The very first television
commercial was broadcast on July 1, 1941, during a Dodgers-Pirates game on
Ebbets Field. It consisted simply of the face of a Bulova clock, with a
voice announcing the time. This cost the Bulova company a whole nine
dollars.
Of course, it was all
downhill from there. However, as much as we hate them, disregard them, zap
past them, or swear that they don’t influence us, television commercials are
a small slice of our lives. And as much as we do our best to avoid the
contemporary ones as we channel surf or head to the refrigerator, nothing
shows us our cultural family album like a good old classic commercial.
Advertising on television says more about us than any history book. Let’s
face it: beer, cars, ice pops, and deodorant are pretty much life as we know
it.
This classic collection of
over 200 TV commercials (from the 1950s through the 1970s) does not include
that first Bulova ad (lost to the ages); however there is plenty here to
entice, enchant and annoy and enjoy. You get just about everything you would
expect and less – and if you’re old enough, you’ll be surprised at how much
of these jingles, slogans and running characters your subconscious has
retained.
The most curious samplings
from the volume are the most obvious examples of the banality of evil:
cigarette commercials. After a decade of corporate/government bargaining,
pending legislation and stalled time, the very last cigarette commercial on
television, for Virginia Slims, was broadcast during The Tonight Show
with Johnny Carson on January 1, 1971. Before that last puff was drawn
from the pouty lips of a liberated woman who had come a long way, baby,
there were literally thousands of cigarette commercials broadcast over the
previous twenty years, influencing generations of otherwise healthy people
to be glamorous, exciting, youthful and reckless with their health. These
ads, as pleasant as a field of spring daisies, had gone as far as reassuring
their victims that doctors recommended a certain brand for mildness on the
throat, or that specially formulated filters actually prevented a cancer
risk.
The tobacco market was the
most competitive of almost all advertised products, and the fight for their
share of your lung was knock down and drag-out. Cigarettes didn’t
just dance (Old Gold) but square dance (Lucky Strikes); and they made their
filthy appeal to all ages and – eventually, thanks to the civil rights
movement – all races. Arguably, the Phillip Morris Company, calling their
brand “America’s Finest Cigarette,” possibly even killed the very celebrity
endorsers who urged America to “buy ‘em by the carton:” Lucille Ball and
Desi Arnaz, who both eventually died of smoking-related ailments.
The pre-cowboy Marlboro
Man was just a “guy who likes to work on my car.” He tells us that he gets
so engrossed in what he’s doing that he forgets to eat (but he never forgets
to smoke). He adds that he is very taken with the new Marlboro
“flip-top” box, calling it “interesting and practical.” It didn’t take much
to impress the Marlboro Man.
There was a cigarette or
cigar message for every segment of the population, and a less-than-subtle
sexual innuendo for all who gave in to the temptation. An animated Muriel
cigar, dressed like Mae West, purred, “Why don’t you pick me up and smoke me
sometime?” Meanwhile, Chesterfields’ message was a bit more homoerotic: “The
taste you’ve been missing – the length you’ve learned to like.”
By the late 70s, John
Wayne, who was suffering from cancer himself, made this plea
on behalf of
the American Cancer Society: “We are asking you for help again this year.
You’re lucky – it could be the other way around.” His is the most powerful
of the celebrity endorsements, but there are others, of course.
Elizabeth Montgomery, as
Samantha Stevens, pimps new Kindness Conditioner Hair Spray for your 60s
‘do, with a multi-stepped, complicated explanation of how to spray it on hot
curlers that would baffle even a nuclear physicist, let alone a common
hausfrau (“spray it on, roll it up, and the heat activates the protein
conditioner to give you extra body.” Huh?). And Ozzie Nelson shows
you the glorious wonders of his Kodak color slides – in a black and white
commercial!
Groucho Marx suggests that
you visit your DeSoto dealer (obviously he didn’t suggest it strongly
enough) and a pre-Charlie’s Angels Jaclyn Smith proves that she
is one of the most beautiful and confident women ever to lather up for
Camay. Like DeSotos, they don’t make ‘em like Jaclyn Smith anymore. She
was the pinnacle of the celebrity endorser, both before and after her
celebrity.
