Playhouse Pictures Presents:

Cartoon commercials sold all kinds of things. They even sold commercials themselves.

No doubt you’ve been on sites that have fuzzy or murky copies of well-designed and amusing animated TV ads from the 1950s. While Disney and Walter Lantz, at least for a time, produced cartoon commercials, there were a number of small studios that specialised in the same thing. They employed artists who had worked on theatrical cartoons, and about the only place they got credit was in the trade press.

Playhouse Pictures was one of them. In 1960, the company took home three of the four prizes for animated TV commercials at the International Advertising Film Festival in Venice. First prize for spots 15 to 45 second went to a Ford commercial directed by Chris Jenkyns and Sterling Sturtevant; both had been at UPA. Animation over 45 seconds went to an Olin Mathieson Chemical spot directed by Bill Melendez and co-produced by Saul Bass. I shouldn’t have to tell you who they are. And the first prize for series animation over 15 seconds went to a campaign for Kaiser Aluminum, directed by Melendez, Jenkyns, Stan Freberg and A. Barzman, with Freberg co-producing.

Ford was one of Playhouse’s big clients. The studio developed the Ford Dog, and also animated the Peanuts characters pushing the latest model Fairlanes. This was Melendez’ first crack at working with Charles Schulz’s kids a number of years before A Charlie Brown Christmas. Here’s a story from Broadcasting magazine of September 19, 1960 about a new Ford ad campaign. Again, the names mentioned in the article should be familiar. It’s a shame the frame grabs are murky, but you get an idea of the design the studio was going for. Were the voices Freberg and June Foray? Unless the spot surfaces, we’ll never know, but I can hear them in my mind.

A maximum of action, a minimum of words. That just about sums up the new animated commercials for the new Fords which Playhouse Pictures of Hollywood made on order from J. Walter Thompson Co., New York.
One 20-second spot for the 1961 Ford opens with a herald holding a standard marching across the screen to regal music. Behind him come two pages and behind them a knight, whose armor squeeks as he walks. He approaches the queen, seated on her throne and bows as she speaks:
"Would you like to go up to 30,000 miles without a chassis lubrication?"
She taps him with her sceptor, his armor drops and turns into a 1961 Ford. She gets in beside him and they drive merrily off as she continues:
"Then get a '61 Ford. Beautifully built to take care of itself."
The "beautifully built to take care of itself" theme is used in all the animated commercials and will be the basic slogan of all advertising for the new Ford. Another 20-second spot opens with a statue of a general on horseback brandishing a sword, with several white pigeons sitting on the stone figures as the announcer, offstage, says: "Beautifully built . . ."
The plink of a raindrop is followed by a flash of lightning. The pigeons fly off. The rain comes down in earnest. The general raises his sword which becomes a sheltering umbrella. The pigeons fly back to roost safely beneath the rain-shedding shield as the offstage voice continues: ". . . to take care of itself. The '61 Ford at your Ford dealers."
Four 20-second commercials and four eight-second versions of them were shipped last week by Playhouse Pictures to more than 350 tv stations, along with almost as many teaser spots containing the tag line, "At your Ford dealers Sept. 29."
The Ford spots were created and produced by Playhouse. Chris Jenkyns and Ed Levitt were story editors; Bill Melendez, director; Sterling Sturtevant and Brenard [sic] Gruver handled layout and design; the animators were Bob Carlson, Rod Scribner and Ed Levitt.
The same theme of the self-servicing automobile is carried in a group of three radio commercials created and produced for Ford by Freberg Ltd. of Hollywood. Stan Freberg, president of the firm, which specializes in the creation of radio-tv commercials, did the Ford spots in conjunction with William Hockerr of the Detroit office of J. Walter Thompson Co. under the supervision of Ed Rodgers, Ford's radio-tv advertising coordinator.
One of the one-minute commercials for the 1961 Ford goes like this:
(Note: man and woman are very British.)
Woman: Harry isn't that fellow taking an unusually long time to put the gas in?
Man: Now where did he go? (He calls) Hello . . .
Guy: (OS) I'm under the car,
Man: Under the car?
Sound: Car door opens and closes; footsteps.
Man: Look here, what are you doing under there? This is a brand new '61 Ford. There's nothing wrong with it.
Guy: (Crawling out from under the car) Oh, I know that. I was just waiting for it to adjust its own brakes.
Man: What?
Guy: But I guess it wasn't ready yet. Every '61 Ford that comes in I keep hoping it's getting ready to do it so I can watch. 1 read there's a little mechanical brain in the wheel that decides when it's time.
Man: How's that?
Woman: (OS) What's he doing, Harry?
Man: (Calls) He's watching our brakes. (To guy) Now look here there's nothing to see . . . I mean the Ford makes its own mechanical brake adjustments during the life of the lining. You don't have to worry about it.
Guy: Oh, I'm not worried about it. I just want to see how it handles a wrench.
Man: Aah, look I hardly think there's anything to see under there?
Guy: Well, I heard a little click just now.
Sound: Scuffling.
Woman: (Calling) Harry, what are you doing?
Man: I'm under the car. It looks like we've bought ourselves a phenomenon!
Woman: Really? I thought it was a Ford.
Music: Tag 1 second.

