Memo to Gregor Samsa:
Yo, Gregor -- here it is 100 years (the 21st century, even!) and you STILL haven't posted your disgusting puss on Instagram?! Get with the program, man! If archy the cockroach could handle a manual typewriter, you oughta be able to manage a selfie stick!
P.S. I myself once had an idea for a delicious breakfast treat, called Kafkakake. Only problem: No matter how much of it you ate, you could never finish it -- there was always some left.
First, a warning – a caveat lector, if you will:
I am about to describe something that I saw at least 45 years ago, so there’s a good chance – a 110 percent chance, I would say – that I won’t get all the details right.
Understood? Then here goes…..
We fade in on a typical living room – typical for the 1960s or early 1970s, that is.
Dad is in his easy chair, reading the paper.
Mom is on the couch, possibly knitting.
Just another quiet night at home.
Until the door opens and their teenage daughter walks in.
She is dressed for a date, but she is in tears.
Both parents, alarmed, go to her.
“What’s wrong, dear?”
The girl can barely get the words out.
“It’s Herbert … he says … he says … we need THIS!”
And she holds out the sponsor’s product – a deodorant! Or maybe it’s a deodorant soap. Whatever.
Mom bursts into tears, but Dad’s Irish is up as he looks out the window.
“Is he still out there? I’ll tell him a thing or two!” And he storms out, determined to settle Herbert’s hash.
Quick dissolve to shot of sponsor’s product, which the announcer quickly but smoothly describes in glowing terms.
Then back to the living room, where Mom and the girl, just barely able to hold themselves together, are looking at the door.
Dad walks in, defeated and on the verge of tears, and looks at Mom.
“You know, Edna,” he says, “the boy makes a lot of sense!”
Then he completely loses it while still managing to say, once again, “The boy makes a lot of sense!”
Of course by this time Mom and the daughter have lost it again, and the three of them embrace, tearfully resigned to their fate as social pariahs.
Then a quick shot of the product, a few quick closing words from the announcer, and we’re done.
This may be the funniest TV commercial I’ve ever seen, and I hope I’ve done it justice.
It manages to kid the product by exaggerating the trauma of body odor, and it does it quickly and efficiently – while still praising the product.
It gets the job done so efficiently that you only later stop to wonder why, after unceremoniously dumping his date, Herbert is still parked outside.
You could argue that he is checking his messages, but this was years before the Internet. Of course you also could argue that Herbert is a really brilliant kid (though falling a little short in the tact department) and that he has already invented his own Internet and email system, which of course leaves open the question of who would be sending him messages.
But as Alfred Hitchcock would say when someone questioned the logic of a plot point in one of his movies, “Who cares? You believed it as you were watching it, right? And that’s all that matters.” (OK, those weren’t his exact words, but you get my point – and his.)
I wish I could send you a link to this commercial, but it doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the Internet. I tried to find it on YouTube, but after several attempts to dig it out, I quit.
I freely admit that I might not have dug deeply enough. What we really need these days is an Internet equivalent of Lloyd Bridges.
(To my younger readers: Lloyd Bridges was the star of a show called “Sea Hunt,” in which he played a scuba diver named Mike Nelson – the guy on Mystery Science Theater was named for him – who every week would go searching for sunken treasure, sunken satellites, sunken corned beef sandwiches, whatever. And it seemed that every week, some bad guy would confront him underwater and try to cut off his air hose. Mr. Bridges, now deceased, was the father of Beau and Jeff Bridges. I’m sure that Beau and Jeff learned a lot about acting from watching Lloyd. I’ll bet they also, unlike Dad, figured out that they should never go underwater without a full supply of air and a finely whetted meat cleaver.)
Another point about this ad, which may not come as a surprise if you know a little about the history of advertising (I know a teensy-weensy bit):
You probably noticed that in describing the commercial, I never mentioned the name of the product.
This is because I don’t know the name of the product – or, as I said before, whether it was a deodorant or deodorant soap.
And this is a problem that some TV advertisers of that time ran into.
