A couple of days ago I posted a reel of 1970s TV commercials. My sense was that the 70s saw an upturn in the humor and style of commercials as opposed to the style of the 50s ads which were largely straight and often painfully earnest and the 60s which
What do Ann Miller, Roy Scheider and Bing Crosby all have in common? The answer: commercials in the 70s! While Ann and Bing were very much known and recognizable, Scheider appears to have been just an everyday lucky actor who got a much sought-after gig doing a Folger’s Coffee commercial–I
No, he doesn’t dance in this clip but George Raft at 85 is as suave, cool and charismatic as he was fifty years earlier. This is a very nice interview segment from a Mike Douglas show in 1980–alas Raft died the same year (he mentions to Mike that he has
The late great Nick Tosches (author of ‘Dino’, ‘The Devil and Sonny Liston’, ‘Cut Numbers’ and much more) was a friend of mine way back at the end of the last century and over lunch would occasionally describe ideas for books he knew he’d never get around to writing. One
For my money, there is no better time machine than television commercials and station ID’s. Above is a terrific collection of 1970 KNBC (Los Angeles) ads that evoke the era perfectly and offer some interesting perspectives on issues of the day. A young Tom Brokaw, then a local newscaster, manages
On January 1, 1971, the last cigarette commercials were aired. To celebrate the occasion (or perhaps ‘squeeze the life out of the opportunity’ is more accurate) Phillip Morris, that noble institution, bought an hour of airtime to jam as many cigarette ads into as possible. Above is a mash-up of
On November 9, 1965, shortly after 5PM, New York City began experiencing the ominous signs of an impending blackout due to a gradual loss of available electricity. The cause of the failure was the setting of a protective relay on one of the transmission lines near Niagara Falls. The safety
Nothing transports me back in time to my childhood quite as much as watching old local TV commercials and station I.D.’s. This is clearly the result of spending way too much time staring at the tube as a kid but what the hell–it was back in the days before children
What better way to kiss the week off then with a few vintage K-TEL commercials? (Actually there are many better ways but I can’t think of them at the moment). Below, behold ads for the idiotic ‘Super Slider Sno-skates’, the moronic ‘Mood Shirt’ and the actually very cool ‘Super Bad’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBp1wLMCmeohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYspFe9u5RU Apropos of yesterday’s post on the joys of Muzak, above are two TV spots for the Los Angeles FM Muzak station KJOI. My memory is that there were no announcers on the station–it was a solid hour of Muzak-Bed with a canned announcement at the end of the hour