Product Placement History - The Early Beginnings

The first documented effects of the way in which an audience can be powerfully influenced happened in 1934 when the spectacle of a vestless Clark Gable in the hit movie It Happened One Night sent sales of vests plummeting over night! (Marlon Brando reversed the effect in On The Waterfront!).
In the detective thriller Laura, released in October 1944, Dana Andrews drinks an imaginary brand of whiskey called Black Pony. The brand was promptly launched in real life, ending the last resistance to using real products. The following year, Joan Crawford brought Jack Daniel's to the silver screen in Mildred Pierce. In this first reliably recorded example of product placement in October 1945, Joan Crawford won the Oscar for Best Actress as the ruthlessly ambitious Mildred, who goes into the restaurant business to boost her daughters' marriage prospects. Mildred pours a customer a Jack Daniels whiskey - a brand whose fame is founded on product placement to this day. And In The UK? | Blockbusters