I mentioned Gomer Pyle in yesterday’s COAL, so now habbout I pour us some good, stiff shots of Televisionland to wash that fetid Town Car taste out from our mouths, eh!
Here’s Gomer Pyle and Associates in season five, episode № 13—”Hit and Write”. It first aired on 27 December 1968. The show was set in some imaginary town in California. It was filmed in San Diego, within an adjusted-reality bubble in which almost all the cars were Darts and Valiants, and most of the rest were other Chrysler products—right from the opening scene, complete with its discontinuity (see it?). Sarge’s car is a 1965 Dodge Dart Charger, much higher up the A-body hierarchy than the el-strippo ’68 Valiant ahead. That’ll prime the pump, now see what-all others there are. For reference, $10 at the time is about $75 in today’s money, and $235 is about $1,800.
Not just the cars are notable; look and see how every driveway is blotched with spilt oil up by the engine and transmission, and streaked with soot back by the tailpipe. That’s how it was with the carburetors and automatic chokes of the day, and engines and transmissions that pretended to keep hold of their oil with half-inch strips of cork and bits of rope. It’s all easy to see in this fine, sharp living-colour presentation:
And while we’re on the subject, here’s episode № six of Leave It To Beaver’s seventh season. Wally gets a car-parking gig for a party, and…wow, lookit there, almost everyone in Mayfield drives a Chrysler product, this or last year’s model. First we see Ward’s ’62 Plymouth, then at 2:47 someone drives by in a ’62 Valiant or Lancer. After a six-minute absence of cars, things snowball starting at 8:27. Ooh, that Eddie Haskell! He’s a feckless gladhander—such a bad influence! First aired on 17 January 1963, several years too early to be in anything other than living-black-and-white:
Gomer Pyle was one of my favorite shows growing up. I was born in 1970, so I assume I am remembering reruns….and Andy Griffith, and Sanford and Son, and Good Times, the list goes on. But the cars were in fact one of the best reasons to watch GP. I also enjoyed seeing Mr. Drysdale’s Imperial on Beverly Hillbillies whenever it rolled up to their front door.
I thought sure you were going to mention the episode called Sgt. Carter’s New Car – the one I probably remember more than any other episode. Sarge was apparently OCD about his red 60 Dart Phoenix hardtop, which he reluctantly let Gomer drive. It got stolen and Gomer went to the police. They found it in perfect condition – right before a wrecking ball fell on it. Fortunately, it changed to a lower trim Dart 2 door sedan before it got smashed. All ended well when the owner of the construction company paid for a new gold 66 Coronet 500 hardtop.
Both Ford and Chrysler promoted their vehicles heavily on TV in the 60s and 70s. Other than Bewitched with the Chevrolets, I can’t recall many shows that featured GM cars so prominently – but then GM was hardly starving for business then.
Was Bonanza sponsored by GM (this was before my time)? Somewhere I have seen a commercial with the cast mocking Ford and their never-introduced Cardinal, talking about the superiority of GM.
Or maybe it was just a one-shot deal.
Did “The Andy Griffith Show” end credits feature a shout out to the “Ford Motor Co”?
IIRC they drove Ford police cars in that show.
The Andy Griffith Show did use Ford’s. After Andy Griffith left the show the town of Mayberry was carried into the new show called Mayberry RFD, which featured most of the old town characters but now they drove Chrysler products. The one exception was Aunt Bee who drove a 66 Studebaker that belong to the actress who portrayed her,Francis Bavier. It was her personal car.
Bonanza was always the debut of the new Chevrolets. I was about 10 and had to go to bed a 9 :00 on Sunday night when Bonanza came on. First time I saw a 65 Chevy was through the key hole at the bottom on the stairs
I feel like I should mention the mother of Chevy sponsorships:
The fabulous Dinah Shore and her show, featuring “See the USA In Your Chevrolet”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSWlm0Nn-QY
“Bonanza” was sponsored by Chevrolet.
I can’t say that I watched Bonanza as a kid. But I can be pretty sure there were not a lot of Chevrolets used in filming. In fact, could this have been the only show sponsored by Chevrolet that featured a bunch of Mustangs, Pintos and Ranch Wagons? 🙂
I remember seeing a Bronco on Bonanza.
