Two Designers Walk Into A Bar

Episode 12: Dogs Playing Poker, Ernest P. Worrell and Pitchmen Going Pop

Released February 17, 2021
© 2021 Two Designers Media, LLC

Two designers walk into a bar is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network. For more information about our show, or to discover more podcasts you'll enjoy, visit evergreen podcasts.com and Brown and Bigelow. For those of you who may have heard, oh, they're promotion. They were a, let me start over, but, you know, but, um, Um, God just drew a blank on the name.

Welcome to two designers, walk into a bar, a place where pop culture creatives, discover design icons that make us tick, and we share a few cocktails in the process. Yep. Today we'll be talking about what happens when something created to sell a product, not only outlasts it, but also grows bigger than its humble origins to the point that it has its own center of gravity with apologies to flow.

Max Headroom and that stoner kid that used to try to sell us of. Computers, we'll be discussing a couple of cultural touchstones, so find your best, convenient store bought cigar. Mix your booze with a fun fizzy soda, and join us once again as we belly up to the bar. So Elliot, I have a funny story to tell you today.

You know, we both do love a little bit of the low brow, right? Yes. And uh, I got a story of something. I've known about for a long time. That pisses on the leg, uh, of, of highbrow all the time. . So let me explain to you, so, you know, the painting, the of the dogs playing poker, are you're familiar with that, right?

Oh, of course. A hundred percent. Okay. Yep. Well, so not long ago I was doing some, uh, browsing around on the internet and I. Man, I wonder if any of those paintings exist and how much they are, you know, surely they're not that much. Um, you know, they were sort of cheesy calendar art. Um, well, I come to find out they were actually done for, uh, advertising purposes, which I had no idea.

I thought it was just some dude that made oil paintings, uh, of dogs. But the dogs playing poker were actually a series of oil paintings, and they were commissioned by Brown and Bigelow to advertise cigar. So Brown and Bigelow, those of you may have heard of them. They're a promotional publishing company and they're based out of St.

Paul, Minnesota, and today we know them as as a like a, an imprinted. Promotional item supplier, things that you would have your logo printed on. But back in the day, they worked with many famous illustrators to create calendars and posters and things like that that you would see in offices. They worked with Norman Rockwell.

Maxville Parish. Really guy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, Roth Armstrong, Gil, uh, El Green. And this guy that painted these dogs is a guy named Cassius Marcellas Coolidge, who wins. He totally wins the name game right there. That's the best name ever. I know. Cassius. And, and he would even sign some of his paintings as just cash, which, you know, makes him even all the cooler.

Um, He was actually painting dogs that had been humanized and he was commissioned to do a series of 16 paintings, way back 1894 to 1910 for Brown and Bigelow, as I said, to advertise cigars. If you think about these paintings, so the, the dogs playing poker, those are probably the most famous ones. Mm-hmm.

and there's actually 11 of those. But they're doing other things too. They're doing other things that, that, you know, dogs just kicking it, enjoying life. Do like playing football or watching baseball or out on a road trip or something like that. But what was cool? The dogs playing poker were by far the most popular, and it's because these paintings that Coolidge did, they set up these whole scenes, like there was so much shit going on in these paintings, and they told a story.

And if you think about it, they were used for calendars, so they were up. You know, a month at a time. So it gave people time to really sort of get into the, the illustration. Now I understand why there was a series of 12 or so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what's cool is they, they tell a story just like. Kind of a classic painting would tell a story, but you feel like you've just walked into the middle of this scene.

The most famous one like that I know of you probably are familiar with this one, with the bulldog passing the ace with his back leg to his friend. Uh, that's called a friend in need, you know, which, come on, that could happen. I've seen that. I've seen that. Yeah. Um, a St. Bernard holds a pair of. Who's trying to bluff to get all the chips?

That one's called a bold bluff. And then a follow up to that, there's a painting called Waterloo, which shows the outcome of a bold bluff. With the St. Bernard winning and all the dogs are like, eh, man, you know, they're like dropping their cigars. They're spilling their scotch , you know, they're like, what?