This was the era of funny commercials – ads that won a lot of awards. These were ads that the public liked and remembered.
So that if you asked Jane or John Q. Public if they’d seen that funny deodorant ad, they would probably say, “Oh, yes! Isn’t it a scream?”
But if you asked them what product it was pushing, they would go into full-blown Ralph Kramden “homina homina homina” mode.
This did not please sponsors, so funny commercials were out of favor for a while.
Luckily you can still see quite a few of the ones from this era on YouTube, including some of the Alka Seltzer ads that remain classics.
An actor named Jack Somack never, as far as I know, never won an Oscar, Tony or Grammy, but he was assured of immortality after this ad, which, 46 years later, still makes me laugh.
I know I told you last time that my next post would be about one of the funniest TV commercials I’ve ever seen, but while I was doing the research for that piece, I was sidetracked.
By a woman from my past.
How to explain her?
Maybe I should start with the Jessica Fletcher Syndrome – the idea that anyone who befriends Jessica Fletcher, or is befriended by her, will be wrongly accused of murder. Which means that it’s a very good idea to steer clear of Ms. Fletcher, lest you inevitably find yourself booked and printed in a capital case that, with your luck, would probably turn out to be the only one Jessica couldn’t crack.
The 1960s equivalent of Jessica Fletcher was a woman named Katy Winters.
Katy was neither a mystery novelist nor an amateur sleuth. And instead of a series with hour-long episodes, Katy was on for only a minute – sometimes only 30 seconds – during other people’s shows.
Still, Katy was a woman to avoid – even more so than Jessica. For while a friendship or even the merest acquaintanceship with Jessica might start you on the not-so-primrose path to death row, getting anywhere near Katy could lead to an infinitely worse disaster: being exposed on national television as someone who smells as if you just stepped ashore after a two-year tour of duty on a garbage scow.
Because, as you’ve probably figured out, Katy Winters peddled deodorant – Secret, to be exact.
All of Katy’s commercials had the same plot: Someone she knows is facing some sort of minor crisis that is stressful enough without the added fear of smelling like something the cat dragged in with one paw while holding its nose with the other.
The ad agency showed great creativity in devising variations of this plot: A couple is about to open a new restaurant; another couple is about to enter a costume contest as both ends of a horse; someone else (played by Maggie Peterson, who was Charlene Darling on “The Andy Griffith Show”) is about to take her road test.
Never fear: Katy always had some Secret handy to save the day. She probably loaded her pockets with the stuff -- both roll-on and aerosol – before she left the house each day. If the EPA had been around then, she would probably have been arrested as a one-woman ozone layer assassination squad.
A dip into that Sargasso Sea known as the Internet indicates that Katy was portrayed by Ann (or maybe Anne) Starr Roberts, who doesn’t seem to have any other credits. If anyone knows what happened to her – or if she herself is still around – please feel free to write in.
The Katy Winters ads ran for quite some time, and you knew she had become an Official Cultural Phenomenon when Johnny Carson began making jokes about her.
I was a kid when the ads ran in the 1960s, and I remembered her as being an annoying, middle-aged busybody.
But when you’re a 12-year-old, anyone above 20 is middle-aged if not out-and-out decrepit, and when I looked at a few of her ads on YouTube yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, far from being over the hill, Katy was relatively young – and more than relatively cute.
If I had been a few years older, and if Katy had ever given me a come-hither look (I mostly get stay-yonder looks), I suspect I would have come running – after first emptying my 401K or robbing a bank, or both, so as to have enough money to send her to a first-rate psychiatrist who could rid her of her perspiration complex.
Ah well. So much for what might have been. Next time I promise I will write about that other ad – cross my heart and hope not to offend.
One day, possibly in the late 1960s, I heard a catchy tune coming from my brother Michael’s bedroom.
My brother liked, among others, The Doors, the Rolling Stones and Joe Cocker.
But this tune wasn’t from any of them. It had a marchlike beat and arrangement (“Sweet cream ladies, forward march…”), like a faux Salvation Army anthem, and I liked it.
