(NEXSTAR) – Roughly 120 years ago, Miller High Life became the flagship beer of Miller Brewing Company. Since then, it has been dubbed “The Champagne of Beers,” a title it proudly sports on its label.
There’s another icon you’ll find on the brew’s label: a woman, sitting on a crescent moon, wearing a red dress and hat while seemingly toasting to the stars. But who is she?
Let’s first back up a little.
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On December 30, Miller High Life will celebrate its 120th birthday. When it was launched, Milwaukee’s Miller Brewing was already serving other beers throughout the Midwest. Miller High Life was meant to be different than those, Daniel Scholzen, an archivist for the company, explained in a Molson Coors blog post.
Instead of being advertised as a tavern or saloon serving, Scholzen said Miller High Life was presented as a beer to appear “on the tables of the best restaurants in the city or the country.”
Three years after its 1903 launch, a woman dressed in an apparent circus costume was added to the advertising kit for Miller High Life. She stood on a High Life crate while carrying a tray of the beer, another Molson Coors blog post explains. A year later, the woman was put on a crescent moon, becoming the icon we know today.
There are several origin stories for the Miller High Life lady. She may have been based on a member of the Miller family, some say, while others point to Mexican artwork the brewing family acquired.
Maybe the best story you’ll hear, though, is the best Wisconsin-style lore of all.
As Molson Coors (and the tour guides at its Milwaukee facility) explains, when Miller High Life’s advertising campaign was still in the works, advertising executive A.C. Paul went on a hunting trip in northern Wisconsin.
While out, Paul became lost in the woods. As he tried to find his way, he reportedly had a vision of a woman perched upon the moon, which helped him back to safety. If this origin story is true, it’s unclear how that vision became the real Girl in the Moon.
There is yet another possible origin story. Linda Hoffman, a nurse and metalsmith from Milwaukee, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she believes her great uncle, Thomas Wallace Holmes, is to thank for the Girl in the Moon. Hoffman believes he used her grandmother as a model for the Miller High Life lady on the moon, and her great-aunt was the model for the aforementioned woman standing on a crate.
Still, Molson Coors says the Girl in the Moon’s identity is unknown.
“It’s hard to pin down her exact origins, but that lends a little more mystery to her as a figure,” Scholzen said.
After briefly being removed from bottles and cans of Miller High Life, The Girl in the Moon returned in 1998 and has remained ever since.
