The 1951 DuMont Teleset

One of the most gorgeous features of the treasure trove of old ads I just discovered on YouTube is a whole series of ads for the DuMont television set (which is what it was called back then). These ads were performed live on variety shows with singers, dancers and comedians doing their stuff. Some of the ads featured a male chorus singing radio-style ditties praising the superior clarity of the DuMont picture. I remember TV from the late '50s on, and in no way, shape or form was the picture "clear". It wobbled all over the place. It flipped. It developed noisy static and went all white and grainy. We didn't care because we had nothing to compare it to. This 1951 DuMont set must have been much more primitive. For all that, it has a much larger screen than the earlier models from the 1940s which were only a few inches across.

Back then, you didn't say "watch TV" - you said "look at television". It's one of those quaintitudes that disappeared at a certain point (like exclaiming "saaaaaay!" at the beginning of every sentence). But if you listened to the radio, you - what? Looked at television, as in "stop, look and listen". Or something. Even the terminology was unfamiliar. People marvelled at the new technology, but were a little scared and intimidated by it all.

By now you may be noting a certain bizarre feature of these very early DuMont commercials. The hostess or whatever you call her is not opening out the cabinet doors to display the "teleset". She always CLOSES the doors to cover the screen up. I think there's a reason for this. People just weren't used to having this honking big open eye, this shiny piece of glass staring at them in their living room. It was not uncommon for the uninitiated to believe that the people on television could see them. It was more modest, somehow, to keep that thing closed away until viewing time. It looked more like a piece of furniture that way. Maybe a radio.

No one knew how to display a product visually in those days - thus the catchy jingles sung in four-part harmony like a Barbasol ad. A woman walked in, shut the doors on the ghastly thing, and walked off. That was about all the movement people could handle in those days. These television commercials for televisions were meant to waft out into Televisionland only once, as everything was done live and couldn't be repeated. These ghostly remainders come from kinescopes, a primitive way to film a program directly from the camera monitor. I like the smudgy, shadowy, phosphorescent atmosphere of them, a sense of technological antiquity. In many cases they're all we have left of the baby years of TV, when the DuMont network reigned supreme before disappearing into the abyss of obsolescence.

This flickering image of a DuMont Teleset, with doors closed, appeared onscreen for nearly a full minute, with only the slick male chorus to remind us of what they were selling. Come on, folks - buy the new 1951 DuMont - uh - whatever-this-is.

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Once upon a time, and long ago

Every year, around the time of my birthday, the anticipation began to build. For some magical reason, the Mary Martin stage version of Peter Pan would always be broadcast on TV, either on my birthday or the day before or after.

My next-door neighbor/on-again-off-again friend Ann Peet had her birthday the day before mine. In those days, kids didn't go to those big video-parlor/jungle-gym/Build-a-Bear-emporium type of places for a birthday. In fact, my own kids, raised in the '80s, usually celebrated with a few friends (and ancient home movies reveal that they were the same friends, year to year) and a bucket of chicken.

My celebration back in the early '60s was even more basic, but no less magical. Ann and I would always exchange presents which (our mothers decreed) had to cost no more than $2. One year, all unawares, we gave each other Cinderella shoes with high heels made out of clear pink plastic embedded with gold glitter. These were held on with torturous pink elastic bands that left deep welts on your feet. Mine broke on the first day, and Ann had a near-concussion from a bad fall.

My mother made spare ribs. That's what we called them then, not ribs, and decades before all those so-called falling-off-the-bone southern recipes. Through hours of slow baking, she turned out ribs that melted in your mouth. You didn't even have to pick them up. Then a cake, made from scratch, on a glass pedestal. Toffee Swirl, or Spice Cake with buttercream icing.

She baked as a sort of grim religion, and though most of her cooking was good, she was too tight-lipped to really enjoy it. She was dutiful. She didn't like me, wished she had never had me, and I knew it. Had always known it, without being told.

But every year, there was Peter Pan. I can't tell you how completely enchanted I was - how captured Ann Peet and I both were, leaning closer and closer to the set until we nearly fell out of our chairs. It's essentially a filmed stage play, with the staginess left intact, so you have to mentally translate it into the much more intimate medium of TV. But it works anyway, especially because of Mary Martin's magnificent, heartbreaking performance. She's over 40 in this version, her body still girlish - or boyish - and her face androgynous before the term was even known about. And her voice. Oh.

