March 26-About Tipping Sacred Holy Cows and Other Stuff

Okay, regarding the “Harry Caray” commercials- as I mentioned, I haven’t heard from too many people who like them. I feel kind of bad for John Caponera, the local comic who’s doing them- first of all, I’ve heard him do a better Harry impression. I think the commercials are the end result of its writers and producers who really based the whole thing on Will Ferrell’s lame Harry impression (sorry, Farrell fans.)Having done some commercials, I’m sure they encouraged him to do it “more like Will”- but, regardless, just doing the commercials as Harry probably wasn’t a good idea. In Stella Foster’s Sun Times column yesterday, she had some interesting information about the spots-supposedly, they will be discontinued around March 30-is that because they were supposed to end right before baseball season starts, or because so many people dislike them? According to the Sun Times information, the sponsor paid only a nominal fee to the Caray estate for use of his image, allegedly saying they were doing a “tribute ad” to Harry- and Harry’s widow Dutchie was under the impression that it wasn’t going to be a huge campaign (by the way, she supposedly has not seen the spots yet.)
Getting back to how it appears that the impression is based more on Will Farrell’s Harry- I’m guessing that, because of the stuff that’s like “would you have a sabre-toothed tiger for a pet? I know I would…” –that was very typical of the lines in the Ferrell Harry bits, done, I’m sure, to indicate how Harry could get of subject…but, Harry fans, correct me if I’m wrong- I don’t recall Harry doing much of that “If the moon was made of cheese, would you eat it? I know I would…” type of thing…which, since it’s an imitation of an imitation, brings us to something I talked about a few days ago- how a lot of impressionists use lines that the actual person never said, yet, through repetition, people start to believe they actually said them! I got a nice e-mail from Dan Marco, who gave me a whole list of “never saids”- like the fact that James Cagney never said “You dirty rat” –although a thousand Cagney imitators have! “Dragnet’s” Jack Webb didn’t say “Just the facts, ma’am” until after Stan Freberg did his parodies of him saying that-previously, he would refer to women as “ma’am” and say “we just want the facts”- but never put the two together until Stan did…
Mark also had an interesting observation-that Ed Sullivan began to use the same cadence that impressionist John Byner did for the phrase “reeeally big shew- right here on our stage”-AFTER Byner’s impression got “really big”- so Ed was imitating Byner doing Ed!
Thanks, Mark, for the info- and everybody “enjoy” those “Harry imitation” commercials while you can.” Hey, everybody-would you take ‘em off now if you had the power? I know I would…”)