Word: cagney
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Among the 100 or so actors wandering about a ritzy night spot in the latest TV commercial for Diet Coke are three with a very unusual item on their resumes: they're dead. Their faces are immediately recognizable. But just how Humphrey Bogart, Louis Armstrong and James Cagney were resurrected to shill for a soft drink with living songman Elton John is the story of "Nightclub" -- 60 seconds of inspired flackery that since its first airing two days before Thanksgiving, has become one of the most talked-about TV commercials of the year...
...staff sat through more than 100 American films, looking for a few seconds of classic footage that could blend into the new Elton John material. The script for "Nightclub" was fashioned around the final choices: Bogie in All Through the Night (1942), Satchmo in High Society (1956) and Cagney in snippets from Public Enemy (1931) and The Roaring Twenties (1939). Director Steve Horn shot the Elton John nightclub footage with the same lenses used during the classic film period, but with live stand-ins for Cagney and company. The footage was taken to R. Greenberg Associates, who edited Woody Allen...
...work was painstaking. Cagney was shorter than the modern blond actress with whom he is seen ordering a Diet Coke. So the editors blew up the image until his height matched that of his co-star. The Golden Age actors were carefully colorized frame by frame to match the hues of the fresh footage. In the stunning final product, Bogart wanders among the nightclub clientele, exchanging greetings with a patron probably not even born when Bogie died in 1957. Louis Armstrong blows away on his trumpet, sharing a knowing glance with Elton John...
...Three with James Cagney and Arlene Francis...
Each came to a tragic end. John spent his last years caricaturing himself in films. Lionel was ignored by the studio he helped build. In 1954, when he was terminally ill, his unused dressing room came to the attention of Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer. "There was a shortage: James Cagney needed quarters for his current film. Consent to dismantle Lionel's suite, store his belongings and reassign the bungalow was granted in a memo of November 15." Lionel died that evening. Peters notes dryly, "MGM couldn't even wait for its most durable star to stop breathing." In old age Ethel...