MANDOM harvest

“The ultimate aim of commercial television is to convince the viewer that he smells bad.” ~ Solomon Short. 

I realise this has been around for awhile but in case anybody missed it… a beautiful beautiful deodorant ad with Charles Bronson and Percy Helton.

Helton was a popular and useful character actor — read his IMDb profile carefully and you’ll notice that he was so valuable to Hollywood that he continued to appear in movies up until seven years after his death. They must’ve really loved the guy to put up with the stench of decay. Even in his live performances you get a slight whiff of it.

The role of the corrupt coroner in KISS ME DEADLY is probably P.H.’s most memorable role, but he was a great barman in CRISS CROSS and racked up an impressive array of sleazeballs and losers in his long career (starting in 1915!)

Other things to relish in this ad include the vision of Chuck, looking like a Droopy hewn from granite, as a dazzling urban sophisticate, and his eagerness, perhaps contradicting the former quality, to spray one heck of a lot of deodorant on his BACK. Also, the connection forcibly drawn by sophisticated montage techniques between the act of neutralising your sweaty stench, and the act of murdering your fellow man with a handgun. I’d never noticed it before, but YES, they are similar!

Now on display at the Bronsonian Institute.