When I expressed interest in the song, Michael told me it was called “Sweet Cream Ladies” (surprise!) and was sung by the Box Tops.
He also told me that the song was about prostitutes.
Oh.
Um, OK.
Then again, if I’d listened more closely to the lyrics, maybe little old naïve me would have figured this out from lyrics like “Let them satisfy the ego of the male / Let them fabricate success to those who fail.”
So imagine my surprise when, some time later, while watching some prime-time network TV, I came upon a new commercial from a food company. The product was some kind of whipped cream – Cool Whip, Dream Whip, Dreamy Cool Whip, whatever – and as I recall (I have to rely on memory because you won’t find this ad on YouTube, and you’ll soon realize why), it featured a montage of smiling Stepfordian wives strutting from their kitchens to their dining rooms while carrying a bowl of the sponsor’s ambrosia.
The lyrics (so help me, Don Draper) began: “Cream pie ladies, forward march….” And yep, that same tune – same arrangement, even.
It was comforting to know that someone on Madison Avenue was at least as naïve as I was.
And I suspect that all the Box Tops had to buy new sneakers because when they ran to the bank in record time to cash their checks before the food company got wise, the friction from the pavement annihilated their Adidases.
I’m sure that someone did tip off the company -- after I saw the ad maybe one more time a week or two later, it disappeared forever.
I would love to have been a fly on the conference room wall during the next agency-client meeting.
Then again, perhaps there was no such meeting. Perhaps the president of the food company merely sneaked into the ad agency president’s home late one evening, walked into the agency chief’s bedroom, placed a $20 bill on the dresser and skulked out.
Surely that would have gotten the food company’s message across. And surely any shame and dread the agency president felt about becoming the laughingstock of the entire industry would have been at least partially offset by relief at the thought that there was now no need to go through the hassle of reserving a conference room.
And I also wonder whether the ad might have so impressed the denizens of the local “sporting house” that they figured that maybe they, too, should advertise, or at least set up some exploratory meetings with the agency.
If those meetings ever took place, I would love to see the expense sheets – you never know just how creative a creative director can be.
The other ad I referred to in the headline involved a brand of dishwashing liquid.
Actually it was one of a number of ads from the same campaign, each of them conveying the same message.
Each ad featured identical twins. And this being the 1960s, you won’t be surprised to learn that the twins were female, young and attractive, but in a homespun way – the type of young woman that Ricky and David Nelson would have been proud to take home to Harriet.
The point of each ad was that the twins – in this particular ad, let’s call them Jan and Jane – looked so much alike that you couldn’t tell them apart.
Unless – and it was a big, 72-point Unless – you looked at their hands.
Because Jan, who used the sponsor’s product, had a perfect pair of hands, each of them a thing of beauty and a joy forever, or at least for the next minute of air time.
But Jane? Tsk tsk tsk. Her hands were raw, rough, not good looking at all. I won’t go into the details – for all I know, you might be reading this during dinner – but let’s just say that Jane’s hands were supposedly in such bad shape that you were sure – you just knew – that the local health officials were only moments away from breaking down the door and placing a bell around her neck.
And of course I don’t have to tell you that Jane used – gasp – a competitor’s dishwashing liquid.
All of which prompts (NOT begs) a few questions:
Why would the same household have TWO brands of dishwashing liquid?
Or was Jane a masochist who wanted her hands to look bad? Was it her way of distancing herself from people? Was she so afraid of reaching out to people that she sabotaged herself to keep anyone else from hurting her?
The commercial never even began to probe these questions – you can do only so much in a minute, especially when you have so much soap to peddle.
But my main reason for mentioning the ad is the way it began:
A two-shot of Jan and Jane.
“Hi, I’m Jan.”
“And I’m Jane.”
Then, the two of them together:
“WE’RE OFTEN CONFUSED!”
