Fast-talking pitchmen sell cars to Houstonians.
This story originally ran in the Houston Post on June 27, 1965. It has been edited to fit this space.
When he started his double life, Arthur Edward Grindle would try to disguise himself by removing his glasses whenever he went out in public with his wife.
It embarrassed him in those days to be recognized as Art Grindle, the wild man of Houston television commercials, because, in his words:
“I’m really not loud or noisy at all.”
Grindle is no longer embarrassed about his oneminute TV spectaculars. But when he watches himself on TV, he still see “a completely different person.” There are, in fact, two Art Grindles.
THE OFF-CAMERA ART, is a pleasant and gracious man with a quick but relaxing voice.
As television’s 42-year-old enfant terrible, he has a voice like a runaway ripsaw. He ad-libs all his commercials at astonishing speeds, ranging up to 200 words a minute, with seldom a bobble before the cold fish-eye of the television camera. “... I want a sell you a car ...” His trademark line may never make Bartlett’s Quotations, but it stirs deep emotions in the public’s breast, from hypnotic fascination to profound loathing.
OTHERS, INCLUDING some of his TV competitors, regard him as a fender-banging clown, a refugee from Gang Busters, a blot on the auto business.
Personality aside, Grindle has become a symbol of a new age of the amateur in TV advertising, of the boss man getting before a camera himself to sell his product. It has been a striking success in Houston and, for better or worse, it is spreading around the country.
Some of Grindle’s major rivals on the Houston television scene just now are:
Harry Burkett Jr — Took over his firm’s TV advertising from professional announcers on the theory that car buyers “want to do business with the boss.” Stopped using ad agency copy because it made him feel “like a kid reciting poetry in school in the old sing-song.” Now writes his own commercials “just as if I were writing you a letter.” Strives for “sincerity” at a brisk 130 words a minute. “I don’t want to be a pitch man — I just want to give them the facts.”
Norm Livermore — A muscular, six-foot ex-Marine with a soft and cultured voice who was “as scared as a bad girl at high mass” when he began TV selling. Still has no great love for it. Views TV as a way to “give the public at least an idea of who they are going to deal with.” Tries to be “informative, direct, honest and natural.” Collaborates with advertising agent on his copy. Has no idea what his word speed is.
Marion Barbato — A onetime Rice Hotel valet who switched jobs in 1957 and became one of the nation’s leading car salesmen. After two professional announcers failed to draw, his boss, Julius Rosenstock, told him to “get up in front of the camera and talk to it the way you talk to customers.” Does commercials in a homey Texas drawl which he says draws lots of customers from rural communities around Houston. “I just be myself.”
ONLY GRINDLE concedes creating a different TV personality for himself, and only Grindle concedes he has gotten viewer protests about his commercials.
He says he still gets a few nasty letters, but he feels most people “more or less like the excitement and enthusiasm of the commercials.”
His electronic alter ego was born in the spring of 1962. Grindle tells it this way:
He had been doing “nice guy commercials” for several
months with little He had over-ordered and was heavily overstocked with cars. It was getting grim.
ONE DAY HE went to the studio and made another nice commercial about “a lady on Cloud 9 with her new car.”
“After it was finished, I looked at it,” he said. “Then I took the script and threw it across the room. I told the director, “That’ll never sell cars. Today we’re gonna sell cars’.” And so it began. “... I want a sell you a car ...”
Grindle hasn’t stopped since.
He now spends almost a full day a week, every Friday, taping the week’s quota of 30 to 40 TV spots for his three Houston auto agencies and one agency he runs in Dallas.
With his three — agency advertising budget to work from, Grindle tops all his competitors in number of TV exposures. His 30 to 40 commercials a week compete with 15 or 20 by Livermore, 10 or 15 by Burkett and five by Barbato.
Grindle’s critics think his shows make peculiarly appropriate showcases for his commercials. His less flamboyant TV rivals are confounded by the adult customer traffic he milks from so-called kiddie shows.
Whatever the secret, other dealers around the country are trying to borrow it.
A COUPLE OF his TV rivals think the novelty of Grindle’s frantic commercials has palled. Grindle doesn’t agree.
“Just as an experiment,” he said, “we have tried some slow commercials with me sitting by the fireplace, speaking normally. But they just didn’t draw the traffic that the hard commercials do...
“It’s hard sell all right, but it’s based on sincere enthusiasm to sell a car — to anybody and everybody.”
His rivals run the spectrum of softer sells, although, as Burkett noted, “I believe all of us are guilty from time to time of overenthusiasm.”