Movies 'Til Dawn BLOG

SKIN FLICKS

Let’s wrap up this increasingly tiresome week of 1970s commercial jingles with a body-oriented two-fer. Above I’ve posted a musical ad for Nivia skin cream. This ad will count as our Friday dance video–I’ve determined that the best way to wash away the weeks miserable news is with a dance

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JINGLE IN THE BOYS ROOM

Continuing our week-long survey of 1970s commercial jingles, we find ourselves confronted with one of my least favorite examples of the genre–the ‘I am stuck on Band-Aids (Cause Band-aids stuck on me’) ad. I wouldn’t even dignify this low-grade (but apparently successful) little ditty except for the fact that the

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DOES ANYONE STILL DRINK DR. PEPPER?

Next on our list (or YouTube’s list really) of catchy, never-to-be-forgotten-if-you-watched-a-lot-of-TV-in-the-70s jingles is the classic ‘Be A Pepper, Drink Dr,. Pepper’ production number. The lead in this niftily staged ad is David Naughton, later to star in ‘An American Werewolf In London’ and a slew of TV shows many of

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MILK & DRUMS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fAqa1ACGdA Yesterday I posted the much-beloved ‘Haw Haw’ song used in a Levi Jeans commercial from the mid-1970s. Naturally this provoked YouTube to drop a dumpster full of 70s TV commercials into my queue. I’m glad they did. First up was the above classic which I couldn’t wait to share

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THE HAW-HAW SONG

Why did I wake up this morning with the song from the Levi Jeans commercial (circa mid 1970s) playing in my head? And why did I find I could remember every word of the lyric? And why am I not surprised to see in the comments section that those who

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GRAPE NUTS ON MY MIND

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0N290zPrbAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbNJHQoFxls Here’s how weirdly tuned-in to each other YouTube and I are. Yesterday I posted a short musical variety film featuring a young Jack Benny as the emcee. It got me to thinking about how different Benny’sl later persona was from the brash, unfunny young man in the film. That

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WHEN CIGARETTES WERE A DELICACY

Watching the above reel of TV cigarette commercials from the early 1960s, one might get the impression that the product being peddled wasn’t really a cigarette, but more of a combination of perfume, cold tossed mediterranean salad, herb-infused lemonade and a good massage. Words like ‘flavorful’ and ‘relaxing’ and ‘rich’

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COMPUTERS OF 1982

For the past couple of years I’ve been comparing where we currently are with Artificial Intelligence with where we were in 1994-1995 with the internet; alternately impressed and scared, dismissive and fascinated, eager to figure out how to use it to give us some kind of advantage we never thought

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CARTOON ADVERTS

Here are a handful of late 1950s/early 1960s animated TV commercials for such diverse products as pretzels, underarm deodorant, children’s cereal, Lucky Strike cigarettes and Beechnut chewing gum. The last mentioned features a nifty jazz score and the others are all witty and interestingly drawn. We’re beyond the lush and

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SMOKE ‘EM, FLY ‘EM

Smoking on airplanes was once okay. Hell, I participated in that challenging sport for quite a few years. But advertising smoking on planes is another thing entirely. Above is a late 1950s commercial for Winston cigarettes. Apparently this particular airline handed out mini-packs for you as gift favors–kind of like

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