwater, whose nuclear comments the campaign wanted voters to hear without a direct attack ad naming him.

Audiences

The campaign pulled the commercial after that single NBC broadcast. News programs kept playing it.

Music

Tony Schwartz built the track: the child's miscount, a launch-style countdown, the blast, Johnson's sentence, and Chris Schenkel on the end card.

Notes

  • Wikidata lists the child as Monique Luiz. The Wikipedia account of the meadow scene names Monique Corzilius.
  • Robert Dryden is credited alongside Johnson and Schenkel. The page does not say which line is his.
  • The end card reads, in capitals, VOTE FOR PRESIDENT JOHNSON ON NOVEMBER 3.
  • Goldwater had opposed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and had talked about low-yield nuclear weapons in Vietnam if they were needed. The commercial was built from those positions.

Scenes

  • The girl counts petals in the meadow until a male voice takes over the numbers.
  • The zoom into her eye is replaced by the flash of the explosion.

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (Commercial-LBJ1964ElectionAdDaisyGirl.ogv)

Quotes

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 stakes are too high for you to stay home.