Mattress Ads Wake Up to Human Sexuality

The fact is largely forgotten, but first lady Eleanor Roosevelt used to host a weekly radio show sponsored by the Simmons mattress company—a cultural footnote immortalized by Cole Porter in one of the last stanzas of “Anything Goes”: “So Missus R. with all her trimmin’s, can broadcast a bed from Simmons ’cause Franklin knows, anything goes.” Porter’s line was also a sly reference to the fact that while Mrs. Roosevelt might have slept in her Simmons, her presidential husband was said to be fond of, er, more mattresses than just his own.