Since we like our music here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, the above ad for Philco's Port-O-Sound Cart (turntable + tube amp + two-way speaker on cart = COOL) definitely struck a Bb13 #9 chord and confirmed that Mrs. John Q. Public in the suburbs was listening to those classic Charlie Parker Dial records while cooking the roast. In 1948 and 2018, music just makes dinner taste better.
Selling state-of-the-art audio technology to the home market was nothing new in the 1950's. Two decades earlier, the stop-motion animation geniuses of the George Pal Studio were selling Philips radios - the last word in 1930's audio - with elaborate, imaginative and painstakingly produced animated films. This one illustrates how Philips radios bring music and entertainment from all around the world to one's living room.
Yes, the Dutch loved American jazz and, in the latter portion of the following George Pal Puppet-toon, as was frequently the case in movies made before World War II, paid homage via 1920's vaudeville/minstrel show stereotypes . . . all part of a boiling cinematic bouillabaisse featuring incredible stop-motion animation, expert use of color, deft matching of sound to image and the ever-buoyant dance music by Bert Ambrose & His Orchestra. The music has got me ready to buy a top-of-the-line Philips radio right now!
Philco's Port-O-Sound Cart would not be its only high tech in the home product. The futuristic and state-of-the-art swivel screen Predicta TV, origially designed for the Holiday Inn hotel chain, was, like the Edsel, expected to take the world by storm. It didn't. The commercials were very cool, nonetheless.
At one point in the 1960's the stereo reel-to-reel tape deck was the height of audio coolness.
The ultimate version of the Port-O-Sound Cart would arrive decades later, at the end of the 1970's, as the Sony Walkman, The writer of this blog very sincerely hopes he didn't look as ridiculous as the actors in this 1980 TV ad for Sony Walkman did when he took his frequent constitutionals, every step tuned into Charlie Parker recordings, dubbed from vinyl and CDS to that wonder of technology, the cassette tape.
And there she is, not Miss America, but the fair Geene Courtney, demonstrating the wonder of 1950's technology, sausages as a fashion accessory, with panache and extra mustard. Ms. Courtney was crowned Sausage Queen during National Hot Dog Week (sponsored by the Zion Meat Company), specifically in the year 1955. Nutritionists be damned - I like her!
And of course, we know what the theme music was when Geene accepted her official Sausage Queen tiara. Couldn't have possibly been Bert Parks singing the Miss America theme, but that's okay - we like this ditty by Perry Como better.
Invariably, this brings to mind a very cheesy TV ad, to this day branded into the minds of baby boomers as a red-hot brand burned cattle - this gem's from 1967 and no less ridiculously unsubtle almost 50 years later.
"He was gifted with an amazing imagination and the performing gifts necessary to transfer that imagination into something that others could see and hear." Mark Evanier
"His humor has worn well and his voice work speaks for itself—pun intended." Leonard Maltin
"Stan Freberg's satire still speaks volumes today." Don M. Yowp
The late, great Stan Freberg wrote the funniest TV ads in the history of Western Civilization, with the possible exception of those Piels Beer commercials starring Bob & Ray. Well, small wonder - they were written by a guy who turned down a drama scholarship to work with Mel Blanc as a voice-over artist on Warner Brothers cartoons!
Stan Freberg was also responsible for the only TV commercial featuring science fiction/fantasy writer (and chum of Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones) author Ray Bradbury.
Stan Freberg started his long career of writing hilarious commercials for radio. Historian and writer Don M. Yowp wrote at some length about Stan Freberg's career as cartoon voice artist and radio/television advertising wunderkind, in an August 7, 2013 post.
Here are a few more hilarious commercials by Stan Freberg - enjoy!
Animation producer/director John Hubley created this very funny and still relevant short about the fun-filled realities of making television commercials back in 1956. Dizzy, as usual, sounds fantastic and there are also several stellar Hubley/Storyboard Productions commercials in the mix.