Speaking of Bonanza, there was this promo movie featuring the casts of Bonanza, Bewitched and the Man from U.N.C.L.E. who was sponsored by GM in the first season but switched to Chrysler the following season when it was filmed in color.
Yes; Bonanza was a ‘all-Blue Bowtie’ production. A family friend worked @ a local Chevy dealership and the show’s cast appeared in a dealer promo for the ’63 models I recalled seeing.
Chevrolet was a big sponsor of Bonanza. Obviously the cars were not in the show but the “Cartwrights” were in a number of ads.
And wasn’t Pontiac a sponsor of My Three Sons?
Ford Motor Company sponsored Green Acres. Oliver Douglass drove a Lincoln 4 door convertible and Hank Kimball drove a Ford Bronco.
I could go on.
My wife was hooked on “This Is Us” and some recent show based on a telenovela.
They both were filled with GM products and the commercial breaks were full of GM ads. A Chevy Cruze became part of the storyline when the main character’s rich dad bought her a Mini and it “just wasn’t her”.
I was thinking of that exact episode where Sgt Carter’s Dart gets crushed by the wrecking ball. I was, and still am, a cat geek. I knew all the TV cars. The Dart was a red hardtop with the fastback smile to the back window. The cat that got crushed was a 2dr sedan with the window post. It was so clearly a different car and I was screaming at the TV.
I one saw another TV show where a character was driving a 61 Lincoln convertible. The car drives off a cliff. The car shown plunging off the cliff was a 60 Lincoln convertible. Think about it.
Worse were in the cheapie movies and TV shows. They’d show a relatively recent auto replaced by a 30’s heap going down the cliff.
That’s like the stock footage used in Midway (1976) where at the end, a barely flyable SBD crashes on the deck and transforms into a Grumman F9F hitting the ramp (the jet pilot lived).
In my opinion, the biggest gaff relating to cars in TV shows or movies, was the 1948 Packard limousine in the movie “Patton”. Must have been an early production version of the Packard, because Patton died as a result of a car accident in 1945.
At one point,in the 60’s, every other car sold in America was a general motors car. Here’s the car we would take to school.they were dang near giving these away in 71. We had the 440 6 pak 4 speed model and with our super tune, you could put that superbird sideways nailing third! We were also playing around with a 48 Anglia b/gas car
Gomer, of course, had a steep learning curve as a mechanic with things like torsion bars and ballast resistors having come from Mayberry where every single car was a Ford.
“I can’t recall many shows that featured GM cars so prominently”
J P: Pontiacs were exclusively featured on “My Three Sons”.
Wasn’t it also Chevys some years?
Chevrolet was featured in the first season when the series was on ABC but switched to Pontiac when My Three Sons moved to CBS. Here a sample of screenshots of the series on IMCDB.
https://www.imcdb.org/m53525.html
My Three Sons used Chevrolets from 1960 to 1962. They switched to Pontiac’s in 1963 while still on ABC. The show didn’t move to CBS until the 65-66 season.
I always wondered how Bub, and then Uncle Charlie got around without a car when Steve took the wagon to work or on his business trips. Mike and Robbie had their own cars, but Bub and Charlie didn’t.
Good question, btw one trivia I saw on IMDB they mentionned then the last 2 seasons of My Three Sons (1970-72), they used Ford and Mercury models.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053525/trivia
At first Chevrolets featured. They even had them rolling along in the closing credits.
The cops in The Naked City drove Pontiacs too.
GM cars were featured in a number of well-known TV shows.
Bewitched was “Chevy heavy” throughout its run.
The Brady Bunch switched to Chevrolets in later seasons (and for awhile, had both Chrysler Corporation and Chevrolet vehicles).
I Dream of Jeannie featured Pontiacs.
I Love Lucy featured a Pontiac in the season with the Hollywood episodes, then switched to Fords in the last season of the half-hour episodes, and Fords and Lincolns were in some of the hour-long episodes. Then inexplicably in “Lucy Goes to Mexico,” a Buick was featured, where we’re led to assume is a rental car.
And of course there were the Corvettes featured in Route 66.
Perry Mason progressed over the years. First there were Fords – although Perry drove a (top of the line) Skyliner. For a brief period, Perry had a Cadillac. And then he settled on Lincoln Continental convertibles.
The “clients” initially drove Fords, and then there were a few Chevys. And finally they settled on Buicks.
