That’s awesome!
So’s that!
Haw haw. This reminds me of the South Park episode “Medicinal Fried Chicken”.
I’ve been aware of him basically for as long as I’ve been aware of anything, really. My brother even had a Col. Sanders piggy bank back in the 70s, that was a realistic portrayal of Col. Sanders. Later they produced a more cartoonish version of the piggy bank. So, for a generation born in the late 60s, we’ve always know who he was.
Surprisingly, he looks a lot like Michael Keaton .
I spent the summers of 1962–68 with my dad in West Virginia. I remember Kentucky Fried Chicken being around almost from the start, but I don’t think we ever sampled it.
When I saw Goldfinger with my dad and brother in the winter/spring of 1964–65, I recognized the franchise immediately. (Felix Leitner and his CIA partner were having a snack at one when they picked up Bond’s tracking signal—“He’s on the move!”—one of the most blatant product placements in cinema history.)
It was around 1966 or '67 that I saw the Colonel featured in an episode of Truth or Consequences hosted by Bob Barker. None of the contestants had any idea of who he was either.
The Colonel was in some KFC commercials in the '70s or early '80s. He usually just sat around swaying to the music as grateful employees and customers sang their praises to the chicken. I remember thinking at the time that he looked really out of it, but I know now he was still sharp enough to bring legal action against the corporate drones who were tampering with his recipes.
According to the Chicago style guide my publishing house uses, that’s perfectly acceptable practice when dealing with a word like "do’s, " as in “do’s and don’ts.” Otherwise it might be confused with “does” (female deer) and “does” (the verb).
In 1965/1966, on the drive to grandparent’s house. We went through Salt Lake, which is where the first franchise was. The only landmark I remember from the drive was the picture of Colonel Sanders. I don’t remember if was a billboard or in front of a restaurant.(I was young),
I would expect that there were more restaurants in the Salt Lake area than other parts of the country at that time.
I was born in 1967, in New York, where I don’t think we had Kentucky Fried Chicken yet. I can’t remember not knowing about it, however. But “Col. Sanders” is another thing entirely. I didn’t associate him with the place until I was maybe a teenager. In the 70s, the only thing I associated with Kentucky Fried Chicken (which wasn’t called KFC then), was the slogan “Finger lickin’ good,” which I always thought was a little gross.
What’s My Line is full of famous non-famous, and the other way around. One of my personal favorite actresses is Irene Dunne, but mostly only film buffs have heard of her-- not only did she retire in the 50s, and make the bulk of her films in the 30s, but she has the distinction of having an extraordinary number of her films remade (a sure sign of talent, BTW, because only popular films get remade), which means that nearly all of her films were unavailable from, more or less, 1950-1980; when a film was remade in the Golden Era, the studio producing the remake usually bought the rights to the original, and pulled it from distribution.
At the time, everyone on the panel remembered her career, though, and was blindfolded when she appeared as the mystery guest; she also disguised her voice. Not to mention, they guessed it was her based on what seemed like scant information even to me, who had a cat named Irene Dunne.
Even by about 1990, few people knew who she was, and four years ago, when a mother at the preschool was a dead-ringer for her, and I said so-- to someone more or less my age, not someone 26-- I got a blank stare.
It kind of makes me sad. But she was greatly loved in her own time. She once starred in a film with Cary Grant, and was paid $100,000 over her salary and percentage (in 1930s $$) to take second billing; another time, a studio making a screwball comedy hoped to star her, but she wasn’t available, so they went with second choice Katharine Hepburn.
So, you just never know.
I recall seeing commercials in Ohio for Kentucky Fried Chicken in what must have been around 1968 advertising that you’ll have a finger licking good time barrel of fun. We never ate out at all when I was a kid so we never had it and dad would state that my mom’s fried chicken was better anyway (it was!). We first got a bucket on a trip down to Texas when we ran out of mom’s prepared sandwich’s and chicken, it was a big deal at the time.
Sanders was not put onto the KFC logo until 1978, so they wouldn’t have recognized him from that. It’s possible they heard of him, but it’s doubtful they were doing ads with him. They were better known for their “finger licking good” slogan and ads.
The unapostrophed plural of do is dos not does, at least in the dictionaries I’ve checked. But dos has its own possible confusion with the Spanish word or possibly the operating system. (Words ending with “o” can often go both ways. Taco is usually tacos. Tornado can be either. Avocados is preferred to the -es ending. Even potato can go both ways, though the -es ending is much preferred there.)
Penny Serenade?
As I indicated, I’m obligated to use “do’s.” I must admit I prefer it to “dos,” which does* look very Spanish.
*No pun intended.
And yet, I also notice very old-fashioned manners when I see reruns of the show. The panelists are “Mr. Cerf” and “Miss Kilgallen”, and when the contestants shake hands with the panelists the men stand up.
Woe unto the poor restaurant owner who sells an odd number of chickens.
He may not have been on the logo itself, but as noted above, his face was appearing on the chicken bucket by the 1960s.
That’s because people back then had “style” and “class,” two things that are in deficit today.
I definitely remember seeing his image before Goldfinger. Don’t recall if it was used in the movie, though.
History Channel did a segment on Colonel Sanders in The Food That Built America series, one of the few bright spots on its schedule. Ray Kroc was also featured prominently in the segment on McDonald’s. (Anyone who ever worked at McD’s in high school or college knows what Ray looked like.)
But do they know how his name was spelled?
Typo corrected, thanks!