Cal Worthington

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Calvin Coolidge Worthington (born November 27, 1920 in Shidler, Oklahoma ) is a well-known car dealer throughout the West Coast of the United States. He is best known for his unique radio and television advertisements for the Worthington Dealership Group. He was usually joined by his "Dog Spot", except that "Spot" was never a dog. Often, Spot was either a tiger, a seal, an elephant or a bear. Spot was officially retired in the mid 1980s, however he is mentioned in some commercials today.

According to a profile in the Sacramento Bee published in 1990, Worthington grossed $316.8 million in 1988, at the time making him the largest single owner of a car dealership chain. He has sold automobiles since 1945 and owns a 24,000 acre (100 km²) ranch located in Orland, California, north of Sacramento. His advertising agency, named Spot Advertising, after the dog, had Worthington as the only client, and spent $15 million on commercials, the most of any auto dealer at the time. He acts much differently off the screen than the zany, grinning cowboy in the car commercials, being described as low-key and quiet.

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[edit] Early life

Worthington grew up in a family of nine children and dropped out of school at the age of 12. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps at the age of 15. Worthington served in the United States Army in World War II, flying for the Army Air Corps, where he was the aerobatics champion at Goodfellow Field in San Angelo, Texas, and served as a second lieutenant. During the war, he served as a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot with the 390th Bomber Group, flying 29 missions over Germany, and was discharged after the war as a captain. He was awarded the Air Medal five times, as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service. Jimmy Doolittle presented Worthington the DFC. He has also been in recent articles in flying magazines as the man who trained some of America's astronauts while in the service.

After leaving the Army, Worthington wanted to be a commercial pilot, but was stymied by the requirements at the time for a college degree. He sold his car for $500 to purchase a gas station, which proved a bust, but was able to sell it for the same amount he paid, an indication of future success in sales. He began to sell used cars in front of the post office in Corpus Christi, Texas by making a folksy pitch when people got their mail. He moved to a dirt lot rented for $25, where he made a $500 profit one week by selling three cars, and decided this would be his career.

[edit] Professional Life

In 1950, Worthington moved to Huntington Park, California, with a Hudson Motor Car dealership and purchased time for a three-hour live country music TV show every Saturday and Sunday. When television became more established and sponsorship of entire programs was unfeasible, he went to doing commercials, saturating the overnight station break schedules of every local station in Los Angeles. One of Worthington's rivals was Chick Lambert of 'Brand Motors Ford City' who, as pitchman, always introduced "my dog, Storm" ( a large German Shepherd Dog) as a prop in the commercials. Storm would be seen either lounging on the hood of a car, sitting behind the wheel or walking with his owner along the rows of cars. Worthington countered with his first "dog" Spot, a gorilla that roared. The response was so positive that a new campaign was born, featuring "Cal Worthington and his dog Spot!" Among the many creatures that were featured as Spot were a killer whale from SeaWorld; a lion; an elephant; a goose that, in a memorable appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, ruined Carson's suit; a tiger; various snakes; a rhinoceros; and a carabao (water buffalo).

Note: Re: Chick Lambert - To see an outtake video of Chick Lambert, with his dog Storm on the hood of a car, go to here, but warning, some profanity in this hilarious outtake.

Worthington appeared as a car dealer in the 1973 film Save the Tiger in addition to numerous appearances on The Tonight Show. According to a spokesman for the Television Bureau of Advertising, Worthington "is probably the best known car dealer pitchman in television history."

The 1985 film Into the Night, starring Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer, featured Cal Worthington's television advertisements prominently as an expository element of Goldblum's character's insomnia.

[edit] Personal & Professional Difficulties

In 1979, Worthington divorced his wife of 37 years, Barbara. The same year he married Susan Henning, swimsuit model, and aspiring actress. They divorced acrimoniously in 1986 amidst a palimony suit, charges that Worthington lived simultaneously with Barbara and Henning for seven years, and a demand that Worthington split up the ranch and his estimated $100 million net worth. The palimony suit was dismissed. He has two children with Barbara, Rod and Barbie; and three children with Susan Henning, Calvin, Courtney, and Susie. He married disk jockey Bonnie Reese in 1995, approximately 40 years his junior, and has a son, Coldren Wilshire, with her.

Worthington has been the target of various legal actions. In 1978, the California Attorney General charged him with deceptive advertising, which Worthington settled without admitting guilt for $50,000. He signed a consent decree in 1986 and paid $60,000 due to charges of deceptive advertising. He claimed that the consent decree would hamper his style by increasing the size of fine print and forcing him to explain financing deals verbally instead of through on screen disclosures. In 1987, Worthington was ranked last in trustworthiness out of 16 public personalities in the Seattle, Washington area. In 1995, General Motors refused to give Worthington any additional franchises because of weak customer service ratings at his existing lots. In 2002, he appeared in advertisements opposing limits on carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles for the California Motor Car Dealers Association. To counter the negative publicity, Worthington went on a publicity campaign to turn around any negative perception. Worthington annually holds a fundraiser at his ranch in Northern California to raise money for the local hospital. He has been awarded the "keys" to numerous cities. One such example is Long Beach, California where the city sign bears his name on the 405 freeway. Today, all of his dealerships have turned around their negative image for the most part and boast one of the highest ratings in customer satisfaction.