Swear to God, that’s what they said. I was only maybe 15 years old – not exactly an idiot, but neither was I what Jimmy Durante would call “duh toast of the intellectuals” – but even I knew how ridiculous and unintentionally funny this phrasing was, as if 60 seconds of sexism weren’t bad enough.
Next time, to be fair, I’ll tell you about an old commercial that’s one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever seen but which, alas, is also apparently not on YouTube.
UPDATE (4/4/26): The cream pie commercial has been found! Turns out Jell-O was the advertiser. See link in Comments.
From the "Ask the Editor" section of the online version of the AP Stylebook:
"Which is it: to-do list, to do list or todo list? Using a hyphen would seem to confuse the meaning of 'something yet to be done' with 'a bustle, a stir, a fuss.'"
“An old enemy lures Emma to a deserted house for a deadly game of cards.”
That’s how the Internet Movie Database describes the setup for “The Joker,” my favorite episode of “The Avengers.”
And for our purposes, that’s pretty much all you need to know.
Except, maybe, that the enemy is deadly, crazy and, in an odd way, pathetic.
And very weird.
Emma Peel figures this out pretty quickly when, while alone in the house, and not having seen her host, she finds a picture of herself cut up. And someone is playing an old phonograph record of a German song that is sweet and haunting – think “Lili Marlene” – yet somehow threatening.
I admit that when I watch the episode these days on YouTube I mainly watch the last few minutes, which epitomize the show and the relationship between Emma Peel and John Steed. (And you might successfully argue that this relationship was the show.)
The villain has revealed himself, and he comes after Emma as an organ on the sound track frantically covers the action. Emma can usually take care of herself very well, thank you, but this time the bad guy gets the upper hand, and the hand is holding a knife, and he has every intention of doing to her what he’s done to her picture when….
From out of nowhere, that song starts playing again; someone – who? – has turned on the phonograph.
The bad guy gets up and then sees, coming toward him, a giant playing card that, as it approaches, is swaying in rhythm to the eerie song. I’m still not sure whether the giant card hits the villain or if he just faints, but it doesn’t matter – he is disposed of.
Emma, now armed, points her gun warily at the giant card.
Then the card falls to the floor and the gentleman who was behind the card looks down at the villain.
“Oh dear,” says the dapper gent in the bowler hat. “I hope I didn’t frighten him.”
“Steed!” Emma says, her voice and face showing her relief – and great affection.
If anyone who wasn’t around in the 1960s and has read the tributes to the late Patrick Macnee and “The Avengers” ever asks you what all the fuss was about, just show those last few minutes of “The Joker.”
It’s almost amazing that “The Avengers” caught on in the U.S. It’s everything that most American TV shows of that era weren’t – subtle, classy, made for viewers who, it was assumed, were smart enough to get the humor.
You might have noticed that I said it was “almost” amazing that it played well here. I think the main reason it did was the chemistry between John Steed and the character that he almost always called “Mrs. Peel.”
Or, if you want to put it another way (and I sure won’t argue with you), it was the chemistry between Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg.
I suppose there are still fans today who debate the all-important issue of “Did they or didn’t they?” I like to think they didn’t; I like to think that Steed was too much a gentleman to do more than playfully flirt with a woman who, as far as everyone knew, was still married, even if her husband was missing somewhere.
And in Rigg’s last episode, he did turn up, and that was the only time that Steed, saying his final goodbye to her, called her “Emma.” Whereupon he watched from an upstairs window as she got into a car that was occupied by her husband – whom we couldn’t really see, though he was wearing (you guessed it) a bowler hat.
Aside from the sterling work of Macnee and Rigg, I think two other key reasons for show’s success were the scripts by Brian Clemens (he seemed to write most of the episodes) and the music of Laurie Johnson. The two of them also collaborated on that eerie German song.
One thing that I have found truly amazing about “The Avengers” is how the show developed. I read many years ago that in the original version, not shown in the U.S. in the 1960s, Steed was a guy who helped a doctor avenge the death of his fiancée. After that was accomplished, the doc disappeared from the show (an extended house call, I assume) and Steed, who in those days dressed more casually, went on to fight crime with a series of partners before settling on Cathy Gale, played by Honor Blackman of “Goldfinger” fame.
