Continuing a thread about vintage TV ads we last did on September 8, today's post delves into 1950's and 1960's Commercial Land, specifically cigarettes.
To get in the mood, it's time for a cuppa joe from Conquistador Coffee!
Since the September 8 post started with animated ads, here are some very good ones plugging Lucky "LSMFT" Strikes.
While I don't know offhand who produced the stylish "It's Light Up Time" ads, they are the epitome of the prevalent 1950's graphic design style in animation, especially commercials, known as Cartoon Modern.
Not sure if a showbiz celebrity is one of the dancing Old Gold cigarette packs in this ad, but that's how we'll start the Celebrity Cigarette Commercials compendium. Didn't Mary Tyler Moore act as a dancing cigarette pack in one of these ads?
With a few cups of java from a roaster other than Conquistador Coffee now consumed, we now watch a Winston Cigarettes ad from the Beverly Hillbillies TV show starring Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan.
In another Beverly Hillbillies Winstons ad, Bea Benaderet joins the cast.
Here, a manufuctured couple (Rob & Laura Petrie played by Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, who previously starred in the Happy Hotpoint ads) and a real one, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, adeptly sell smokes!
The Jack Benny Program on radio and TV was sponsored by Lucky Strikes.
In the early 1950's live Jack Benny shows, guest stars at times delivered the commercials, giving announcer Don Wilson a rare breather. In this case, the great Humphrey Bogart does the honors.
While the following celebrity ads compilation mostly consists of car commercials, there is a great Viceroy Cigarettes ad starring a pre-Batgirl Yvonne Craig; yes, Viceroy's got the taste that's right. It's the third one in the mix and starts at 1:00.
Here, the excellent vocalist and actress Julie London sings one of the Marlboro jingles ("you've got a lot to like with a Marlboro, filter, flavor, flip-top box). Later in the compilation, actor/writer Dennis O' Keefe stars in a bunch of commercials for Camel Cigarettes, as opposed to slapping guys around or terrorizing Ann Sheridan in a hard-boiled film noir thriller.
In closing, we extend a prominent top hat tip to Tim Romano for the following terrific compilation of commercials, mastered from 35mm.
Yes, it's true - there is a National Beer Lovers' Day (9/7), so here are ads (print and animated) sellin' suds for National Beer Lovers' Day.
Enjoy a quaff or three with the accordion-wielding Miss Rheingold of 1956!
And guzzle some pints of Blatz Beer with film noir tough guy Dan Duryea!
How shall we celebrate National Beer Lovers' Day? With green beer?
No, we'll celebrate with a slew of classic animated beer ads, invariably seen directly after consuming highly hopped and headache-inducing 9.5% alcohol green ales!
The terrific writer Mike Kazaleh has beat all of us reprobates at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog to the Hefeweizen punch (and subsequent hangover) by writing several outstanding Cartoon Research pieces on animated commercials for malty, hoppy brews - including
Pilsner Pranks - More Spots with Beer and Hops & Spots!.
Alas, many of these great animated ads posted in Mike Kazaleh's articles back in 2014 have since been taken down. We shall attempt to re-construct Mr. Kazaleh's cornucopia of clever cartoon commercials as follows, starting with Gene Dietch TV spots featuring Bob & Ray!
Stag Beer starring Mr. Magoo
In closing, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog enthusistically salute the talented creators of these animated ads, as well as the splendid voice work by comedy aces Jim Backus, Mike Nichols & Elaine May and Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding. Love the Piels Brothers ads and the Nichols & May commercials for Jax and Narragansett Beers.
Also extend a big time Raymond Griffith top hat tip to Mike Kazaleh, the excellent writer/animation historian and suggest checking out his tres cool YouTube channel.
This blog will, as a misbehaving toddler would, be taking a time out; wish it were Dave Brubeck's Time Out and Time Further Out, but nonetheless we shall, like Bing in White Christmas, be counting our blessings. Today's post will be even sloppier than our usual offerings.