I defy you to listen to the melancholy little lullabye at the end of this clip without crying. A few minutes ago I was sobbing, tears splashing down my face. I was not a happy child. Ours was not a happy home, though we pretended it was. I pretended Dad didn't get drunk every night and abuse me and tell me he wished I had never been born. I had to. No one can let wounds like that show.

We pretended a lot of things: that Mary Martin was a boy, or else we just didn't care if she wasn't. The loudly-proclaimed theatrical lines didn't matter. And when Tinkerbell began to wink out and die, Peter turned to the audience and said in a voice full of urgency, "Clap your hands if you believe in fairies!"

Then we heard something. A faint spectral clapping behind us, slowly growing faster, and louder.

I turned. There was my mother in the doorway, my mother the grim un-nurturing one who looked after me as a mother cat might look after a kitten, except less warmly. And, incredibly, she was exclaiming,

"Yes, yes, I do believe in fairies. I do, I do!"

Blurple, blurple, blurp, blurp

Herewithin and forsooth, my absolute, all-time favorite TV ad, something worthy of Mad Men's Don Draper on a good day. I've analyzed it frame-by-frame, and I'm still coming up with things I didn't see or hear in it before.

We hear almost before we see - a hesitant, then more self-assured sound, a coconutty sound of something blipping and blurping appealingly in a funny sort of tune. Then we see a trio: a suggestion of breakfast in the upper left corner (on circular plates, the first of many circular motifs), and, dominating the picture, an old-style (then standard) "coffee perc", the kind that produced a burnt, tongue-dissolving brew.

The camera loves this pot, for soon it's zooming in, tight, then tighter. The top of the perc, the blippy part, suddenly fills the screen in a closeup that can only be described as intimate. It appears to be repeatedly ejaculating into the little glass dome. By now the merry coconut theme has accelerated and is clopping away, something only a musician could compose. ("Hey, let's put some sound effects in the background. You know, the sound of the coffee perking.")

Meantime, we have a shot of the pot exuding, nay, gushing steam, in a sensory blast that dares us to inhale. The next shot is so brilliant I swoon when I see it: the wide, round, white cup poured full of black coffee sits in the very back of the frame, surrounded by nothing. Nothing! Just the cup. Then a giant male hand comes out from the right-hand side, picks up the cup and lifts it up and forward so that the black coffee fills the entire screen.

Jesus!

Some giant is drinking this coffee! Then comes another arresting shot: the cup and the coffee can standing next to each other, two circles, with the dominant image on the right. It's said that Mickey Mouse is so appealling because he's made up of circles, maybe because they're non-threatening and remind us of ova and baby's heads.

One more split-second shot of the coffee being poured, a sort of review. (This is like some sort of mini-drama in one minute: it's crammed with images, but somehow seems leisurely.) Then in the next shot (every one is significant in this ad), someone is holding up the round can to face the camera. The rich-looking ground coffee is literally shoved in our faces, and on the left-hand side there is a small avalanche of coffee that might just have happened by accident, and was kept in for sensory value.

I haven't even mentioned the voice-over, which is equally brilliant: see, smell, taste the coffee flavor! As with most early ads, there is a lot of repetition, but in this case it's more hypnotic than annoying. The name Maxwell House is mentioned five times in one minute. "Taste", as in "tastes as good as it smells" or "taste the coffee flavor", is mentioned six times. This ad appeals to every sense (listen, look, smell, taste) except touch, but that's why that big hand comes into the frame, almost erotic.

When you first watch the ad, none of this registers. You have no awareness at all of the fact that you're hearing the brand five times, or that "tastes as good as it smells" (the slogan) is being drilled into your subconscious. Some guy in a rumpled suit with a hangover came into the office, plunked himself down and said, "Well, guys, I've got it."

"How's that gonna work? It's too simple."

"But that's just the point. We want nothing but straight, clean, simple images, with circles, tight closeups and a lot of repetition. We want those idiots at home to listen, look, smell, taste the coffee flavor, whether they want to or not! We want them to hear "tastes as good as it smells" so often, they go numb."

"But what's going to happen at the grocery store?"

"Nothing. But faced with a few varieties of coffee, their hands will gravitate. They won't know why. In their subconscious, they're going to hear that blurple, blurple, blurp, blurp. . ."

"Hey, I've got a better idea. "You get a cup and a half of flavor. . . "