What just happened here? So what struck me about this was, again, I had no idea that this was advertising art. I thought it was just, you know, a painting. I didn't realize that when you look at every single one, there's, you know, a dog holding a cigar, a cigar is part of it in some way, but it definitely is not, um, overly done.

So it got me thinking about, I wonder if there are other pop culture icons that we know very well that could have possibly been selling products at one. It's funny you mentioned that, so I am going to, Use this topic, use this opportunity to deviate a little bit from our typical format. Um-huh. , I feel like up to this point we have always discussed something that has in one form or another, manifested itself as a physical object.

Whether that object be something. Now that's, that's kind of digital in nature, like a typeface or something that is totally physical, like a giant sign or trading cards. But, um, this time I'm actually going to go with a person. You have totally inspired me to go with a character whose roots are in advertising, but a lot of people probably.

about his life. This character's life beyond advertising. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna give you two catchphrases and you tell me if, based on these two catchphrases, if you can guess who it is I'm talking about. Oh, okay. Shoot. Okay, now I want the character. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. Not not the actor, but the character.

Okay. Okay. And I'm gonna do my best, impress. Which means they're not gonna be very good . All right. Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. Phrase number one. Hey, Verne. Hey Verne. Oh yeah. Uh, yeah. And then phrase number two. Know what I mean? Know what mean,  Yeah. Yeah. Ernest p Wark, right? Yes. Is that right? Exactly, exactly.

I mean, Ernest, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. So, but, uh, so that he's not a real character. I mean, I mean, I know he, I know he made movies and stuff, but, so that's, there's not a guy named Ernest p Wark. So this is the interesting thing. So you touched on a, a, you hit the nail on the. You talked about movies. A majority of people know this Charact.

Because of the movies he was in. Ernest Saves Christmas, Ernest goes to camp, you know, there's a whole great movies Yeah. Series of the I know Todd, again, you talked before about how you felt the Oscars were fixed. And this is further proof for you that, uh, you know what? The best work never sees the light of day at the Oscars.

That's right. When Ernest saves Christmas did not get a nomination nod. Something was wrong. Yes. Yes. Well, so the actor behind. The Ernest p War character is a fellow named Jim Varney. And, um, Ernest got his start because Varney was a pitchman for local businesses on television, and that's where the character came from.

Where, uh, in like the south or something. So he and, uh, a Nashville ad man named John Cherry. Who is a partner with another guy named Jerry Cardin in an ad agency named Cardin and Cherry? Oddly enough, Uhhuh , they with Jim Varney created this character, Ernest p Worl. Now Todd, with you being a fan of Andy Griffith, can you think of an Andy Griffith character with a similar.

Oh yeah, yeah. Uh, Ernest T Bass. Exactly. So that's where the name came from. Oh, no kidding. Really? Yes. That's funny. Yes. Every character has a handle. Every character has sort of a catchphrase as we talked about, and so the hey Vern and the, you know what I mean? Those were the two phrases that Varney came up with as part of this character.

Mm-hmm. . So the way these guys made this work was Cardin Cherry would approach local Nashville area businesses. So think about car lots, uh, grocery stores, places like this, and they would. Hey, do you want to do a quick low budget ad with this earnest character plugging your. Enough people took them up on it to the point that sometimes in a single day, they shot 25 spots for different damn businesses.

Wow. And these were all super low budget. Yeah. So they were all just shot with a handheld camcorder. You know, there was nothing at all sophisticated about this. You know, it's the equivalent of just you or I going out with our iPhone today and just shooting one of us hamming it up for, right, right. You know, a local grocery chain or.

A lot of times these were shot through the vantage point of a kitchen window. So Ernest p Worl would always be walking by the open kitchen window with a kitchen table there, and he would come up and he would start talking to Verne. Now we, the audience, were Verne, so Verne was. Us. So Ernest was always talking to us.

