Stars Pitching Cars . . . Before They Were Stars
It’s been estimated that actor Matthew McConaughey has earned as much as $90 million from a series of arty commercials he’s done for Lincoln. While that kind of endorsement deal may be a dream for many actors, the truth is that plenty of actors with McConaughey’s level of fame have also done car commercials—they just weren’t famous at the time.
The entertainment industry is a tough way to make a living. Most actors and actresses toil in relative obscurity hoping for a lucky break. While working toward that lucky break, many support themselves working in commercials and doing corporate videos and presentations. Sometimes they hawk cars. Let’s look at a few.
We’ll start out with some American Motors ads that ran in the late 1960s.
Note: Please excuse the video quality on some of the ads. They’re the best versions I could find.
To punch above its weight, AMC hired advertising agency Wells Rich Greene to produce a series of genuinely funny and somewhat self-deprecating commercials. Perhaps the most memorable campaign, which actually resulted in significant sales, was “What’s a Matador?” used to promote AMC’s midsize coupe in the mid 1970s.
Wells Rich Greene, which was located in New York City, must have had a strong connection to the city’s acting community, as it hired a number of performers who would end up with top billing as their careers prospered.
Richard Dreyfuss: AMC
Richard Dreyfuss, who starred in Jaws and Close Encounters of a Third Kind, plays the leader of a gang of young NYC toughs who encounter a Javelin. Vic Tayback, who played the diner owner on the long-running sitcom Alice and had a long career as a character actor, also appears.
Herb Edelman: AMC
Twice nominated for an Emmy award, Herb Edelman’s best-known role was as Stanley Zbornak, the ex-husband of Dorothy Zbornak (played by Bea Arthur) on The Golden Girls. Here he’s a guy who discovers that a Javelin might be a bit sporty for his self-image.
Robert De Niro: AMC
Perhaps the biggest star of the future employed by AMC was Robert De Niro. Long before he had a role playing a car salesman with a mafia past in Analyze That, he helped sell cars in a commercial for AMC, showing up in his old neighborhood to impress his green-grocer parents with his new Ambassador.
Dustin Hoffman: Volkswagen
A year before Dustin Hoffman got his break starring in The Graduate (I know many of you think the star of that movie was the Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider that Hoffman drove), he appeared in a commercial for the “larger” (compared to the Beetle) Volkswagen Fastback sedan. If the script wasn’t written specifically for Hoffman’s persona, I can understand why they cast him. Very entertaining.
Brad Pitt: Honda
Once they are famous, many notable actors get work doing commercials in Japan and other Asian countries. Brad Pitt was on the cusp of stardom when he did these two Japanese Domestic Market ads for the Integra, which was sold under the Honda brand there.
Gary Burghoff: Plymouth
If you watch enough period commercials you start seeing themes across both car companies and their ad agencies. For American Motors, the Wells Rich Greene agency cast De Niro with an appropriately Italian mother. Riffing off of that same maternal theme, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Plymouth’s ad agency, Young & Rubicam, produced a series of “Mama” commercials. In this ad for the 1970 Plymouth “Bananacuda”, Gary Burghoff, who played Radar O’Reilly in the hugely successful TV adaptation of MASH, plays a character named Marvin with a malaprop-spouting (“torsion-bobbers suspension”) mother who sounds a bit Yiddish.
“Mama” and Marvin returned a year later, this time with Burghoff at the wheel of a more sensible 1971 Satellite Sebring.
Kristen Stewart: Porsche
Like many actors, Kristen Stewart, who starred in Twilight, got her start acting as a child. Here she is in a commercial playing a girl who is not upset that she misses the bus to school since she then gets a ride with her dad in his Porsche 911 Carrera.
Paul Rudd: Toyota
Paul Rudd has had a successful 30-year career playing both comedic roles, as in his breakout film Clueless, as well as playing the superhero Ant-Man. Three years before he made Clueless, Rudd played a young man borrowing his brother’s new Toyota Tercel (ignore the title, that’s not Martin Sheen).
Ron Glass: Chevrolet
Ron Glass was best known for his role as a detective in the long-running sitcom Barney Miller and as a spiritual guide in the Firefly/Serenity science fiction franchise. A year before he started on Barney Miller, Glass was telling consumers about the increased trade-in values of their two-year-old Chevys.
James Doohan: Toyota
When James Doohan made this commercial for the 1968 Toyota Corona, the original Star Trek series was still on the air, so technically he was already famous for playing the starship Enterprise’s chief engineer, Montgomery Scott. Still, if you wanted a spokesperson to talk about a reliable machine, you probably couldn’t make a better pick. No, there’s no mention of dilithium crystals.
More did voice overs too.
How about a version with print ads?
