I just couldn't let this pass, even though we've already posted one classic commercial.
Chevrolet has long used celebrity endorsers for their line of cars & trucks. In this spot from 1965, though it could be 1964, as the next year's models usually came out in the fall of the previous model year, Bewitched's Elizabeth Montgomery & Agnes Moorehead join the cast of Bonanza (Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker, & Michael Landon) to introduce the 1965 line.
The spot also features Robert Vaughn (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), so look close.
Greene would later do some voice-overs for Chevrolet, and Chevy did, in fact, sponsor both shows.
Chevrolet became Bonanza's principal sponsor when NBC moved the show to Sunday nights in 1961.
ReplyDeleteActually, Chevrolet owned that particular hour on NBC - Sunday night at 9pm, 8 Central time (Dinah Shore had been the previous occupant for a number of years).
It was (I think) 1962 when Chevy decided to put on a splashy extra-length ad spot for their new models.
That evening's Bonanza ran without commercial interruption; at the end of the hour, they had the "Ponderosa Party", to intro the new cars.
As part of the hype, Chevy brought in the stars of their other fully-sponsored network series; that season, they were Martin Milner and George Maharis from CBS's Route 66, and Fred MacMurray and the boys from My Three Sons, then on ABC.
Bonanza got the placement for the simplest reason: NBC had color, and the other networks didn't.
This was at the tail-end of the time when sponsors still had some control over network programming in prime time; as I mentioned above, Chevrolet had controlled that Sunday hour on the NBC network, going back to radio days (Kraft Foods had a similar hold on Wednesday nights at 9/8 Central, for as long a period).
The Chevy/Bonanza spot was successful enough that General Motors brought it back for several seasons thereafter; I think you've got the final one here.
As far as I know, Mike, this was the only one of these "Ponderosa Party" spots available on YouTube.
ReplyDeleteKraft on Wednesdays meant, of course, the Kraft Music Hall, which was packaged by Perry Como's production company, Roncom Productions, IIRC. Roncom also packaged Kraft Suspense Theatre & Run For Your Life, both of which were long gone by the time Kraft & Como shut the Music Hall.