He was asking us questions, he was pitching a product. He was telling us what we needed to do, and this was sort of a brilliant master stroke on the part of the structure of these advertising spots, because as a viewer, it immediately put us in the middle of the action. Right, right, right. So these spots took off and they took off to the point that Koch notice.

Ernest P World , and so he started advertising Sprite and I think TAB and some of these other products in the Coke portfolio. So they quickly realized they ran into a problem working with these local businesses that was a grocery chain or a dairy company, or a, a gas utility or some of these other things.

They were having exclusive contracts signed with these folks basically, of course, We will not advertise with any other grocery chain. Mm-hmm. , if you work with us and you advertise with us. So when these national grocery chains, or national dairy companies or other large, uh, you know, nationwide entities came knocking on the door of Carden and Cherry wanting to use Ernest p Worl, they couldn't do it.

Their hands were tied because of these exclusive contracts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because. Really, it was born out of the local car dealer. Exactly. Wow. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Yeah. . Yeah. So that became a quick problem. So suddenly, Uh, Carden and Sherry had this very popular character, but they didn't have a path through product endorsement to monetize it in a major way.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So what do they do? They pivot to TV and movies. Right? These Uhhuh , uh, exclusive agreements were just for advertising. They weren't for anything else. So that's how Ernest became part of our pop culture. That's how we started to see him in movies and all these different sorts of. Oh, okay. So, uh, does, uh, well, is, is the actor Jim Varney, is he still around?

Does he do commercials anymore? Yeah, sadly he passed away at age 50 in, uh, 2000. Um, oh, wow. He was a long time chain smoker and he died of lung cancer, so, um. Oh, wow. It's amazing though that 20 years later we still. Who he is and we still know his work. So a little bit of background on him really quickly.

So he was an American actor, a comedian, and a writer, and he's best known for, of course, Ernest p Worl. And this is something he won a daytime Emmy award for because he had a Saturday morning TV kids show on cbs. Finally. Finally, he got his recognition Exactly. With DMA war. Exactly. So he was both a serious actor and a standup comedian.

Mm-hmm.  before this Ernest P War character was invented. And you know, as they say, the rest is history. Hmm hmm. And he was in other movies outside of the Ernest movies as well. So along with those nine movies, he was Jed Clampett in a film adaptation of the Beverly Hillbillies in 1993. Right. And he.

Another Pixar tie in Todd. He was Slinky Dog in Toy Story and Toy Story two. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've forgotten about that. I did know about the, uh, the Beverly Hillbillies remake. Yeah. So he went on to do things. Capitalize on his fame as an individual, just outside of the earnest character as well.

Naturally, there's cultural impact here. I think one of the things that we always tend to circle back on is pop culture, and why are these people remembered, you know, or why are these products remembered? Why are these characters remembered? Okay. So another, as you can imagine, line of potential prophets were things like books and toys that were earnest driven, and they were made when Varney was alive, but they really weren't that popular.

They weren't that impactful. Mm-hmm. . But his character over the years has been parodied on a ton of different television. That also, of course, have not only mined pop culture, but they themselves have become part of pop culture, Beavis and Butthead family guy. Oh, wow. And the Simpsons. Oh, wow. Among many, many others.

So you'll love this. I need to, I need to list some of these for you. Yeah. So these are some of the fake earnest films that are in episodes of The Simpsons. Okay. Are you ready for these? ? Okay. Ernest needs a. Ernest versus the Pope. Ernest goes to Broadway,  Ernest goes straight to video,  and Ernest goes somewhere cheap.

So you can start to see how this has this long tail beyond just the original work. And then other TV shows that have referenced the earnest movies as well are saved by the Bell Mystery Signs Theater 3000. How I met your. And the Big Bang Theory among many, many others.

Todd, those dogs have the right idea. Hanging out with friends, having a few drinks, and just shooting. Hey, I tell you what, before we get into the second half of the episode, let's go refill our snack bowls, get a new picture from the bar, and meet back here in just a few minutes. Know what I mean? Hi podcast listeners.

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Are we done? We're done. We're done.

