Not Bert and Harry

Want to sell beer? In the 1950s and early 1960s, the combination that seemed to work was cartoons and comedy.

Hamm’s featured an animated bear in its TV ads. Mr. Magoo sold two different brands of brew. Perhaps the most famous cartoon beer hawkers were Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding as Bert and Harry Piel. Word is their Piel’s beer spots were so popular, they were included in New York television listings in newspapers.

There was another famous comedy couple employed to sell beer to a regional audience, appealing to the smart set in their own way as much as Bob and Ray. Mike Nichols and Elaine May were seen on Ed Sullivan and other variety shows, breaking up audiences with their nightclub routines. In 1960 they were hired to lend their voices to ads, both radio and TV, for a regional beer.

In the May 1961 edition of Television magazine, an article entitled “Keeping Up With the New Generation” states:

Last year the Jackson Brewing Company, New Orleans, marketing its Jax beer in nine southern and southwestern states, left off live-action film commercials on an “adventure in taste” theme to go with fun, animation and the voices of Nichols & May.
The commercials—full animation, no break for the usual “live” product shot —center on humorous situations: a cowboy who brings his horse into a bar, is saddened when the animal is refused service; a talking dog, also refused service; a woman who uses Jax to wash her hair; a man who breaks his teeth taking off a Jax bottle top.
Jackson, advertising via Doherty, Clifford, Steers & Shenfield, New York, works its key themes into the humor (“real beer taste,” “premium brewed from 100% natural ingredients”), has had its share of success as measured by a sales increase last year, a flood of complimentary viewer mail, and even a request from a TV station for permission to run the commercials in its local programming.

The article adds that a survey of best-liked TV commercials conducted in January 1961 by the American Research Bureau found five beer companies ranked in the top 31, with Jax at number 11 with 2% of mentions (Hamm’s was no. 1 for the eighth year in a row).

Though Jax was based in New Orleans, its New York City ad agency decided to have the TV spots animated in New York City, where there were a number of excellent commercial/industrial studios. According to the May 15, 1961 edition of Television Age, the agency hired Pelican Films, the firm owned by Jack Zander, who started with Romer Grey’s ill-fated studio in 1930, and later animated Tom and Jerry for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. He formed Pelican in 1954. One Nichols-May spot for Jax involving a kangaroo won honours at a commercial animation festival in New York in 1961; Chris Ishii co-directed with Armin Shaffer designing the characters.

Here are some frames from one 60-second commercial that spoofs The $64,000 Question. Nichols plays the quiz-master, with May as “Miss Mallory,” the contestant in the sound-proof both. Nichols confides in the audience that the contestant’s father, whom she hasn’t seen in 45 years, is next door. Miss Mallory blows the question (about Jax’s slogan, “premium brewed from 100% natural ingredients”) and a stage-hand grabs the father and hauls him away, killing any happy reunion. “Do I still get my freezer?” she asks hopefully as the camera fades out.



Here’s another one, with Nichols as an interviewer and May as “Boo Boo Gorman, popular Hollywood starlet,” who spends much of the interview being an airhead and blowing bubbles. You’ll see a logo for TVDays.com, a site owned by Ira Gallen, who rescued these, and countless other discarded reels of old television film.



The interviewer has trouble pouring the beer into a glass.



Boo Boo reveals her measurements are 76-22-64 1/2. The interviewers eyes make a path equalling the ridiculous measurements.



The spot comes to a halt when Boo Boo blows a bubble and then says she sinks in the ocean. No tag line for the beer, just a fade out.



1961 was the year the networks, encouraged by ratings for The Flintstones, started snapping up cartoon series for prime-time. All kinds of animation outfits tried to jump on board. Variety of September 20th that year reported Pelican and Total Television Productions joined together to concoct “Parrot Playhouse,” which never got on the air. Zander’s company carried on with commercials and, in 1966, debuted the 10-minute short A Nose at New York’s Trans-Lux Theatre.

Pelican remained busy, despite a bit of a downturn in the commercial animation industry in New York. An article in the February 28, 1966 edition of Broadcasting reported the company had 56 animated commercials in various stages of production and gave a prediction of gross income that year of around $3,500,000, up a half-million dollars from 1965. Some clients are below:



When the ‘70s rolled around, Zander put Pelican to rest after roughly a thousand commercials and opened Zander’s Animation Parlour. He retired in the mid-‘80s, and passed away, a respected figure in animation, at the age of 99 in 2007, leaving behind some stylish, enjoyable commercials. If only more of them were in circulation.