Sunday, January 24, 2010

CLASSIC ZONK: MILEAGE MAY VARY

When my co-worker Maurizio (TV favorite: 'EastEnders') sent me this video, I watched it on a computer that had no speakers. I was spazzing out in telegasmic glory as I saw the ghosts of the Cartwrights use their serlinguistic skills to sell cars. Other serlinguists - those who can break the fourth wall and talk directly to the people of the real world - were the Witches of Westport and 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' And because Endora used her magic to summon Hoss Cartwright into the present, he was alive while his pa and his two brothers were the spirits of the dead.

And then I got home and saw it with the sound restored......



I don't know what to make of it now. Whatever TV dimension it lands in will have its hands full. Most of the people on screen are identified by their names as actors (including a quick cameo by Dick York), but there's still the fact that magic is used to summon Dan Blocker.

Kind of creepy the way Agnes Moorehead fawns over Blocker.....

I figure that this was an ad that ran near the beginning of the 1965 Fall TV season, at least on ABC and NBC. (No CBS stars were used for the ad.) The whole reason we have Fall TV premieres was because of the tie-in to the unveiling of the new line of automobiles each year. But if the Toobits Awards existed back then, this would have been the clear winner of the Biggest Zonk of 1965!

BCnU!

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