Block That Schlock

On TV guest shots. Comic George Jessel has a knack for veering the conversation to Bulova watches. While palavering with Jack Paar before millions of viewers not long ago, Georgie went on and on about his watch, a Bulova. When being Person to Personed by Ed Murrow, Jessel lovingly showed off five clocks in his house; all five were gifts from Bulova. (Genial Georgie insists neither mention was intended as a plug.)

Many comedians are prolific brand-name droppers. Gagged Bob Hope recently: "The NBC peacock is really a plucked pigeon with a Clairol rinse." Jerry Lewis punched out a joke with the tag line, "Look, Mom, no cavities!"--which happens to be a slogan of Crest toothpaste. Steve Allen built a skit around Colgate's toothpaste ingredient, Gardol, and the Three Stooges built an act around Polaroid cameras. On NBC's Ford Startime fortnight ago, Dean Martin greeted Guest Frank Sinatra with a cheery "What's this you're wearing--My Sin?" And on a Crosby-Sinatra show, one of whose comedy skits involved the rest rooms of a filling station, the script specified Union Oil.

Such plugs, even when they grow out of genuine comedy, bring payoffs (sometimes known as payola) of varying kinds; the My Sin plug reportedly was worth more than $1,000. Sometimes the payoff goes to the performers, but usually to writers or other employees of a show. Last week the Federal Communications Commission belatedly began to investigate TV's predilection for the plug. The announcement aroused widespread dismay. Moaned Actor Walter Slezak: "Everybody has become so suspicious that if you say 'Oh, my God!' on television, people think you're being paid off by the Holy Father."

Everybody's Doing It. The plug system is so well organized that there are lists setting out which firms pay what--and it would not be possible if U.S. business did not eagerly go along. Many a performer jokes about the practice. Arthur Godfrey slipped in a mention of a popular brand of shoes and then conspicuously followed by specifying his own shoe size. On his NBC show, Interviewer Tex McCrary enjoyed displaying people who happened to be clients of his pressagentry firm.

Admen buzz that one of Madison Avenue's biggest agencies pays up to $1,000 for dropping a mention of a client on a high-Trendexed show. A Hollywood public-relations agency spreads word that for $500 it can get plugs into the scripts of one of the half-dozen most popular TV comedians. One Beverly Hills agency that specializes in placing plugs, Fishell & Associates, sends out to writers and producers a long list of "clients" that pay it for arranging a mention. Among them: Howard Johnson, Betty Crocker, Western Union, Wheaties, Diners' Club, Gallo wines, Playtex girdles.

Some stars play along with the racket because crack writers are tough to come by, must be pampered. According to Hollywood folklore, Jack Benny once used a quick series of five plugs which furnished the home of a writer who was about to get married. But a writer often has to exercise all his creative talents to ease in a plug. Working on a racing yarn, one writer yearned to plug a well-known drug product. Solution: he named a race horse Anahist.

Be Nice to Truck Drivers. The fast-growing "institutional"-type plugs also kick back handsomely. One top comic collects a case of whisky every time he mentions "bowling" on his show; recently he used the word 30 times in a 30-minute show. A perfume company sends out a case of whisky to every writer who mentions perfume--any perfume. "Give me a double shot of bourbon" is a rewarding line. For it--or something similar--the star and the writer usually each get a case of bourbon, and sometimes much more. There is even a payoff, from an association, for sympathetically handling the American truck driver on the screen.

So flourishing is the plug business that 40-odd firms have sprouted in Manhattan, Los Angeles and Chicago to bring together freehanded advertisers and itchy-palmed producers, scripters. or stars. One of the real pros, Hollywood's waxy-mustached Adolphe Wenland, happily remembers the time Jack Benny mentioned Schwinn bikes (a Wenland client), then wheeled toward the screen and said, "Send three."

Wenland and his fellow schlockmeisters (from schlock, Yiddish for junk) also make a big business of supplying props for movie and TV sets. For one space-travel movie, which has yet to be released or titled, Wenland furnished $1,000,000 worth of Burroughs Corp. electronic equipment--all conspicuously flashing the company labels on the screen. "This certainly is a reciprocal deal and no violation of ethics," says Wenland. "What's more, it is good business practice." But he concedes that plugs have been abused "by hungry amateurs as well as greedy writers and producers." By diverting the spotlight from a show's regularly advertised products, the plug or "painless commercial" may cheat the legitimate sponsors. Some businesses, unable to afford prime network time, have grown fat by using only the relatively cheap plugs.

Plenty of Schmeer. One of the schlockmeisters' big tasks is to provide prizes for giveaway shows. The operators argue that, as long as such shows (e.g., The Price Is Right, Queen for a Day) are on the air, someone has to do the job of getting things to be given away--in return for a plump plug. But along with relatively legitimate prize-getters, there are the shady types operating out of phone booths. To place one washing machine on a second-rate show, the hustler demands a cash payment, plus five or six washers--and sells the overflow to discounters. Hoping to bypass the hustlers, some of TV's brightest stars have their own schlock-gathering teams. Ralph (This Is Your Life) Edwards has six staffers out gathering loot, has a warehouse to store it in. Says an Edwards aide: "We may use the leftovers for charities and hospitals, or just let the TV crew members draw for them."

It is in the rough-and-ready world of pop music that payola is most common and flagrant. One record-company executive has the system down to a cash-accounting formula: it would take $22,000 to make a record popular in Chicago. "There are so many people you have to schmeer [bribe]--the singer, his manager, the station, the disk jockeys." In Detroit, two stations will openly plug a song for the right price. WKMH offers an "Album of the Week" deal: it plays one record or album 114 times a week, with a commercial before and after each shot. Price: $350 a week, for a minimum of six weeks. Detroit's WJBK has a similar deal.

A Piece of a Singer. Many a disk jockey owns a piece of a singer or of a record-distributing company, thus has his own vested interests in the popularity charts. In Detroit, WKMH Jockey Robin Seymour bought a 15% interest (in the name of his wife) in ARC Distributing Co., which has 50 labels. Even scrubbed, smiling Dick Clark owns three music publishing companies: Sea Lark Enterprises, January Music, Arch Music.

In Philadelphia one record wholesaler says he used to have 25 local disk jockeys on his monthly payroll, at $25 to $200 each. And one recent Christmas an eager Philadelphia record distributor sent a deejay a gift TV set and portable typewriter.

The next year the distributor, in a more modest mood, sent him only a fancy tray under a huge yellow cheese. Back from the angry deejay came a crisp note: "Cheese constipates me."

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