Popular Culture
Movies and television shows set in the 1950s have used the Burma-Shave roadside billboards to help set the scene. Examples are Bonnie and Clyde, A River Runs Through It, The World's Fastest Indian, Stand By Me, and the pilot episode ("Genesis") of Quantum Leap. The long-running series Hee Haw borrowed the style for program bumpers, transitioning from one show segment to the next or to commercials.
Tom Waits' song "Burma-Shave" (from his 1977 Foreign Affairs album) uses the signs as an allegory for an unknown destination. ("I guess I'm headed that-a-way, Just as long as it's paved, I guess you'd say I'm on my way to Burma-Shave") Chuck Suchy's song "Burma Shave Boogie" (from his 2008 Unraveling Heart album) incorporates several of the Burma Shave rhymes into its lyrics.
The pedestrian passageway between the Times Square and Port Authority Bus Terminal stations in the New York City subway system contains a piece of public art inspired by the Burma-Shave ads; Norman B. Colp's The Commuter's Lament, or A Close Shave consists of a series of signs attached to the roof of the passageway, displaying the following text:
- Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again.
Several highway departments in the United States use signs in the same style to dispense travel safety advice to motorists.
The word "burmashaving" is used in Canada to describe politicians holding signs and waving to traffic by the side of the road, a common sight during election campaigns. One of the first to use the phrase was Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative premier John Buchanan, who would stand at the end of a long line of party signs and wave to morning traffic.
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