Coming soon to a brain cell near you:
Mar. 21st, 2011 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblog"I'm sure you recognise this LOVVVVE-LY melody as 'Stranger in Paradise.' But did you know...."
That burned-in brain bit from a longago record commercial just came back to me, from God knows where, moments ago. It led, sadly, not to a Youtubable copy of it-
- but, at least, to this 2008 blog entry about the once-omnipresent commercial about it:
For anyone watching American television in the 1970s and 1980s, if they heard that phrase one time, they heard it a thousand times. There was no escaping this ad: a distinguished looking English gentleman, talking about how many popular melodies originated with “the great mawhstuhs” and how, through buying the LP collections 120 Music Masterpieces and 30 Piano Masterpieces, one could readily and cheaply obtain them all. We are informed that tunes such as “Full Moon and Empty Arms” originated with Rachmaninoff and “Tonight We Love” with Tchaikovsky. No matter that these pop adaptations of classics appeared on the pop charts of the 1930s and 1940s and were already in the 1970s well on their way to being forgotten; audiences in 2008 don’t even recognize these tunes by their popular aliases- they are more likely to know the originals from which they come.
True, dat. Yet the blogger from 2008 manages to cut even closer to my currently-besotted bone:
In one of the early seasons of Saturday Night Live, Dan Aykroyd performed a parody of this commercial, which opened with something like, “Hello, I am actor such-and-so, and I’ve been dead for six years. But this deal is so good, I had to come back and tell you about it.”
Erm, NOT true, dat. That bit was from the pre-SNL comedy album by Robert Klein which I just quoted here barely a week ago:)
The rest of the blogger's analysis, though, is spot-on:
Actually, Aykroyd’s parody was a bit premature; actor -not guitarist, and not composer - John Williams was still alive and kicking when Aykroyd’s skit was aired. However, Williams would die at age 80 in La Jolla, California, in June 1983, and as prognosticated, the commercial continued to run and run on television for a long time until the development of compact discs finally put 120 Music Masterpieces out of business; it was one of the longest running TV commercials in history. Williams was best known for his roles in supporting parts in Alfred Hitchcock films such as Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief and was a frequent flyer on series television. He even filled in once for Sebastian Cabot, portraying Mr. French on Family Affair.
This, therefore, was not the John Williams of Star Wars fame (or his earlier "Johnny Williams" incarnation who did the Lost in Space and Time Tunnel themes for Irwin Allen in the 1960s), nor even the John Williams who shared the Secret Policeman's Ball stage with Pete Townshend in 1979, but the one who played Chief Inspector Hubbard in Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder in 1953 and continued acting well into the careers of the other much younger Johns Williamses.
I'm still on for a pancake breakfast next Sunday, but it's clearly gonna be served up with a side order of three degrees of Kevin Bacon;)
That burned-in brain bit from a longago record commercial just came back to me, from God knows where, moments ago. It led, sadly, not to a Youtubable copy of it-
- but, at least, to this 2008 blog entry about the once-omnipresent commercial about it:
For anyone watching American television in the 1970s and 1980s, if they heard that phrase one time, they heard it a thousand times. There was no escaping this ad: a distinguished looking English gentleman, talking about how many popular melodies originated with “the great mawhstuhs” and how, through buying the LP collections 120 Music Masterpieces and 30 Piano Masterpieces, one could readily and cheaply obtain them all. We are informed that tunes such as “Full Moon and Empty Arms” originated with Rachmaninoff and “Tonight We Love” with Tchaikovsky. No matter that these pop adaptations of classics appeared on the pop charts of the 1930s and 1940s and were already in the 1970s well on their way to being forgotten; audiences in 2008 don’t even recognize these tunes by their popular aliases- they are more likely to know the originals from which they come.
True, dat. Yet the blogger from 2008 manages to cut even closer to my currently-besotted bone:
In one of the early seasons of Saturday Night Live, Dan Aykroyd performed a parody of this commercial, which opened with something like, “Hello, I am actor such-and-so, and I’ve been dead for six years. But this deal is so good, I had to come back and tell you about it.”
Erm, NOT true, dat. That bit was from the pre-SNL comedy album by Robert Klein which I just quoted here barely a week ago:)
The rest of the blogger's analysis, though, is spot-on:
Actually, Aykroyd’s parody was a bit premature; actor -not guitarist, and not composer - John Williams was still alive and kicking when Aykroyd’s skit was aired. However, Williams would die at age 80 in La Jolla, California, in June 1983, and as prognosticated, the commercial continued to run and run on television for a long time until the development of compact discs finally put 120 Music Masterpieces out of business; it was one of the longest running TV commercials in history. Williams was best known for his roles in supporting parts in Alfred Hitchcock films such as Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief and was a frequent flyer on series television. He even filled in once for Sebastian Cabot, portraying Mr. French on Family Affair.
This, therefore, was not the John Williams of Star Wars fame (or his earlier "Johnny Williams" incarnation who did the Lost in Space and Time Tunnel themes for Irwin Allen in the 1960s), nor even the John Williams who shared the Secret Policeman's Ball stage with Pete Townshend in 1979, but the one who played Chief Inspector Hubbard in Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder in 1953 and continued acting well into the careers of the other much younger Johns Williamses.
I'm still on for a pancake breakfast next Sunday, but it's clearly gonna be served up with a side order of three degrees of Kevin Bacon;)