So that's an interesting tie in because I was thinking about, um, kind of some takeaways with the dogs playing. And what you just mentioned there is exactly one of the same things that I was thinking, which is, um, Uh, icons, these pop culture icons, uh, they got their life started as pitching a product, but they become far hipper, um, than the original intent.

You know, the dogs playing poker has also been parodied, uh, a number of times, like for family guy. Um, ESPN on video games, movies, and certainly has been seen in every game room across America. And I think another takeaway is what really sells these into the world of pop culture. What sort of gets them out of just the orbit of advertising is that they do represent this, this kind of nirvana, this, uh, they're certainly in front of us in media, all the.

But in the case of the dogs playing poker, um, this is something we've talked about in past episodes when we talk about parody, is the, their genre scenes that were influenced by Flemish Baroque paintings of everyday life. So, mm-hmm. , the, the painter went to. Uh, the extent of making them look believable, like, uh, the golden age of Dutch Masters to really sell the parody and then Yeah.

When you look at them, it's, you know, dogs playing poker . Right, right. . It's because, well, it's this business awareness of high art to elevate the low art. Right? Oh, that's a good way to look at it, because it wouldn't have been anywhere near. Um, sustainable if it were just guys sitting around playing poker and smoking cigars, right?

Yeah. Like completely forgettable. But Coolidge was, uh, astute enough to know that, take that, um, parody of the genre of that Flemish painting and make. Uh, do it . Um, because you know, that's what we love and it's what we love about parody. It's that plausible impossibility, which I love that phrase because that just means it's something that.

You know, it probably is not going to happen. It's hard to see dogs passing cards under the table with their little hin legs, but it's plausible that it could happen. Mm-hmm. , um, do you think, do you think he also chose dogs? Because dogs are quote unquote man's best friend, and cigar smoking was a man's activity, and so it was this whole like male, you know, kind of today of course you have the man cave culture.

Do you think this was sort of an early version of. Absolutely. And, and particular dogs, like the dogs that were representing the, the men were German Shepherds St. Bernard's Bulldogs. And uh, there's even a few paintings. Where the, the wives come in and are busting up the poker game, and those are like French poodles, you know?

So, um, so very humanized, uh, in, in their character, which again, the thing that's so great and will post, uh, a link to these, the thing that's so great is there's a ton of stories and we need to see these things big because I'm sure that stories are being told with the cards. You know what the hands are and the expressions of the dogs and things like that.

And on top of this, so what started with my original quest was to see if any of these paintings. Uh, could be bought for a reasonable amount. And the answer is no.  , like, so there was a, a, I saw this one bit, um, of this snotty art critic who referred to, uh, Coolidge's paintings as pop schlock. And to me, like that makes us feel comfortable.

It's real and it makes it, um, it makes it something that we can relate. And obviously we remember it. And here's my coda to the critics comment about Pop schlock. In 2015, Coolidge's uh, painting poker game, which was done in 1894, sold for $650,000 at Sotheby's, $650,000. Yes.  one of of dogs playing. And just for the record, you weren't the one who bought it.

No. Yeah. To be really clear, I do not own that painting, but I'll take it if someone wants to give it to me. . Well, it's interesting, um, this is a great, uh, segue because I was thinking about a few things that the earnest character, what can, what can we learn from earnest? I ask myself that every day. , you know, Ernest went in all these places.

How can we, where do we go to learn from Ernest? So, uh, right. You know, a few takeaways here. So one is that the Ernest character was one of the few characters that was able to bridge the chasm between a character in a 32nd TV spot. And into a series of movies that are independent. Mm-hmm.  of products.

Mm-hmm. , like for example. Mm-hmm.  Flow from Progressive. She's never going to appear mm-hmm.  in a series of movies about going to camp. Right, right. It would, that would be silly. Yeah. It's really impossible to. Separate a majority of characters from the products that they endorse because we're introduced to them both simultaneously.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . And so the second point I wanted to raise is that, Because the character earnest was not associated with any one thing because he endorsed so much different stuff. Food products, car dealerships, TV stations. He was universal. He had to be universal, so he was highly adaptable. Right. So when it came time to drop him into a movie, that was something that Varney could very quickly improvise because he was doing so many of these different TV spots over the course of the day.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you if that was probably the reason why it moved. He moved into movies so easily in that, uh, he wasn't known for one particular brand and he, he just represented that sort of nosy neighbor from what I understand. He would basically, over the course of these shoot days, these intense shoot days for all of these local spots.