Another Playhouse’s clients was the U.S. Navy. Unfortunately, a July 18, 1958 article in Broadcasting doesn’t give specific names of artists.

The usual procedure in developing an animated commercial campaign for television is to create a character, identify him with the product or service being advertised, and use him over and over in a series of more or less varied situations. Each situation presents a problem which he solves through use of the product or service. Continuity is the key to this technique, whose motto is the tried and true advertising saw: repetition means recognition.
The new series of recruiting spots which Playhouse Pictures has produced for the Navy Dept. represents a complete break with that traditional technique. Each of this series of five 60-second and five 20-second animated films concerns distinctly individual characters. None appears in any of the other nine spots. Each has his own particular problem, his own peculiar worry. What links the 10 individual spots into a series is that the solution to all 10 problems is the same: Join the Navy, young man. Well, that's virtually true but not exactly so. In one or two of the films the answer is: Join the Navy, young woman.
The films, shipped to all tv stations in the country for use as public service material, were aimed specifically at the young men and women of Navy enlistment age. To reach that group, they must "combine salesmanship with entertainment, fusing solid facts with elements of whimsy, humor, striking artwork and modern musical backgrounds," says Commander J. "B" Stewart, Bureau of Navy Personnel, who coordinated the project for the Navy.
Commander Stewart also appreciates that there are other realities of tv life which must be considered. "We realized that there is a great deal of public service film competing for free television time," he states, "and wanted our spots to be original and interesting enough to capture the attention of television station program directors. Once accepted and scheduled . . . (they) must then compete for attention with the steady flow of commercial spot announcements and must therefore be of equal or superior quality to the best of these."
The presentation is done in a variety of ways. There's the cat and dog, gazing at their absent master, agreeing "it's kind of lonesome" but they're "awfully glad he did enroll in Navy Officer Candidate School." There's the graduate, wondering which branch of the service offers him the best opportunities and singing his problem with a chorus of professors in an operetta spot which gives the Navy man the chance to sing: "Oh, see what the Navy offers you. Travel and adventure, yes, and good pay, too. We have many jobs that you might do." And so on to the chorused conclusion that "He will join the NA-AA-VEE."
There's the excitement hunter, with his head in the lion's mouth; the kid who's given up his "idle childish dream" of being a cowboy and "after considerable deliberation — decided to join the Navy"; the man who has devoted his youth to inventing a machine to crack a nut, then realizes he is the nut and it's time he joined the Naval Reserve and learned a trade. And so on.
The new spots will shortly make their tv debut.

The “dog and cat” spot mentioned above won third Prize in the 20-second category at the Advertising Association of the West convention that year. Playhouse also won first (Burgermeister Brewing) and second (Ford) prizes, as well as colour TV honours for a Carnation “Half the Fat Calories” spot.

But Playhouse was only one of several West Coast companies making animated spots. At the time, there were also Cascade Pictures of California, Churchill-Wexler Productions, Film Fair, Fine Arts Productions, Format Films, Graphic Films, Pantomime Pictures, Ray Patin Productions, Quartet Films, Swift-Chaplin Productions and TV Spots, and even smaller operations. There were others on the East Coast. All did interesting work that deserves exposure to animation fans today.