Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy

Nearly every single US presidential television ad from 1952 to the present can be seen HERE. Noticeably there aren’t many animated commercials, except in 1952 when both Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson had cartoon spots. Poor Stevenson was getting bargain-basement animation, as evidenced by the hands of one of the characters which is screwed on backwards in the “Double Talk” spot. Also in 1960 there’s the John F. Kennedy spot which was produced by none other than UPA director/ROGER RAMJET creator Fred Crippen, who is the subject of a retrospective that I’m putting together for this year’s Ottawa Animation Festival. The story behind the ad is that Fred and some co-workers had decided to create a spot for Adlai Stevenson’s 1960 run against Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and others at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. They put the ad on a loop and took it down to the Memorial Sports Arena where at night they projected it against the side of the building. They hadn’t been commissioned by Adlai’s campaign to do this, but were merely ardent Stevenson fans who wanted to show their support for him. The ad was something of a hit, and while Stevenson lost the Democratic nomination, some of Kennedy’s people who had seen it projected at the convention liked it enough to hire Fred’s studio Pantomime Pictures to produce the catchy Kennedy jingle spot. (link via BoingBoing.net)

Amid Amidi

Amid Amidi is Cartoon Brew's Publisher and Editor-at-large.

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