An early ad slogan is still being used today, thanks to AGA
Now You're Cooking With Gas” is a phrase often used in TV and film. And it originated with the American Gas Association.
Back in the 1930s, Deke Houlgate, an executive with AGA, came up with the phrase. He happened to know some of comedian Bob Hope’s writers and planted it. Hope began to use it in his routines on the radio, and then Jack Benny began to use the phrase in the early 1940s.
The slogan is also heard in a 1942 movie, The Big Street, starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, as well as in a 1943 Daffy Duck cartoon. Daffy, who is trapped in an oven, says, “Say, now you’re cooking with gas.”
The American Gas Association Monthly, Volume 23, published in 1941, had this to say about the phrase: “ ‘Now you’re cooking with gas’ literally took the gas industry by the ears around December 1939—Remember?—when it flashed forth in brilliant repartee from the radio programs of the Maxwell Coffee Hour, Jack Benny, Chase and Sanborn, Johnson Wax, Bob Hope and sundry others.”
Echoed the Pacific Coast Gas Association’s Proceedings, Volume 32, in 1941: “It’s up to us to plan our activities so as to assure progress—so that people will say of us, ‘Now You’re Cooking with Gas!’ ”
The first AGA TV commercial, advancing the idea that cooking with gas was the superior choice, appeared in January 1957 during the popular drama series Playhouse 90, hosted by TV personality Julia Meade, according to a 75th anniversary article in the July 1993 issue of American Gas.
In 1960, Brooklyn Union Gas Company and Living magazine created a cooking film called Do Come to Dinner, featuring a young girl who invites a young man—future movie star Warren Beatty—to dinner and cooks for him using none other than the modern Gold Star gas range.
Gas played a starring role, too, at the New York World’s Fair of 1964 and 1965, where AGA’s “Festival of Gas” pavilion drew thousands of visitors. Gas fueled 99 percent of cooking at the fair, advancing the message that “cooking with gas” was best.
AGA still finds a high return on its use of the phrase. AGA’s #CookingWithGas social media campaign, which features chefs from across the country sharing why they love cooking with natural gas, enjoys great popularity among viewers.