He had basically a photographic memory. So someone would say, okay, you're gonna do this Toyota dealership. And he would read the script once and it was templated, of course, you know, he had to insert certain things at certain points. Mm-hmm. . But he would read the script once and he would just nail it. Like there was never any second take.

Not because they weren't that much of a hurry, but because they never needed to do it. Wow. Like he just had that good of a memory. Wow. Yeah. So I guess, you know, it was one of those that, uh, you knew what you were hiring too. Like if you, if you hired Ernest, you knew he was gonna be Ernest and you weren't gonna, uh, spend a lot of time talking about the motivation of, of, of a particular car dealer,

Right. I would assume it would be to sell more cars, . I mean, you know, why does Ernest care about the cars and, and such? But yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. And then the third reason, the last reason. Hey, news flash kids viral videos existed before the internet. Right. The earnest character was one of the first viral video stars because he was in so many local markets.

Right, right. And I will say, Todd, this includes the market where I grew up in northeastern Ohio. Oh yeah. There is a chain of stores of food stores called Convenient. You know, these little carry out stores, they're still around today. Mm-hmm. . And in doing my research, I found one of the. Convenient food store spots with earnest in it.

And I will add this to our episode page along with a compendium of all of the different. Ads that this guy did, and maybe a trailer or two of some of Earnest's, uh, , you know, movie based adventures as well. So, lot of different things, but this was a very, very versatile character. Yeah. So this was a really interesting road to go down.

Now the question is, are there any earnest oil paintings available? Not sure that there are, that might be some, but there may be a market for one. Yes. And maybe I should get busy on this. You should actually. You should buy, you should buy some velvet, I think, and then you can start your earnest paintings.

That, that's true. That's true. Uh, man, so interesting conversation. Uh, the. That started with me just trying to seek out thinking that no one in their, in their right mind would ever care about a painting of dogs playing poker. And I could probably find one . No. And, um, also about, uh, Jim Varney as Ernest p Worl who, uh, started as a, a pitchman everywhere it sounds like.

Yes. And became well loved and well known, and it was a natural, easy. To movies because the character was already known and the character was already loved. Yes. Hey, speaking of being silver tongue and persuasive, do you think we could walk back over to the bar and maybe, uh, see about getting some free drinks?

Uh, persuade me. Yes. Persuade me.  Twist in my arm. . All right, man. Well, this was a lot of fun and. I hope the audience had as much fun as we did, and folks, we look forward to seeing you back here at the bar very, very soon. Yep. See ya.

Todd and I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has been listening to us throughout our first season. With 12 episodes under our belts, we feel this is a great place to press pause for a couple of months. When we first started this podcast, it was a big experiment. Neither of us had done anything like this.

We had no idea if it would even work or if anyone else would be interested in the goofy stuff that we like. But sometimes you've gotta say, what the hell? And just put something out there. So we did and we've enjoyed the support we've gotten, the memories listeners have shared with us and the suggestions for future topics, keep 'em coming.

During our break, we'll be prepping for season. And working on more ways to get the word out about what we are up to. We're not going anywhere. Feel free to email us, hit us up on social media, visit our website and if you're feeling generous, make a donation to help support us. But most importantly, subscribe and ask a friend who also we're available on most major streaming platforms.

If there's another place we should be, An email to hello at two designers. Walk into a bar.com. We'll get to both of us. So thank you again. While for many of us, the doors to our favorite watering holes are currently closed. There's always an empty stool waiting for you next to us here in our bar. We'll be back.

See you soon. Two designers walk into a bar is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network. For more information about our show, or to discover more podcasts you'll enjoy, visit evergreen podcasts.com.