Even Lt. Tragg drove a Buick Electra at one point. Pretty fancy for a police car.
Jason Shafer-Bonanza was very much a Chevy show. Although they couldn’t use any Chevys in the show, the commercials were for Chevy. For some years, they had special commercials at new model time introducing the whole model line for Chevy.
I forgot to mention Paul Drake (Perry Mason’s detective). He drove T-birds at the same time Perry had Fords. Paul Drake briefly had Corvettes (while Perry had a Cadillac). And finally Paul Drake switched back to T-birds.
I think the choice of cars was of course related to the “deal” the production company could make with the car manufacturer.
Perry Mason had a strange sponsorship where the sponsors rotated from episode to episode. It sounds not have mattered it if was Polmolive and Tide. But Perry Mason was sponsored by both Ford and GM in alternate weeks. So the Fords and Cadillacs rotated on a weekly basis. Perry must have had a double car garage. They didn’t charge between sessions like some shows. If you watch the show in season and episode order then you can see them switching back and forth in the 57-60 seasons. I think it settle down a bit after that. I never understood how Perry drive a Cadillac in GM shows in the 57-58 seasons, but he never drove a Lincoln in a the alternate sponsored episodes. He went down to Ford.
Yes, he drove 1957-59 Ford Skyliners but also 1957-59 Cadillacs. But there are at least a couple of episodes where he drove the 58-60 gen Continentals, too. It’s quite a mash-up of cars until things did seem to settle down in later years during which he and Paul consistently drove the 1961 and later Continental/Thunderbird convertibles.
I took this test of identifying 50’s cars this morning. I would have been near perfect if I knew Mopar fronts from one another.
http://www.americantorque.com/game/car-show-50s/
“For a brief period, Perry had a Cadillac”
Thank you, I just typed and erased a question about that. I watched some episodes on MeTV a year or two ago, so the memory should have been more certain.
It was hit and miss. Some cars were excellent while another on the same line may be poorly assembled.
Entertaining quiz. I got 100% but was lucky on identifying the exact model years of the early-mid 50s Mercurys!
That misaligned side trim on Grandpa Munster’s Valiant isn’t a result of the accident. Was poor build quality on Mopar products of this era really as prevalent as I’ve heard?
Until Japanese cars demonstrated that it was possible to assemble mass produced cars with some precision, American cars were somewhat casually assembled. Panel gaps/shut lines were much wider than now to accommodate this. When I was a kid I noticed in particular how off tail lights that continued from the body to the tailgate on Chrysler product station wagons could be, or not.
Peter Gunn had late 50s Mopars exclusively. Good thing the episodes were only 30 minutes, they would have rusted away in an hour show.
Great to see a Gomer Pyle show.
I remember watching the show, “FBI” with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. I think they drove Fords in that show.
Indeed, Zimbalist always ended the show by driving off in the latest Ford convertible, then had to switch to hardtops in the final season since Ford stopped making convertibles for a while after 1973.
One of my favorite tv car-spotting is still Get Smart. Max’ most well-known car was a Sunbeam Tiger in the opening shot (although they just used an Alpine with Tiger emblems for actual episode work). In the pilot show, Max drove up in a Ferrari 250 Spider. Later, the Tiger was switched out for a Karmann Ghia Cabriolet (VW paid for an early example of product placement), and Max last car was an Opel GT.
And the Karmann Ghia was only used in the opening credits during seasons 3 and 4.
Btw, should we include the short 1995 revival on Fox where Max drive a Mustang convertible?
I heard one reason Maxwell Smart drove Alpines instead of Tigers was his car had a machine gun mounted in the hood or fender. It wouldn’t fit in the Tiger because the engine took up too much space.
There was a Lehmann-Peterson Lincoln featured in the Get Smart Pilot. I think they used Fords in the early seasons, then Chrysler products and the last season were Buicks. Opel was Buicks captive import.
I’m watching The F.B.I. now and for the first time. Not sure if we in Australia got this show back in the day.
It’s definitely Ford central in Hooverville!
Were all Gomer Pyles in color? We only had a small B&W TV until Christmas ’69, so it’s a bit of a shock to see old shows (though many were years old when we saw them, which I didn’t know until adulthood).
All Gomer Pyle episodes were in color except the pilot episode, which was actually an episode of the Andy Griffith Show in the 64 season.
