Grape-Nuts, The Discordant Danny Thomas, and City-Wide Power Outish

How was your Sunday? Mine was unusual, in that I was at the office all day. You see, there was a city-wide power outage scheduled for 1:00pm May 21st here in Alliance. We were told for weeks on end that on this date, at 1:00pm, everybody in the city would be sitting in the dark. Well, not really. I mean, at 1:00pm it’s still light out. But also not really because at least one place, our beloved Radio City, never lost power. (I’m wagering it was more than one place.)

I have great relationships with folks from the Alliance city offices. And I think they all deserve a great deal of credit. Having said that: For an event as wide-reaching and impactful as a city-wide power outage, it would have been incredibly helpful–essential I’d say–to have at least one city employee available to answer questions from the public, post updates on the city’s Facebook page, or supply information to the media. A city of 8,000 people deserves to be informed. Even on a Sunday. That’s why Herr Kroheim von Newsheim and I spent eight hours in the office that day, unfortunately with nothing to report. Not even WAPA, the outfit working with the city on this project, had a live human being on any of their phone lines. I’m disappointed in the lack of communication. (A friendly reminder, this is just my opinion and does not necessarily so and so and so and so.)

Okay, enough of this serious stuff.

This past weekend I listened to a Jack Benny radio program, from the era when Jack’s sponsor was Grape- Nuts and Grape Nut Flakes. I got to thinking: Do they make Grape-Nuts anymore? (Since it’s a highly nutritious cereal I have trained myself to skip past it for the likes of Fruity Pebbles. They’re yabba-dabba- delicious!)

Anyway, I found their website which includes this rather hilarious bit of TV trivia. And yes, this is legitimately from the official Grape-Nuts website:

Arguably, Grape-Nuts is to thank for The Andy Griffith Show. Post sponsored a late-1950s TV series, The Danny Thomas Show, but it depicted a discordant, urban family life that conflicted with Post’s wholesome family image. So, in an episode promoting Grape-Nuts, Danny Thomas visited Mayberry, the fictional small town that has since become an all-American icon. Here, America met and immediately fell in love with Sheriff Andy Taylor. A spin-off premiered in 1960, and The Andy Griffith Show quickly became a staple in American culture. What’s more, commercial breaks featured Andy Griffith and co-star Don Knotts heralding the goodness of Grape-Nuts.

Now, I’ve seen a lot…a LOT of “The Danny Thomas Show” (aka “Make Room For Daddy”). I even wrote a blog about it! And “discordant”–a Readers Digest “Know Your Word Power” word if ever there was one–seems ridiculously overwrought. “The Danny Thomas Show” was a delightful, funny sitcom with a Dad who yelled sometimes. Which, in my experience, Dads are known to do. And the show was “urban” in that Danny Williams was a nightclub comic with a regular gig in New York City. There weren’t drug dealers in little Rusty and Linda’s school. But supposedly the show “conflicted with Post’s wholesome family image”. Can there be a more wholesome family image than Uncle Tonoose?

And look at this Grape-Nuts commercial with animated likenesses of Danny Thomas and Marjorie Lord (who played Kathy Williams, wife of Danny).

This hardly seems discordant to me. Of course, it could be that the chaste Post Cereal executives caught a peek at these outtakes, which could….I suppose…be considered slightly discordant.

“You laughed in the most ridiculous place, you stupes!” Love that line.

As the website story states, “…in an episode promoting Grape-Nuts, Danny Thomas visited Mayberry.” Because of course, the most historically important element of that episode was its promotion of Grape-Nuts. I guess everyone puts themself at the center of the story they’re telling.

Here’s Andy and Barney doing their thing for Post Grape-Nuts:

In Mayberry, nobody is discordant. Well, Andy became kind of a grouch in the color episodes…but Goober’s enough of an idiot to get on anyone’s last nerve, as I’ve discussed previously here on the blog.

Anyway, I can’t get over the Post Cereal people’s description of “The Danny Thomas Show” as “discordant, urban family life”. I’d like to find 10 people who know what “discordant” means and ask them to name the first sitcom that enters their mind. All I can think of right now is “The Honeymooners”.

Honestly, I should not be surprised that the Post Cereal historians have presented a skewed representation of their television sponsorships. This, after all, was the company that sold a cereal with neither grapes nor nuts in it and called it Grape-Nuts.

I have no slam-bang finish for this, so here’s another example of corporate America having strange standards: