A blond Swedish model named Gunilla Knutson holds a can of shaving cream to her cheek and gazes deeply into the camera. “Nothing takes it off like Noxzema medicated shave,” she says.
In a 60-second commercial from 1966 that rings with double entendre, the jazzy instrumental “The Stripper” plays as a man shaves his face in rhythmic strokes timed to the bump-and-grind of the music. When the camera returns to a tight close-up of Ms. Knutson (pronounced KUH-noots-son), she utters seven of the most famous words from that era of advertising.
“Take it off,” she says, before pausing slightly. “Take it all off.”
In another ad from the campaign, Ms. Knutson strips the rind from a lime, licks her thumb slowly and hums “The Stripper.”
“Men,” she says. “Noxzema shave cream now comes in lime, too. So take it off.”
Ms. Knutson, for whom the Noxzema campaign represented the peak of her fame, died on Feb. 3 in Ystad, Sweden, where she was born and where she had lived since leaving Manhattan a few years ago. She was 84. Her death was not widely reported at the time.
Her son, Andreas von Scheele, said she died in a hospital after dealing with multiple medical issues. He and her husband, Per von Scheele, are her only immediate survivors.
Gunilla Karin Maria Knutson was born on Nov. 14, 1940, to Einar and Sonja Knutson, who divorced when she was young.
She was crowned Miss Sweden in early 1961 and competed that year in the Miss Universe pageant in Miami Beach. Before the finals, she told The Associated Press: “I’m very surprised I got here; I didn’t think I would. I’m nothing special.” Marlene Schmidt of West Germany was the winner.
Ms. Knutson studied languages at the University of Lund and then moved to the United States, where she began working as a model.
She was not originally part of the Noxzema campaign. But after reviewing a planned version of the commercial that showed a man shaving to the strains of “The Stripper,” executives at Noxzema and the William Esty advertising agency decided that it needed a woman.
“It wasn’t as effective as they had hoped,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 1997 for a retrospective feature on 50 great ad campaigns. “Someone said, ‘Well, we could put a broad in it.’ At first it was a joke, but then they tried it.”
From 1965 to 1968, thanks in part to Ms. Knutson’s commercials, Noxzema’s rank among shaving creams rose from the sixth to the third most popular.
“She replaced the ‘hard sell’ with the ‘sex sell,’” The Times-Herald of Vallejo, Calif., wrote in 1968.
In 1971, while still working for Noxzema, Ms. Knutson also promoted Tijuana Smalls mini-cigars and Tuborg beer. She was part owner of a clothing and health food store in Manhattan in the 1970s and a spokeswoman for Rose Milk skin care products in the ’70s and Gold Seal vineyards and Taylor California Cellars wine in the ’80s.
But of all her work, it was the Noxzema ads, which she did for about five years, that resonated the most.
In 1972, when she appeared on “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson” to promote “Gunilla Knutson’s Book of Massage” — and gave Mr. Carson a massage and a waterproof vibrating massager that she was promoting — the band played “The Stripper” when she was introduced.
“I was just wondering if you were going to play it,” she told Mr. Carson, who had asked her if she thought she would ever live down the Noxzema commercials.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t,” she said. “But that’s OK.”
She added, “It definitely got me started, but, of course, now I’m into a different field.”
Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades.
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