Actually, the entire first season (30 episodes) was in black-and-white.
Don’t forget Studebaker’s we’re featured on Mr. Ed, as they were a show sponsor.
As a big GM fan when growing up, it was annoying to see so many shows sponsored by Ford and Mopar. I suppose when you’ve got 50% or so of market share as GM did in the 60s, there was much less need for them to show off their products on TV shows.
We were avid fans of Bonanza, so I did get to see all the Chevy commercials then (of course as pointed out above, the cars weren’t in the episodes themselves)!
Speaking of Chevy, does anyone remember when Wally Cleaver got his first car? It was a beater ’53 Chevy convertible. When the family went to a fancy restaurant in the car, Ward made Wally park it in the back.
When a TV character got an old beater or junk car, it was usually a different brand from the sponsor. So the Beaver producers would not want to show a bad Chrysler product. The Brady Bunch used an awful 56 Chevy as Greg’s first beater.
The only exception I remember was an episode of the Andy Griffith show, when Barney bought a clunker ’54 (?) Ford from “Fair Deal Dan”, a shady used car salesman.
Mrs. Lesh (Ellen Corby). The Munster’s was Fair Deal Dan.
If you look carefully on the “beater” cars, you’ll be hard pressed to find a car maker’s emblem or name. Most were either removed or had black gaffer’s tape over them. This is still the case in 2021.
The Highway Patrol series started with GM, including those famous CHIPS Centurys. Then they switched to Ford for a couple years, mainly Mercurys. They ended on a more realistic note with Dodges.
At least they never used Nashes, which were both cop cars and robber cars on some early cop shows.
The 50’s Superman series used Nash’s.
Like Lois Lane’s famous Rambler convertible.
ADAM-12 used AMC products too. Cop cars and poor Martin Milner’s character was given a very ugly yellow Matador.
I watched Gomer Pyle when I was 10 but the Mopars don’t really stick in my mind at all. However, watching Hawaii Five O and Streets of San Francisco, the Fords did stand out to me. Actually both the cars and the streets scenes especially of San Francisco. Consequently I have DVDs of all the episodes of both so one can watch Lord, Malden and Douglas. Oh, and forget that piece of crap called Hawaii Five O of today.
The Gomer Pyle clip featured a nice 67-68 Mustang in the scenes with Kathleen Freeman. What a great loud mouth she was.
I always wondered why we never saw Sgt Carter’s 66 Coronet again after the Wrecking Ball episode. He seemed to always have late model used cars and not the newest model. I guess he sold the Coronet to pocket some cash and buy the older Valiant, lol.
The Beaver episode featured several Ford’s and Mercury’s that seemed to move about. One black Mercury was parked in front of the house when Eddie drove off in Fred Rutherfords Dodge. Eddie then parked it next time that same Mercury in the No Parking Zone.
I also saw a Corvair, a Studebaker and several Triumphs in the Beaver episode. They had a weird selection on cars shown outside the car window while Eddie was driving Fred Rutherford Dodge. Maybe that was stock footage. I couldn’t identify all the cars.
Sadly, the Beave’s family’s beautiful 1962 Plymouth four door hardtop doesn’t appear to have AC. Most new cars, particularly top of the line models like that one, would have had it in Los Angeles then. It does however display the trademark casual Chrysler assembly with the uneven windshield wipers, which were not parallel overlap types even on that all new for 1962 car. They didn’t even fix that with the new windshield/cowl in 1964, because Chrysler. (I really like them anyway.)
Leave It To Beaver is kind of an icon of silly white TV middle class 1950’sness, but it was actually better than that in some ways. And definitely that in others.
Some of the shows would actually put the provider of the automobiles in the ending credits or say it in a voice over. They must have been like sponsors.
See the USA in your Chevrolet sang Dinah Shore. That and boinking much younger Burt Reynolds are all I remember about her.
One car surprisingly missing from small screen as a sponsor was Oldsmobile. Mannix drove a custom Toronado and there may be a few rare sporadic sightings but Olds never did sponsor a show or supplied cars to my knowledge.
Interesting on how Oldsmobile is virtually absent from the small screen. I guess the marque really didn’t have the type of visual cache that fit with any television programs or their characters.
True.
The only on-screen appearances of Oldsmobiles I can recall are the movies Ordinary People and (of course) Fargo.
