A mere five years before portraying Franklin D. Roosevelt in the network mini-series ‘Eleanor and Franklin’, Edward Hermann portrayed “one of the country’s leading bachelors” in the very amusing Panasonic Stereo commercial posted above. We are deep in the early 70s groove here and Hermann’s portrait of the era’s swinging guy in his swinging pad is quite witty–I can imagine the ad agency types getting a kick out of his audition and hiring him on the spot. Hermann was apparently quite busy on the commercials circuit at that time. Below, witness him eating a lot of McDonald’s french fries in an ad for…er…McDonalds. He isn’t given as much to work with here as he is in the Panasonic ad, to say nothing of how much he had to work with when he scored the FDR gig a few years later. He portrayed Roosevelt again in John Huston’s 1981 version of ‘Annie’ and most younger types know him from ‘The Gilmore Girls’. Interesting fact; he fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a woman who launched a paternity suit against him, before dropping the suit and instead marrying him. Interesting way to start a marriage. Yet they remained together for many years…