Jane Withers, Whose Josephine The Plumber Commercials Redefined How TV Depicted Working Women, Dies At 95

Actress Jane Withers, whose Josephine the Plumber character in the long-running series of television commercials for Procter & Gamble’s PG Comet cleanser redefined the depiction of working women in advertising and marketing, passed away at the age of 95.

A New Television Heroine: From the beginning of television, advertisements depicted women strictly as housewives and mothers with an acute preoccupation on cooking, cleaning and frilly self-indulgences — working women, either white-collar or blue-collar, were nowhere to be seen on the small screen.

The idea of a female plumber was an unusual jokey effort to sell the Comet cleanser used in sinks and bathtubs. Withers would later recall she was the 103rd actress to audition for the part. She wore her own white overalls for the test — that outfit would later be used in the commercials, which began in 1963 and ran through 1974, with 30 different commercials airing each year; the character was also prominent in the brand's print advertisements.

Why It Was Important: Withers took her role seriously and enrolled in a plumbing course to better understand her character’s profession.

As more American women began to move into the workforce in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Josephine went from being an anomaly to an unlikely reflection of how American women were taking on careers that were previously closed to them. Television commercials began to include working women such as Jan Miner’s Madge the manicurist, Nancy Walker’s Rosie the diner owner and Margaret Hamilton’s shopkeeper Cora as recurring characters for consumer brand advertising.

Withers departed from playing Josephine in 1975 to take care of her mother, who was incapacitated with a brain tumor.

“I felt badly about leaving Josephine,” she said in an interview when announcing the end of her run. “It’s as if I killed somebody. The company wanted me to stay. We were in fifth place in the market when we started the commercials. Now we are No. 1.”

An Unlikely Pioneer: Born in Atlanta in 1926, Withers first gained public prominence as a child actress in films produced at the 20th Century Fox studios. She averaged three to five films a year and her on-screen personality inspired a series of dolls and children’s mystery books.

Withers retired at the age of 21 to marry Texas oilman William P. Moss in 1947, but the couple divorced after six years. Withers returned to acting in the 1956 classic “Giant” starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, and would later become a jolly presence in guest roles on television series including “The Munsters,” “The Love Boat” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

Withers would gain a new audience when she expanded into voice performing as one of the talking gargoyles in Walt Disney Co’s DIS 1996 feature “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and its 2002 direct-to-video sequel.

Photo: Screen shot from an early 1970s television commercial with Jane Withers as Josephine the Plumber explaining the benefits of Comet cleanser to a pre-teen Robby Benson.