I was listening to an old time radio show. Basically the plot is this. George Burns forbids Gracie Allen from using the car. Gracie, of course, takes it anyway. She returns home to find it dented. She trys to get it fixed w/o George knowing it, with typical hillarious results
But it turns out GEORGE had actually dented the car first and forgot to tell Gracie. Now he tried to make out that Gracie did it and Gracie found out about it and gives him a good “what for.”
She says
Gracie) So YOU dented the car and tried to make out like I did it. Well sir just for that I’m buying a new dress
George) Yes Dear
Gracie) Imagine making me feel guilty, and you go around driving thru red lights, racing at a hundred miles and hour [she’s making that up]
George) Yes dear
Gracie) And I’m getting a new hat to go with the dress, Mr Los Angeles Driver. Honking at women, crusing the parkways
George) Yes Dear
Gracie) And I’m getting new shoes too. Imagine a man your age, throwing bottles in the street, crashing the car so bad that even MONKS wouldn’t want it.
At this point the audience laughs a lot. That line about the MONKS gets a huge laugh.
I’m taking a wild guess: monks typically have a vow of poverty, and wouldn’t normally have fancy things like cars. The car is apparently dented badly enough that it’s now even below what folks with a poverty vow will accept.
Other than that, I got nuthin’, and I’m probably wrong.
Okay, so they might have been familiar with Monk’s Towing, but wouldn’t they have been smart enough to realize that it had nothing to do with the setting of the show, and that 90% of the audience at that time would never have heard of it?
Wasn’t there a “Madman Monk” who might be the same guy referred to in the post above? If so, I think he was a used-car dealer…I tried to Google him, but couldn’t find a thing…
I remember having a book as a kid on off-beat U.S. sports cars - ones that were around before the Corvette that were made by small manufacturers. There was a Willy’s-Knight and a few others. One was made by - what what his name? - maybe George “Madman” Monk. Apparently he was very well known across the country based on his nutty advertising…
Yes, that would apply to whatever the reference was. What I question is that an east coast small business, which by its nature (towing cars) would only operate locally, would have been nationally known.
It could have Monk’s, or Munk’s. It could have been a car-related business, or something else we haven’t thought of yet. It could have been monks. It just seems highly improbable to me that it was a towing company with no presence in L.A…
Most people probably would have heard of it, though. Hell, it was rattling around in my head, which resides on the West Coast some sixty years later – for the same reason that dozens of other defunct companies have brand recognition for me: I listen to an hour or two of radio from the thirties, forties, and fifties every night before going to sleep.
Most of the companies are recognized because of sponsorship, but people mention contemporary companies during the program as well, just like today. I’ve heard Monk’s mentioned before (on Jack Benny’s show, I think, specifically to disparage a car.) It may have been something of a mini-meme.
It seems likely that, like many towing outfits, the company had a sideline in wrecking, and ran ads for a time saying they’d piick up any car. So people become aware of them.
Heck, advertising is a funny thing. Even today we’re exposed to plenty of advertising for and references to companies and products that aren’t local to us.
I believe you are referring to Earl “Madman” Muntz.http://www.smecc.org/mad_man_muntz!.htm
Muntz sold and made televisions, appearing in ads in longjohns and a Napoleon hat. Later, he made a lot of money selling car radios, and even in-car record players. He briefly had a car company, making a sweet little roadster. He made a stab at airplanes, too.
I wonder if Monk’s was a sponsor for the show? Did they have locally targetted advertising back then, or did exactly the same show go out to everyone, everywhere? It would explain why there’d be enough brand familiarity with a local company for the joke to work, and make the whole thing funnier in a meta-humor sort of way.
Nope. Local companies bought airtime on network affiliates and had commercials that ran between programs and during local programming. Much cheaper. It wouldn’t make any sense to pay for national advertising when you don’t have a national presence. The most memorable sponsors of Burns and Allen were Spam and Maxwell House.
I think this joke is may be somewhat analogous to the gag they did on The Office, where Michael makes sure to stop at Sbarro for a “New York” slice. (Maybe – I don’t know how much advertising leaks over to the west coast and middle America.)
Maybe a better analogy would be Cal Worthington and his dog ‘Spot.’ In sixty years, people may wonder why someone in New York might have a clue about a car dealer who was way out in California – yet he had (and has) huge recognition, and references to his commercials are all over '80s and '90s pop culture intended for national (and international) consumption, which will no doubt seem somewhat cryptic as the decades pass.
For instance, in UHF, they parodied Cal’s style and his “I’ll eat a bug!” routine with “I’ll club a seal!” – and it was set, where – Oklahoma? Arkansas? Somewhere where you might not expect a California car dealership to be well known, anyway. But the writers were from California, and anyway Cal’s commercials had achieved the same sort of notoriety as “Where’s the beef?” and “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” in spite of their local nature.
Cal Worthington’s ads also ran in Houston, where he had some dealerships for awhile. I’m not sure where else he might have had a presence, but it wasn’t just California.
We also have Sbarro here.
How can we find out whether Monk’s was a nationally-known entity? Anyone know if there are there other references to it in the pop culture of that time?