[edit] Life Today

The Worthington Dealership Group has outlets in Carlsbad, California; Long Beach, California; and Anchorage, Alaska. Dealerships that have been sold were located in Federal Way, Washington; Sacramento, California; Folsom, California; Sugar Land, Texas; Houston, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; South Gate, California and Claremont, California [1]. He was one of the first to abandon the traditional stand-alone dealership in favor of "auto malls."

In addition to automobile dealerships, Worthington owns ten ranches (including his headquarters, including the PX ranch in Nevada, once owned by Bing Crosby). As of 2002, he also owned three shopping centers and one office tower, grossing $600 million a year.

As of late September, 2007, some TV ads for Worthington's Long Beach, and Carlsbad, California dealerships are not showing Cal Worthington and do not have his voice announcing the cars for sale. His son, who sounds much like Cal, is in fact now doing the audio talking on the ads. Cal is supposedly in fine health for an 86-year-old man.

[edit] My Dog Spot Ads

For nearly a quarter-century, from the 1960s up through the 1990s, Worthington ran a series of TV ads for his auto dealerships. They were known as the "My Dog Spot" ads because each commercial would introduce "Cal Worthington and his dog Spot!" However, the "dog" was always some exotic animal being led around on a leash, such as a tiger or elephant.

These commercials were originally a parody of a long-running string of commercials for local Ford dealer, which invariably began with "I'm Chick Lambert, Sales Manager here at Ralph Williams Ford, and this is my dog, Storm." Storm was a German Shepherd, who was usually lounging on the hood of the first car to be featured in the ad. These commercials were seen on every channel in Los Angeles television through the 1960s and early 1970s.

Worthington's commercial was accompanied by a jingle accompanied by the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It" went, "if you want a car or truck, Go see Cal, if you want to save a buck, Go see Cal," with the "Go see Cal" part repeated at least 15 times.

[edit] Pop-Culture References

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  • In the 1989 Weird Al Yankovic film, UHF, a commercial is shown with a used car dealer named Crazy Ernie who promises that if "no one comes down within the next 15 minutes and buys a car", he's going to "club a baby seal to make you a better deal". Yankovic, who grew up in Lynwood, California, more than likely was inspired by Worthington's commercials.
  • George "Goober" Lindsey played a car salesman named "Uncle Cal" that had an orangutan for a limo driver when his two nephews came to visit needing a car for the cannonball run in the movie Cannonball Run II; the way he dresses and talks and acts is very similar to the commercials that Cal Worthington has starred in.
  • In Tom and Jerry Kids Tom was forever pestered by a slick feline door-to-door salesman named 'Calaboose Cal "of the Calaboose Cal Mouse-Rousting Company of Costa Mesa, California". Cal's mouse-catching devices were invariably overpriced and always backfired spectacularly. Cal was voiced by Phil Hartman in a fast-talking, loud baritone.
  • Throughout the Histeria! episode "Loud Kiddington's Ancient History", Loud and his dog Fetch show up in a few sketches based on the "My Dog Spot" ads. In these vignettes, Loud continually claims that Fetch will eat something disgusting if he fails to sell his products, and the Kid Chorus bookend his appearances by singing the same tune as in the ads. This theme was also used in the later episodes "Americana" and "North America".
  • On an episode of Match Game, host Gene Rayburn read this question: "Nick said, 'Our economy has hit rock bottom. I never thought I'd see the day when I would see _______ in the unemployment line!'" When Charles Nelson Reilly was asked for his answer, he responded, "Who's on TV more than anybody, Gene? Who's on TV more than anybody? Cal Worthington and his dog Spot!" When the audience proceeded to laugh hysterically, Rayburn explained the joke to those who didn't live on the west coast, and then remarked, "It's obvious that I won't be buying a car from him!"
  • In the 1993 film Made in America, Ted Danson plays a Cal Worthington-like car dealer named Halbert "Hal" Jackson, who is the sperm-donor father of a young black woman.
  • There is a band in Los Angeles called Pu$$y-Cow named after the often misheard lyric in the Cal Worthington jingle.
  • In an episode of Sanford and Son, Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) is making a television commercial for his salvage yard and refers to his son Lamont (Demond Wilson) as "My dog spot".
  • In an epsisode of Emergency!, the paramedics treat a car dealer similar to Worthington; the man was supposed to appear with a trained tiger, but foolishly carried a package of salted peanuts in his coat pocket. The tiger smelled the peanuts and attacked the man.

[edit] Sources

 This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations.
You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.
  • Woodroffe, Pam. Seattle Times April 6, 1986, "Cal Worthington's 'depressed'"
  • Hintzberger, John. Seattle Times April 15, 1986, "Trustworthy or Trustless? Poll rates people in the public eye"
  • Stanley, Don. Sacramento Bee January 14, 1990, "The Dealer: By Golly, Cal Worthington Went From Dirt-Poor Ranch Hand to Millionaire Car Czar"
  • Rivenburg, Roy. Los Angeles Times June 3, 2002, "Spot's Co-Star"
  • In the film Memento, starring Guy Pierce, A Cal Worthington Commercial can be seen on the TV set in his hotel room.

http://www.hemmings.com/hcc/stories/2007/08/01/hmn_feature18.html

[edit] References in Media

  • In the movie Into the Night, the full version of his commercial jingle is shown playing on a TV.
  • In the movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills, a partial version of his commercial jingle is shown playing on a TV.

[edit] References

  1. ^ “An auto icon gives up his keys: Worthington closes the sale of Folsom dealership, the last of his local car lots.”, The Sacramento Bee: D1, September 15, 2006 

[edit] External links