Word: alka
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...days, many a viewer is tempted to leave his set during the first half of The Brady Bunch, fix a sandwich, pour a beer and then hurry back to watch these entertaining dramas in miniature. Actress Alice Playten, for example, has become nationally famous as the bride in the Alka-Seltzer ad who lies in bed breathlessly reliving the triumph of her first home-cooked meal-particularly a single, monumental dumpling. Behind her back, the uncomfortable husband surreptitiously gulps a fizzy glassful ("Is it beginning to rain, dear?" she asks). The playlet's success depends upon the interaction...
...that Jack has to say is, "Mamma mia, that's-a spicy meatball!" Trouble is, every take is fouled up: Jack blows his lines, forgets his Italian accent. At one point a fiery meatball scorches the roof of his mouth and all he can do is gasp. Enter Alka-Seltzer. Finally, after a perfect take, the prop oven door falls off, and the tired director sighs, "Cut. O.K. Let's break for lunch." It may not be Pirandello, but the effect does depend on taking the viewer across the TV "proscenium" into the studio...
...Mediterranean resignation on Jack's face is so perfect that it is hard to believe he can look any other way. Two weeks ago, he took an ad in the show-business trade journal, Variety, showing him grinning. The headline asks: WHO'S THE GUY IN THE ALKA-SELTZER COMMERCIAL? IT'S JACK SOMACK...
Self-Spoofing. Post-Jack ads for Alka-Seltzer have slipped-but the Volkswagen experience demonstrates that this is almost inevitable. The most enjoyable-and most effective-of the Volkswagen minidramas is the one about the 1949 auto show, where crowds ignored the lonely Volkswagen and clustered around the glamorous "cars of the future"-Studebaker, Hudson, De-Soto. The production pays such meticulous attention to period styles -baggy trousers, Andrews Sisters types swinging and harmonizing-that at first glance the viewer thinks he is seeing 21-year-old footage...
Unfortunately Doyle Dane Bernbach, the agency that created the VW and the Alka-Seltzer commercials, has overdone a good thing. Mrs. Poached Oysters has returned with a heart-shaped meat loaf, and one of the latest VW ads is a singularly unfunny parody of the old Mr. Wizard show. The program, featuring a science teacher and a questioning kid, died so long ago that few viewers will get the joke. Most of the successful minidramas are in the self-spoofing tradition pioneered by the old Bert and Harry spots for Piel's beer, which grew out of the routines...