Lovable, trustworthy,
dependable characters endorsing products became so popular that they became
celebrities themselves. Mr. Whipple, for instance, has a recurring phobia
about his supermarket customers orgasmically squeezing rolls of toilet
paper. This disorder is so prevalent that his obsessive-compulsive dilemma
repeats itself over and over again during the course of decades. In the end,
though, Whipple is a troubled hypocrite: he is repeatedly caught doing the
dirty deed he so despises in others.
Mrs. Olsen, either widowed
or not on good terms with her husband, spends many hours in the kitchens of
younger couples, advising the culinarily challenged housewives of the
relationship-healing power of mountain-grown coffee. This is so that the
young pretties could at last please their snotty husbands, who are always at
the ready with a nasty comment about the way their currently putrid coffee
tastes.
The most baffling
character of all is the strangely cheerful and sexually ambiguous Josephine
the Plumber. Not only does her plumbing career seem to revolve around the
trusty Comet cleanser – her entire life (both inner and social) does as
well. Could it be that Josephine is actually the embodiment of Comet
cleanser itself: abrasive, tough and a bit green? Her idea of a sense of
humor involves telling her customers, with the urgency of the Emergency
Alert System, not to use Comet. Once the innocent sap hears this and nearly
faints from the irony, Josephine clarifies the comment by instructing them
to instead use “new, improved Comet!” With this, the customer
breathes a sigh of relief and willingly proceeds to learn more.
The most curious aspect of
these character-driven commercials is that the conversations and situations
that relay the message are practically identical and, a la
Groundhog’s Day, take place over and over and over again, without
anybody getting even the slightest feeling of déjà vu (except you,
the viewer). The most cloying of these situations is brought to you by Crest
toothpaste, whose catchphrase comes (without exception) from an excited
child making a beeline from his/her dental exam, exclaiming, “I only had one
cavity!” Over the course of a generation, this throwaway line has been
carefully sewn into every situation known to man (and woman): a child,
barely containing his/her excitement, runs to the parent, appearing as
anything from a college professor, a bus driver, a football coach, a
heterosexual theatrical actor and a helicopter pilot. In every situation, a curious
bystander, barely masking a bubbling curiosity, asks, “how did you do it?”
and the parent of the day would reply, as seriously as a priest from a
pulpit, “We use Crest now.”
TV commercial characters
come in all forms – even animation. We remember that Frankenberry and Count
Chocula were the cause of colored stools in millions of baby boomers.
However, at least during television’s first two decades, non-animated
characters did not come in colors. Although Wisk laundry detergent bravely
but briefly introduced the first “integrated” commercial in 1963 (a little
league team very quickly included an African American boy), most ads before
the late sixties were aimed at upper-middle-class white Americans.
It’s the way we never
were: “Where there’s life, there’s Bud,” goes the jazzy beer commercial, as
‘60s WASPs frolic on the beach; a fifties-era Dodge car is put together by
an all-Caucasian assembly line; Chevrolet introduces their new line of ‘58’s
(“fun to see! Fun to drive!” But they leave out: “Fun to pay for!”) in which
a crew-cutted frat boy is allowed the privilege of foregoing the “jalopy”
for dad’s new Impala. And Manners the Butler, who for no reason happens to
be four-inches tall, politely advises lily-white housewives about Kleenex
napkins and how they eliminate the universal problem of napkins falling off
your lap (“they cling like cloth!”). Now that this problem is solved, it’s
on to cure cancer.
Stereotypes took their
good old time going away. An animated “Oriental” baby cries for “glape”
Jell-O, but eventually even minorities are welcomed to be as manipulated as
Caucasians. One small victory concerned Hispanic watchdog groups working
hard to eliminate the Frito Bandito, and good for them. Still, white people
were urged to tan (QT) – and even Malibu Barbie turned a chocolate brown
(accessories and batteries not included).
No matter what color, TV
commercials were never short of Stepford Wives. Here we see seemingly
brainless (or brainwashed) women dreamily hanging their laundry on a
clothesline placed conveniently on the beach for Tide detergent (“the
cleanest clean under the sun!”); they enthusiastically remove their makeup
with Puff’s tissues and marvel a little too much at its absorbent qualities.