A UK car magazine I receive mentions a pre-Magnum Tom Sellick modeled for ads (or brochures) for 71-73 Mustangs.
Tom Sellick also appeared in several Ford and Lincoln sales brochures.
Sellick’s best known literature appearance was modeling in the 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V brochure, in the first few pages with the Collector’s Series.
Whoa! The first few seconds of the DeNiro spot had me totally expecting Sonny Corleone jumping out to beat the crap out of Carlo Rizzi!
This spot was a couple of years BEFORE “The Godfather”… Do you think it maybe stuck in Coppola’s mind?
Bada-Bing-Bada-Boom!
Forgettaboutit.
Sticking to the Star Trek franchise: you missed Ricardo Montalban, whose “real Corinthian leather” Chrysler ads are still famous today, and predate his most famous roles in Wrath of Khan and Fantasy Island. He was in other stuff before (Including Star Trek, obviously) but he wasn’t exactly famous.
Post Star Trek fame:
Mark Lenard, who played Spock’s father, Sarek (and a Romulan in the original ST), did the voiceover for a number of Volvo ads in the 90’s.
Patrick Stewart, of Next Generation fame, did voiceovers for Pontiac in the early 90’s.
Finally, the late, great, Leonard Nimoy and the legendary William Shatner both did ads, with their adult children, for Oldsmobile in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Ricardo was really big on Fantasy Island at the time and was a well established western actor. He was very famous at the time.
Ricardo Montalban goes a lot farther back than that: he was featured in at least on “I Love Lucy” in the ‘fifties. Don’t recall any cars in that one, though.
He was in a movie called Battleground in 1949 which is great. I noted that he’d been in lots of guest roles previously, but he wasn’t as well known as he would be after the Chrysler ads.
I think the Chrysler ads started in 73-75, whereas Fantasy Island was 77. Yeah, he was in lots of guest star roles, but not as famous as he would become.
The captains chair in the USS Enterprise was made using genuine Corinthian leather.
This is Hagerty, not Reddit. You talent is requested there. 🙂
Farah was in Ford ads before she became Charlies Angel.
She started in Mustangs in 1971 then went to Cougar and also Mustang II ads as time went on into the Charlie years.
She was always a Cougar when I was young.
That absolutely is Martin Sheen doing the voiceover in Paul Rudd’s commercial. I have an ear for celebrity voices. I picked it out before I read the caption.
“Hey punk!, gattaway from da car!!” Vic Tayback- Mel Sharples of Mel’s Diner in “Alice”, among other car commercials. he did.
National Lampoon magazine had a fake VW add that stated, “If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen, he’d be president by now”. Touting the car’s ability to float.
You may too young to remember a film called “American Graffiti” but Richard Dreyfus co-starred in that one in about ’72. Reputedly, it featured a few cars, too…
Just the premier car/nostalgia mover ever made!
agreed
You want to see an Anglo-American classic: the first-run Nash-Healey was featured several times on “My Little Margie”, c. 1953-4, including what purports to be a N-H showroom, complete with huge wall-hangings touting the N-H features. Margies octogenarian side-kick, Mrs. Odets, even wants one ‘with dual pipes, and a chrome cylinder head (sic)’ in one episode. Other cars featured live are a ’53 Caddie convertible, ’54 Lincoln, and MGTD. Margie is forever blackmailing/coercing her dad, Vern, for a new ragtop!
Another great and very interesting article Ronnie!
I find it odd that Porsche ever made (or needed) TV commercials.
It is strange that you have that misconception of things. Porsche, struggled for many years and almost went bankrupt in the late 80’s early 90’s. It was the successful introduction of their entry-level Boxster, followed by the Cayman and then the VW-based Macan, that saved them from going under.
True! I sold Porsches in the 80’s and many 911’s were “floor-planned” for 1-2 years after their model year.
I’ve seen the commercial, and I knew the girl looked familiar. I wonder if she was a vampire when the ad was made? Can’t remember when “Interview…” came out.
Martin Sheen was the voice of Toyotas for years….
“Avalon, the AMERICAN MADE flagship of the Toyota fleet”….
I recall the Patrick Steward Pontiac ads…
He’d say “Pon-tee-ack” in that poncy, pretentious style of his, like he was giving the Ten Commandments instead of just shilling for an over the hill brand from over the hill GM.
.
Lyle Waggoner as “a hardworking cowboy” hawking trucks for Chrysler (Dodge, I believe), circa mid-60s.
Scotty endorsed a Toyota, that’s awesome. Can you imagine him driving one and the humor that would result from it? I’m givin her all she’s got Captain!
👍👍
She’s gonna blow for sure!
“Aye, but I can’t say she’ll hold together…”
If Scottie owned a Toyota, it would be an over the top JDM Supra with turbos the size of dinner plates and a 3″ waste gate dump!