Show us your pizza rolls

If Super Bowl commercials were a thing in 1968, this ad for Jeno’s pizza rolls would have had people talking about it Monday morning:

It was written and produced by Stan Freberg, whose list of accomplishments in television, radio and comedy recordings is long and remarkable, although he may be best remembered for his inspired advertising work with such clients as Contadina tomato paste (Who put eight great tomatoes in that little bitty can?), Chun King: (Nine out of ten doctors recommend Chun King Chow Mein) and Sunsweet prunes (Today, the pits; tomorrow, the wrinkles. Sunsweet marches on).

(The Chun King line of canned Chinese food and Jeno’s pizza rolls were both developed by food entrepreneur Jeno Paulucci).

The story goes that after one showing on The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson remarked that it was the first commercial to receive spontaneous applause from the studio audience. (I’m guessing this was when The Tonight Show was broadcast live).

The ad is funny, memorable and works off a shared experience, something much more easily achieved in 1968 than today when we all watched the same handful of television commercials and didn’t – couldn’t – mute commercials.

First, the ad plays off this then-ubiquitous Lark cigarette commercial:

Secondly, it works off the shared knowledge that, going back to the 1930s, the William Tell Overture served as the theme music for the Lone Ranger radio and television programs. Not to mention that nearly everyone who ever had a music course in elementary school knew that piece of music.

In other words, everybody got the joke.

The guy playing the Lark lurker in the Jeno's commercial is Barney Phillips. With 188 acting credits listed on IMDB, he’s probably best known as the diner counterman with three eyes in a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone.

Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels reprise their roles as the Lone Ranger and Tonto, a full decade before Jack Wrather, who owned the Lone Ranger character, obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from making future appearances as The Lone Ranger. There was a countersuit from Moore before Wrather dropped the lawsuit in 1984.