In addition, the fact that Dove is a dishwashing liquid that thinks it’s a
hand lotion is not as fascinating as the housewives who are passionately
arguing this fact with an animated dove. For Dole bananas, a Stepford Wife
erotically dances in circles as a jingle encourages her: “if you feel it,
peel it.” And, as we all know, choosy Stepford Wives choose Jif because they
care deeply about their children.
The most sixties of all TV
commercials is awarded to Hai Karate, the aftershave that allegedly drives
sixties babes mad with desire with one mere whiff. In fact, the contents are
supposedly so dangerous that instructions for self-defense are included in
every package. Here, we watch a nerdy playboy in his bachelor pad fending
off an out-of-control young girl after she exclaims, “What’s that after
shave you’re wearing?” The narrator soberly warns a terrified male audience,
“Wear too much Hai Karate and women can be a problem.”
An advertising habit that
was mercifully put out of its misery in the 1950s (but continues on radio
even today) is the live commercial. In the hands of a lesser talent, this
format is pure agony, but handled by a master, like Arthur Godfrey for
Lipton Instant Soup (his live commercial is almost seven minutes long!),
it’s strangely compelling. Here you can watch Godfrey talk about soup for
almost as long as it takes for the water to boil, and then he practically
has an on-air orgasm over how delicious powdered broth can be.
Not so lucky is the
brilliant Betty Furness, who in a classic live TV moment, attempts to show
the wonders of a Westinghouse refrigerator even though the door of the
contraption refuses to open (“somebody’s playing games,” she says sternly to
no one in particular, but never forgets that the show must go on.). However,
you can’t help but wonder whose head rolled once that live demonstration was
over. She handles it so smoothly that you want to give her a big hug when
she finishes, but you feel sorry for the poor schmuck who is about to lose
his job.
Finally, the collection
contains three total mindblowers. The first, and least lethal, is a
commercial for the Ford Edsel, the most unsuccessful car in the history of
automobiles. After seeing this monstrosity on wheels, you can see why. Be a
witness to history when the ugliest car ever made lunges toward you and the
announcer warns us, “they’ll know you’ve arrived.” No kidding.
The second mindblower is
the classic public service announcement from the seventies alerting a newly
sexually liberated culture about the dangers of venereal disease. In it, a
montage of seemingly normal people, from doctors to teachers to babies to
moms to nerds to librarians to a lady riding a horse happily floats by your
screen, as an old-fashioned crooner sings, “VD is for everybody, not just
for the few. Anyone can share VD, with someone as nice as you.” It’s
powerful as hell – the absolutely perfect example of how chillingly
effective the medium can be when it wants to be.
However, the grandpappy of
all mindblowers, the absolute motherfucker of all TV commercials, is Fred
Flintstone for Winston cigarettes. Hard to believe now, but in 1960, Winston
was The Flintstones’first sponsor. Week after week, Fred, Barney, and
even the gals happily smoked their brains out in between “yabba-dabba-doo’s.”
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Fred and Wilma sprawled out on the
hard-as-a-rock couch, indulging in a cigarette break. Fred reassures us
that, even millions of years ago, Winston still tastes good like a cigarette
should.
Of course, too much of any
good thing is possibly too much, and you may have to take this experience in
small doses. Three hours of TV commercials, even classic ones,
are a long
time. The exaggerated facial expressions, the outdated technology, the
cloying jingles, the fuss over failed products (Screaming Yellow Zonkers
anyone?) and the merciless lack of subtlety can get tiresome. Plus, this DVD
makes it impossible to maneuver between commercials so that you can zap
right to your favorites. This is in contrast to the early sixties ad for the
Renault Daphene, in which an attempt is made to sell America a French
car because it’s small and easy to maneuver (unlike this collection).
However, like this DVD, the biggest selling point of the Renault is that
it’s “fun!” And, it has a “city horn” and a “country horn.”
We’re sold!
Ronald Sklar
Copyright © 2004
PopEntertainment.com.
All rights reserved. Posted: September 22, 2004.
