This Taster's Choice ad is also at Saturday Morning Archives due to its star.
That would be the inestimable Paul Frees, who makes a rare appearance in front of the camera, playing a British detective in a sendup of movie whodunits. The voice was used for cartoon characters such as Inspector Fenwick (Dudley Do-Right) and the Chief, Secret Squirrel's boss.
Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteIt was back in 2020 (over at the Saturday Morning blog) that a Certain Commenter happened to mention this particular commercial, wondering why he hadn't seen it in a while.
Check your archives; that was indeed little old me (I was a decade off on the date of origin, but still ...).
This spot would be roughly coincident with Paul Frees And The Poster People, the LP that Mr. Frees released that showed his lovely face to all of us for what was one of the few times (he'd all but withdrawn from on-camera work by this point in his career).
Over at Saturday Morning, you'll find a mention of the Frees biography, Welcome, Foolish Mortals, which is in its second edition from BearManor Media, and is worth the time and effort to get.
Anyway, the spot has been recovered (maybe some day it might even be Digitally Restored), so there's that.
Meantime, BOLO for Paul Frees's many on-camera roles from early in his career (check IMDb for a very partial list).
I have a small number of his face work (i.e. a rare dual role on The Millionaire) over at the Archives, and I posted this ad there, too. The Taster's Choice ad was posted by Bionic Disco at YouTube, and he only posted it yesterday.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the Poster People album, I posted a track from that a ways back, as Paul impersonated WC Fields in covering the Randy Newman-penned 3 Dog Night hit, "Mama Told Me Not to Come", one of at least two tracks where he did the Fields mimic. Makes me think he went back to that when Frito-Lay created WC Fritos to replace the Frito Bandito.
His last Saturday morning jobs were as an announcer/narrator for William D'Angelo in 1974 on "Run Joe Run", and the next year as an announcer only on "Westwind'.