Here's a pair of rarities that the person who posted this video to YouTube says were produced by Hanna-Barbera. So far, as far as I know, that hasn't been fully proven.
Lion Oil is a regional company originally out of Arkansas, but now based in Tennessee after a corporate merger or three. In the 2nd of the 2 ads, a Frenchman (reputedly Alan Reed) brings his sputtering sports car (Mel Blanc, of course) to a Lion service station, where the Lion himself (Shepard Menken) convinces him to try his brand of oil.
Bardahl is the better known of the two brands, and was founded by a Norwegian immigrant. The spot that opens the video features a quartet of gangsters inside an engine, whose plans are flushed by Bardahl (Gary Owens).
If anyone has more information on these ads, please feel free to pass it along.
2 comments:
Never saw these ads till now but I can't link the animation to HB. Perhaps it's an assumption due to the VAs who WERE working for HB at the time.
The guy who wants to get rid of his car is DEFINITELY Alan Reed. In fact, he was also famous for doing all sorts of foreign accents which made him in demand not only as a VA/radio personality but on the stage as well. He and Sid Caesar also used to do what's been called, "foreign double speak" in which a foreign character speaks in what is supposedly his native tongue, but peppered with Anglicized words - sort of like Spanglish.
To my knowledge, Shep Menken didn't do too much work for H-B, if at all, but had worked for other studios (UPA, for example) around the time the Lion Oil ad was made.
Of course, the commentators on YouTube never got around to acknowledging the easiest voice on the tape, that of Gary Owens, as this was around the time he was doing either Roger Ramjet or Space Ghost.
Post a Comment