PUT ON A HAPPY FACE

WHEN injured New York Jet Quarterback Joe Namath was wheeled into a press conference at New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital last week, he wore two smiles. One was his own. The other was pinned onto his shirt. It was a Smilie button, bearing a simple face that in recent months has become one of the most familiar in the U.S.: a pair of oval black eyes over a happy upturned mouth.

The Smilie face beams out from sweatshirts, T shirts and even brassieres. It appears on watches, cigarette lighters, necklaces, on gold cuff links that sell for $80 at New York City's Bergdorf Goodman, and on auto bumpers--sometimes above SMILE, GOD LOVES YOU stickers. The Smilie was the theme of a Look magazine promotion campaign early this year, and was used as a temporary trademark by Good Humor, Bohack supermarkets and Presidential Candidate George McGovern.

Where did it all begin? No one seems quite sure, but Ken Fairchild of New York City's radio station WMCA has a theory. In 1964, he recalls, WMCA created a Smilie similar to the curren version as part of a promotion campaign for the Good Guys, the station's disk-jockey team at the time. "Ours had a few wisps of hair on the top," he recalls, "and I think it was cuter." WMCA handed out thousands of Good Guy sweatshirts during the 1964-66 period and a few still can be seen around the city today. One of them may have inspired the artists of the N.G. Slater Corp., which caused the smile epidemic when it began producing Smilie buttons two years ago. After a slow start, the design suddenly took off this year, and several million buttons have already been sold. "People are looking for an excuse to smile," explains Marketing Director Robert Slater, "and anyone can wear it. Smilie's not right-wing or leftwing. He appeals to everyone." And, Slater adds, putting on a happy face, "it is our biggest button of the decade."

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