Until our return in June, here are cheesy print ads from the two most clicked-on posts from the 15 years of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, starting with a brilliant bogus one from the fertile imagination of the king of fake retro ads, Cris Shapan.
Both of the most clicked-on posts were about cheesy print ads (real and fake). Here's a very clever fake from Jack Pollock's 1994 Devil Chef comic book.
Meanwhile, this (fake) Soda Pop Board of America ad makes me laugh out loud every time I see it.
While no variant of Potato Fudge took America by storm, no doubt Cris Shapan noticed that Kraft's actual canned spaghetti had some things in common with the super-starchy fake product.
Don't know who created this ad, although one suspects this is yet another Cris Shapan Special. It is, in fact, not far afield from other businesses Mickey launched over the years.
While wondering what the heck besides spuds were ingredients in a "potato shake," we note that Mickey Rooney's Star-B-Q and Weenie World, indeed, were actual ventures.
The good news: Madame Blogmeister, at long last, is home from the hospital and has already made a reference to the song It's A Hap Hap Happy Day (from the Fleischer Studio's Gulliver's Travels).
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Also good news: this blog and blogger, knock on wood, shall return in a few weeks.
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, obsessed with vintage print and TV advertisements from the mid-20th century, did a post in August 2017 about celebrities plugging alcoholic beverages, featuring everyone from Lucille Ball to Orson Welles to Dan Duryea. Makes me think of this Red Skelton routine. . .
So, before Pinterest makes searching online for ads either obsolete or expensive, let's kick off this post about comics selling alcoholic beverages with Ernie Kovacs. It comes as no surprise that Ernie Kovacs appeared in this campaign for Hueblein ready-made martinis, although it does surprise me that I could not find even one ad featuring Ernie's martini-lovin' Percy Dovetonsils character.
Hard to think of a better spokesperson for "cocktails in a bottle."
Can one imagine Ernie and Edie Adams performing Spike Jones' Cocktails For Two? Yes!
Far and away, the king of print advertisements featuring comedians plugging BOOOOOOOOOZE would be Smirnoff Vodka, owned by. . . G.F. Heublein & Brothers. None less than the King of Late Night, Johnny Carson of The Tonight Show, appeared with a St. Bernard to promote a Smirnoff + Fresca cocktail. . . to which we say, don't knock it unless you've tried it - and, PLEASE, don't skimp on the vodka.
A frequent guest on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson was comedian Buddy Hackett, who portrayed a fireman with a mission to save dull, boring, floundering parties with plenty of social lubricant Smirnoff vodka in this ad.
Wally Cox, star of Mr. Peepers and Underdog, as well as the comedian who waxed the novelty record There Is A Tavern In The Town, also liked his Smirnoff!
There was a successful campaign plugging the use of Smirnoff Vodka in a cocktail called The Moscow Mule. While the always glamorous Julie Newmar was in many of the ads for The Moscow Mule, quite a few of them featured comedy greats. None other than Woody Allen - see 10 Classic Celebrity Booze Endorsements for more - starred in several "get blasted as Sputnik at a Smirnoff Mule party" print advertisements.
Another celebrity generally not associated with heavy drinking who appeared in ads for alcoholic beverages was Groucho Marx - but, in demand for endorsements, did this one for Smirnoff.
Not to be outdone, Harpo also did Smirnoff ads.
Although Chico would definitely have needed the money and fit nicely in a Smirnoff print ad, he had passed away in 1961. Zeppo and Gummo of The Marx Brothers did not endorse Smirnoff, even if they drank the stuff.
It is rather difficult to believe that were not A LOT more print ads with movie stars and cinematic luminaries of the 1920's and 1930's plugging BOOOOOOOOOZE! W.C. Fields! John Barrymore! Errol Flynn! Joan Crawford! John Ford! Walt Disney and his crew of hard-partying animators at The Mouse Factory! Charley Chase!