I always figured these episodes would be great to see. I mean, John Steed and James Bond’s Pussy Galore? How could they miss?
It turns out that they could and they did – by several country kilometres.
Because some years ago, A&E announced it would be running the original Avengers episodes, and I eagerly awaited them.
Boy, was I disappointed.
I don’t mean that the show was awful -- it’s just that, well, it wasn’t “The Avengers.” It was typical hardboiled stuff that wasn’t helped by being shot on videotape, which meant that, given the technology of the times, you wound up with a lot more indoor scenes compared with the later, more expansive version. I couldn’t fault Macnee and Blackman, but I couldn’t get excited about their characters, either.
I don’t know what led the producers to totally make over the show, but they somehow took a run-of-the-mill thriller and turned it into something that’s at least pretty near a classic.
I suspect that most of the credit goes to Brian Clemens, who had written episodes of the original version. Maybe he saw the show’s special potential, and Macnee and Rigg were only too happy (or just needed money enough) to go along with it.
By all accounts, Macnee was as classy as his most famous character.
And I suspect he was the main reason that I was allowed to watch “The Avengers.”
Because I don’t think my mother liked Emma Peel very much. But I do think she had a little crush on Steed.
And though I’m saddened to hear about Macnee, I’m glad that for at least a few days, any young people who do a Google search for “The Avengers” might learn that marvels don’t always start with Marvel.
The death of Dick Van Patten reminded me of an episode of “To Tell the Truth” that I saw in the early 1980s.
This was a later episode of what aficionados call “TTTT” – years after Bud Collyer and Garry Moore hosted the show. The host for this episode was a guy named Robin Ward, whom I had never heard of and don’t think I’ve seen since.
This episode included a segment featuring Tom Braden, the journalist who wrote the book on which “Eight Is Enough” was based and whom Van Patten played on TV, though the name was changed to Tom Bradford.
Braden later became the co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire,” where he sparred with Patrick Buchanan every night.
I wonder whether Braden would have been offered the job if he hadn’t been famous for “Eight Is Enough.” I say this because although I’m sure he was a capable journalist, he had all the TV charisma of a baked potato that had been left in the rain for two days. He always seemed tired and sometimes dyspeptic, like a guy who gets up in the middle of the night and wishes he hadn’t had that fourth burrito.
But Braden wasn’t the only TV host of that era who always seemed tired. Around the time that Braden was glumly holding forth on “Crossfire,” Charlie Rose was burning the 2 a.m. oil as host of “CBS News Nightwatch,” which I often watched after getting home from my late shift at the newspaper.
Rose had good guests and was an excellent interviewer. But his eyes always seemed droopy, to the point where I was sure that he wasn’t the real host of “Nightwatch” – the real host, I figured, was some guy who never showed up for work because he was sozzled or otherwise indisposed, and every night a production assistant with a key to Rose’s home would rush into Rose’s bedroom and jostle him: “Charlie1 You gotta do the show! The dirty so-and-so stiffed us again!”
And every night, after he signed off the show and the floor manager gave him the “all clear,” Charlie would collapse on the floor, and when it came time to do CBS’ morning show, folks such as Bill Kurtis, Diane Sawyer and Charles Osgood would considerately tiptoe around him until he finally woke up and quietly went home.
I can’t recall whether Tom Braden seemed sleepy on “To Tell the Truth” because the main thing I remember about that segment was one of the impostors – No. 3, to be exact.
No. 3 looked awfully familiar. I was sure I recognized him. But no, it can’t be, I told myself, but the resemblance is way too uncanny….
Finally the real Tom Braden, asked to “please stand up,” did so, and it was time to meet the fakers.
And it turned out that No. 3, one of the two guys pretending to be the father of eight kids, was indeed the guy I thought he was.
He was a former president of my alma mater.
And a Jesuit priest.