Oh, and the Clampett family’s truck on The Beverly Hillbillies.
The Vista Cruisers from “Family Vacation” & “That 70’s Show”
Oldsmobile was the sponsor of “The Patti Page Show” back in the 50’s.
Dont think anyone’s mentioned Tony Nelson’s GTO yet, in I Dream of Jeanie.
These shows were all rerun in Australia in the 70s and as a kid I soon developed a love of all things American, it all looked so perfect, I still feel that way actually.
An interesting bit of trivia about the featured episode ofLeave It To Beaver: Kim Hamilton appears as a maid in this episode, and this is the one and only time that an African-American person appeared on LITB.
Another cool fact is that Kim was married to Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes.
I wondered! I’ve not seen every episode and wouldn’t want to try to, but it is a very uniformly white show.
Blimey teddy, get me a drink! Gomer Pyle didn’t wash away a damn thing – that was absolutely bloody dire! Boring, moralizing and utterly unfunny.
Now that I think about it, when watching these as re-runs as a kid in the ’70’s, I didn’t find them very funny then either. Actually, US sitcoms from the entire ’60’s and ’70’s were universally poor, with the honorable exception of Get Smart (and even that was a tad repetitive).
That said, like any good car nut, I avidly watched the shows for the cars, mostly being wonderful and strange and giant things we didn’t get here. And a bit like jonco above, I also looked on in a wishful awe at the sheer stuff Americans had – microwaves, dishwashers, auto garage doors, second cars – that just didn’t exist here till years later. In truth, there’s a few of these productions where I couldn’t tell you to this day what the show was about, but I could describe the whizzo family kitchen and the giant glam bouncy castle car that Mother drove Family about in as if was nothing much!
Couldn’t agree with you more. Endless drivel spewing out of the tv, for decades. I watched it as a very young kid since there wasn’t anything else, but by the time I was 15 or 16, i was done with it, and retreated to my room with my music.
TV wasn’t called the “vaste wasteland” for nothing.
Speaking thereof, our TV has been stashed away; if we need to watch something, it’s available on the computer.
Oh, heavens—I hope you weren’t waiting for any actual merit or substance to the shows, beyond the parade of old cars!
That’s why they have laff tracks, to let watchers know “Hey, you were supposed to laugh at that”.
Ford got plenty of product placement value on Green Acres for Lincoln from 1965-’69, then Mercury after the Lincoln convertible ended after 1967. Always a soft gold metallic with eggshell white interior, must have video-taped the best. The ’67 Lincoln convertible held over through the 1968 season until they got a ’69 Mercury Marquis convertible. On various episodes, Lincoln Lehmann & Petersen limousines show up as well as Mr. Kimball’s Ford Bronco roadster. The Monroe brother Ralph and Alf drive a ’46-’48 Ford station wagon.
Oddly enough, Mr Haney drove a mid-’20 Dodge Four truck. But those had a 12V system, were easy to start when necessary without labored cranking of a Model AA Ford!
About 1982 I sold a 1965 Lincoln Continental Lehmann-Peterson limousine overseas. On delivering the limo to the shipper at the port of Dundalk in Baltimore, I turned the car over to them, and received a receipt. It was marked with the new owner’s info, a well known hotel chain that begins with H. It was to be delivered to their flagship hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark. Never saw it again . . .
That is . . . Until about 10 years ago. Back then I was still in the antiques business and buying estates. On going thru one estate, I found a selection of 1980s 8mm black & white XXX rated filmstrips from “Swedish Erotica”. On the cover of one filmstrip package was a photo showing a 1965 Lincoln Lehmann-Peterson limo, so I just HAD to watch it [it wasn’t easy finding an 8mm projector!]. The film showed the Lincoln picking up a customer from a prominent hotel in Copenhagen, for the ride of his life.
And this was when I started to get upset. During the time I owned what I believe was the same limo, I never experienced what that guy went thru during the limo ride!
And it wasn’t even his limo!
And, there also is the 71 challenger 340 convertible driven for the mod squad.they switched out the bumpers and grill, turning it into a 72. There were only two made both for mod squad. Then, some one here mentioned the kustom Coronado that mannix drove in the beginning of the series, changing into the kustom dart later in the show. These cars were made by the king of kustom, George Barris,who also made the original batmobile, and the drag-u-la featured in the Plus a bunch more lol