Passing thought:
One day as I was watching the Boston Red Sox on TV, up to bat came a center fielder called Coco Crisp. My five year old granddaughter Erin Maeve said, " Coco Crisp, what a funny name." I told her his mother didn't know what to call him when he was born, so happening to gaze at a box of cereal on the kitchen table she thought, " Why not?" And that's how he got his name. With one of her exuberantly beguiling laughs, lovely, little Erin quipped, "What if it was Fruit Loops?"
It's two a.m. in Los Angeles and I'm fast asleep in my hotel room when the phone jars me awake. Operator: "Mr. Al Hampel. I have a call from a Mr. Hoagy Carmichael." Hear that Scaz, Maish, Harry, Bull, Squirrel, Tommy, Bobby and all you othe guys on Eighth Avenue in Paterson? The great Hoagy is calling Al Hampel. He wants to know if he can change one word of the lyric in a voice over to introduce Log Cabin Country Kitchen Butter Syrup, a product to compete with Mrs. Butterworth. "Get that you guys. Hoagy Carmichael is asking Al Hampel if he can change one word of Hampel's lyric. I say,"Let me hear how it sounds Hoagy." So Hoagy Carmichael sings the new lyric on the phone to Al Hampel in his hotel room in Los Angeles. It wasn't Stardust but it was just as memorable to me.
I got the script for the next Jack Benny TV show about three weeks before taping in Los Angeles. All I had to do was tailor a Jell-O commercial around the theme of the show so that viewers would stay tuned. That final segment had to be such a seamless transition from the main story line that the viewer would not anticipate the commercial that was coming. They were called integrated commercials or cast commercials. "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Because General Foods owned the show, the agency was entitled to use Jack, Dennis Day, Don Wilson, Rochester, and Phil Harris to deliver Jell-O commercials woven into the show's fabric. Creating those commercials became my specialty at Y&R.
And that's how I came to find myself winging to L.A. to meet with Irving Fein, Jack's manager who had approval of the script. I walk into a small office on La Cienega and wait a few minutes for Irving Fein. My legs were aquiver like the consistency of Jell-O itself. I introduce myself and hand Mr. Fein the script. All the while I'm thinking, "If I have to fly back to N.Y. without aprroval from the Benny people, I can go back to writing trade ads. Fein looks it over for what seemed like the time it would take for the show to play out. Eventually he nods, as if in approval, but says, " I don't think so, but I'll show it to Jack. He goes into a back room and brings Jack Benny out to meet me. We shake hands and I'm thrilled to learn his handshake is as limpid as mine, only drier. "What do you think Jack. I'm not sure," says Fein.The great Jack Benny, a comedian I adored from radio days on, says with a smile, " I like it. I'll do it. Nice going kid." I admit to slipping a line from one of the old radio shows into the script. I described Jack's eyes as being Lake Louise blue.
I could have flown home without the plane.
From then on I became the integrated or cast commercial writer for such shows as Andy Griffith, Hogan's Heroes, I Love Lucy, Jack Benny, Roy Rogers, Bugs Bunny (Chuck Jones), Jean Arthur, Carol Channing, all for General Foods products: Jell-O Gelatin, Jell-O Pudding and Pie Filling, Dream Whip, Sanka, Post Cereals, Log Cabin, Tang. All cast commercials required my being on the set at the shoot. My home in L.A., sometimes for weeks on end was the fabulous Bel Air Hotel which spoiled me for every other hotel in the world.
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