Dean's World

Commercials fascinate me as an art form. Of course the vast majority of commercials are trash, but a well-made one is as much a work of art as any short film. Commercials are also a part of our culture and of intense interest to historians, for they often tell us things that old movies and movies and TV shows alone do not.

Cigarette advertisements are particularly fascinating to me; today, anyone under the age of 35 has simply never seen a TV commercial for cigarettes unless through some historical source. Indeed, cigarette ads used to be embedded in some TV shows, like I Love Lucy and The Flintstones, but were removed in syndication. So unless you seek a historical source you'll simply never see such commercials.

You may be tempted to fulminate "good!" but that's not the point: history needs to be understood for what it was, not what it should have been. Simply erasing these things from the collective memory doesn't make sense.

Sometimes old commercials are illuminating for other reasons. For example, see this long string of public domain commercials from the Prelinger Archive:

I notice a few things about that Budweiser commercial at the beginning, for example. First, the obvious fact that today Budweiser can labels look almost exactly the same. Such an old brand of beer has not found the need to redefine its label in generations. On the other hand, look closely: back then--and I'm guessing this ad to be about 50 years old--Bud was marketed as a somewhat sophisticated, semi up-scale brand. Cool jazz, a sophisticated look, and a breezy "Where there's life, there's Bud" slogan. Picnic with your girlfriend, listening to music on the beach with your cool transistor radio or maybe your convertible car's radio. This is quite different imagery from how Bud is marketed now, which is much more blue collar, working class, male bonding and sports-oriented.

On an anachronistic level, look closely: when is the last time you used a can opener to open a can of beer? I've read about such things, but I'm 40 years old and I've never seen a can of beer that requires you to find a can opener, and I kinda feel bad for the Joe who got home after a hard week on a Friday night and then lost his can opener and couldn't relax in front of the tube with his beer.

I'll bet Dean's World readers in their 60s and above remember cans of beer that required an opener, but I'll bet no one my age or younger has ever bought a beer like that.

All that out of one 30 second commercial. Well hey that's what a sharp eye and an interest in history can do for you when you watch old commercials.

I've also never seen an ad for Ballentine Ale. I've drank it once or twice but it's an obscure brand. But it used to be one of the top breweries in the United States.

Then, take that talk show host talking up Lipton soup near the end. I have no idea who that guy is but I can tell just watching it that he was a regular talk show host who had a segment where he was expected to talk about his sponsor. You almost never see this sort of thing on television anymore but it used to be common. Note how he even jokes that the sponsors like it if he eats the soup on the air, so he does. The segment ends there, but you can tell it was only one small part of a longer show that almost certainly had nothing to do with soup or selling products.

One of my pet theories is that in the coming years we are going to see a return to that sort of in-show advertising with a vengeance. Hollywood is slow to adapt to new technologies, but with the advent of file sharing and free video services, it only makes sense: why not create content that you allow to be distributed freely online, with the advertising embedded straight into the show? This sounds bizarre to modern eyes but 50 or more years ago this sort of thing was just normal. I'd even guess it was probably the most common form of television and radio advertising.

Anyway, all these old commercials, plus a lot more public domain materials of a similar nature, are available from the Prelinger archives, about which you can learn more right here.

I hate the word "nostalgia," and I rarely use it. The reason I don't like nostalgia is that it seems to carry with it an unhealthy impulse to romanticize the past. People waxing nostalgic sit around talking about "the good old days" as if they were infinitely better somehow than today. Usually, that's nonsense. In the past some things were better, some things were worse, and some were about the same.

I know I startle some of my older readers sometimes, because they see me write about modern rock and pop music, and modern movies and television shows, and when I do I generally write appreciatively of those things. I also don't pan things very often because frankly, if I don't like them, I have no urge to write about them. But modern things I like, I write about with enthusiasm.

But then all of a sudden I'll write about Artie Shaw, or Benny Goodman, or Sarah Vaughan, or beer that required a can opener to drink. Well I have no urge to go back to cans that require a can opener, but I do love much that's found in old music, old movies, and old books. Furthermore, I like what I write about NOT because it's old, but because it's GOOD, and sometimes informative in surprising ways.

For example, I've listened to a good bit of what they nowadays call "old-time radio," which basically means radio shows from the days before television. Now as it happens, most old-time radio was crap. Sorry, but it was. I you're old enough to remember the heyday of radio and you try to tell me that most of what was on the radio in those days was fabulous I probably won't believe you. I generally subscribe to what is best known as Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is crud."

Sure most old-time radio and television and movies and books were crap. Which is exactly the truth about radio and television and movies and books today. Crud, 90% of it.

The advantage you get with the older stuff is, usually (not always but usually), the stuff that survives years, decades, generations later is much less likely to be crud. It's no guarantee of course, but if 50 years after a song first becomes popular it is still well known and widely recognizable, there's a very good chance it was not crud at the time and still is not crud. Sometimes it may seem a little dated or a product of its time, but you can say that about Shakespeare or Bach too.

See for example this 1941 Glenn Miller Orchestra video featuring the great Dorothy Dandridge:

I do not love this song or this video because it's old. I don't care that it's old. I don't care that it's in black & white. I love it because (A) that's a great song, and (B) those are some great performances.

Nor do I have any "nostalgia" for the period. I have no idea of wanting to get into a time machine and live in 1940s America. I just appreciate it for what it is: a great performance that is partly a creature of its time and place but also a just plain great performance.

I might also note that I think it is cool to learn that Glenn Miller was working with great black performers in the 1940s. Not because they were black either, but because "wow, great black performers were not as invisible as we have often been led to believe about that era... good to see!"

I thought similar things when I recently uncovered this little internet treasure: a free Jack Benny radio program from 1939. Now this thing was recorded on live radio in 1939. Nearly 30 years before I was born, I only just heard this for the first time yesterday. Jack Benny was already a fading star when I was born in 1966. He died before I was a teenager. But dude, this guy was funny.

I mean, funn-neee!!!

You don't even have to know much about the time and place it was recorded, although it helps if you know that the great Jack Benny developed a well-known stage personality: he was supposedly very self-centered, self-absorbed, and extremely stingy with his money. Plus he had a wife named Mary, a butler/personal assistant named Rochester, and a small cast of supporting players who he supposedly paid almost no salary. In real life everyone who worked with him said that was the opposite of his real personality, which was generous, kind, and not stingy at all. But those were the running gags of his stage persona: egotistical, selfish, and extremely stingy with money. He supposedly loved money more than people.

I listen to that old live radio show and I laugh out loud at most of it. Sure some of it's dated but most of it is timeless and much of it is just hysterical. And all of it performed live, decades before there was any "Saturday Night Live."

Give it a listen and tell me if you agree. The West Coast version is a little funnier than the East Coast version, in case you don't want to listen to both.

Oh, and I suppose it helps to know that Jell-O was Jack Benny's main sponsor at the time. Yes, the same Jell-O you can buy in supermarkets now. I notice that the Jell-O theme song has not changed since then, which is also cool.

I have no "nostalgia kick" for any of this. I just think it's great entertainment.