WELLINGTON - The image of American singer John Denver, who died in a 1997 plane crash, was pulled from a television advertisement about mental illness after it upset the International John Denver Memorial Foundation.
Denver, whose hits included Rocky Mountain High and Thank God I'm A Country Boy, until last month
featured in a Health Funding Authority advertisement aimed at erasing the stigma of mental illness.
The advertisement featured other famous and successful people, includng Albert Einstein, Judy Garland, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Audrey Hepburn and New Zealanders John Kirwan, Ian Mune, Sarah Smuts-Kennedy and Mike Chunn. It indicated that at one time each person suffered from a type of mental illness.
However, Susan Leaver of the Denver memorial foundation complained to the Advertising Standards Complaints Board that the advertisement was detrimental to Denver's memory and the foundation's work.
She had communicated with Denver for 21 years and "I know this information to be incorrect and defamatory to his character and memory."
The Health Funding Authority and its advertising agency said they were concerned the foundation had taken offence at the advertisement and had replaced Denver with another personality.
But they still believed Denver had a mental illness at some point in his life. He said in his autobiography he had suffered from depression and anxiety, and more than once felt suicidal.
The complaints board did not uphold the complaint.
It said the funding authority was entitled to rely on information it received about Denver, particularly as he was dead and the statements were autobiographical.
- NZPA