Well, at least one ad featured silver screen icon Buster Keaton, who, by the time in his life that appeared in this ad was not guzzling fifths of Smirnoff Vodka daily. . . as he may well have been when he co-starred in What! No Beer? with the shy, retiring and low key Jimmy Durante.
George Burns, the great comedian (and All-Star straight man in Burns & Allen) was headlong into his successful second career as a solo act when he did this ad from Black Velvet Imported Canadian Whisky.
We close today's post with another guy who also headlined print ads for Canadian whiskey. While he's not somebody who would be regarded as a comedian per se, these ads, seen 40 years later, are definitely funny (as are his golden throats record albums). That would be the one, the only Telly Savalas, not only the star of Kojak and the macho action flick The Dirty Dozen, but the unfortunate victim of evil killer doll "Talky Tina" in a memorable, unsettling and creepy episode of The Twilight Zone. "Feel the Velvet, baby!"
Nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like Arthur Godfrey firing up a Chesterfield while simultaneously firing Julius DeRosa on-air!
Or, for that matter, receiving a case of Old Golds during this festive time of year!
Or surprising your sweetie under the tree with that well-known and potent aphrodisiac, Pall Mall Cigarettes!
And don't forget, wifie digs Viceroy Filter Tips! This semi-swinging, rhyming 1964 commercial is about as close as suburban white people ever get to doing something remotely resembling hip-hop: "not too strong, not too light, Viceroy's got. . . the taste that's right!"
At Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we have found that many of the cheesiest of cheesy retro print ads are not actually real. The above ad for celery is a very clever fake from Jack Pollock's 1994 Devil Chef comic book. The following looks like an actual print ad from the Soda Pop Corporation of America, but one wonders. . . Cola for babies? Are you kidding? Really?
A surefire way to earn emphatic, appalled and mortified thumbs-downs from many movie blog organizations is not just to veer off from the silver screen beat into music, comedy and other various n' sundry topics, but by forgetting all about movies and posting cheesy print ads instead.
The usual gang of idiots at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog thought those wildly inappropriate (even by 1950's standards) Griffin Microsheen print ads which promoted an unsexy product, shoe polish, via ample cleavage were fakes. They're not - these ads were real and very likely successfully sold gallons of the stuff to lecherous guys who inhabited The Heartbreak Hotel wearing shiny shoes.
An actor not exactly shy with starlets and fashion models who promoted Griffin Microsheen Shoe Polish and other products, Mickey Rooney tried all kinds of wacky business ideas. Did Mickey actually own a chain of spud-laden "Potato Fantasy" restaurants?
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog thought the Mickey Rooney's Potato Fantasy print ad was fake, a ruse and that the restaurant did not actually exist. . . Potato Fantasy? REALLY? No Tipping Allowed?? Don't know who created the above ad, which we thought was a parody, but it is, in fact, not far afield from other businesses Mickey launched over the years. While wondering what the heck besides spuds were ingredients in a "potato shake," we note that Mickey Rooney's Star-B-Q and Weenie World, indeed, were actual ventures.
But. . . according to the following article from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, there was a fire that destroyed a Mickey Rooney's Potato Fantasy restaurant! So, did at least briefly, a Mickey Rooney's Potato Fantasy restaurant exist (albeit without the success of Minnie Pearl's Chicken)? Read the following article; it is stranger than fiction, and since the Herald Examiner correspondent's name is Otto Pinkpig, it's extremely likely this reportage IS FICTION - and that there never was a Mickey Rooney's Potato Fantasy restaurant to begin with. That said, the question remains, were we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog fooled by this bogus story (and at least briefly by the Potato Fantasy ad)? Until we noted the name of the author, yes!
And, speaking of potatoes, the following 1950 style ad was actually a very clever hoax, which we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog fell for! Don't know who did the clever Photoshop work to create this Potato Fudge ad (one suspect would be graphic artist and king of fake retro ads Cris Shapan), but, alas, there was no such product as Kraft's Potato Fudge - and it's just as well.
Thus far, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has not found any cheesy print ads for any of Mickey Rooney's various restaurants . . . well, not yet.
