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Be Nice to Truck Drivers. The fast-growing "institutional"-type plugs also kick back handsomely. One top comic collects a case of whisky every time he mentions "bowling" on his show; recently he used the word 30 times in a 30-minute show. A perfume company sends out a case of whisky to every writer who mentions perfume—any perfume. "Give me a double shot of bourbon" is a rewarding line. For it—or something similar—the star and the writer usually each get a case of bourbon, and sometimes much more. There is even a payoff, from an association, for sympathetically handling the American truck driver on the screen.
So flourishing is the plug business that 40-odd firms have sprouted in Manhattan, Los Angeles and Chicago to bring together freehanded advertisers and itchy-palmed producers, scripters. or stars. One of the real pros, Hollywood's waxy-mustached Adolphe Wenland, happily remembers the time Jack Benny mentioned Schwinn bikes (a Wenland client), then wheeled toward the screen and said, "Send three."
Wenland and his fellow schlockmeisters (from schlock, Yiddish for junk) also make a big business of supplying props for movie and TV sets. For one space-travel movie, which has yet to be released or titled, Wenland furnished $1,000,000 worth of Burroughs Corp. electronic equipment—all conspicuously flashing the company labels on the screen. "This certainly is a reciprocal deal and no violation of ethics," says Wenland. "What's more, it is good business practice." But he concedes that plugs have been abused "by hungry amateurs as well as greedy writers and producers." By diverting the spotlight from a show's regularly advertised products, the plug or "painless commercial" may cheat the legitimate sponsors. Some businesses, unable to afford prime network time, have grown fat by using only the relatively cheap plugs.
Plenty of Schmeer. One of the schlockmeisters' big tasks is to provide prizes for giveaway shows. The operators argue that, as long as such shows (e.g., The Price Is Right, Queen for a Day) are on the air, someone has to do the job of getting things to be given away—in return for a plump plug. But along with relatively legitimate prize-getters, there are the shady types operating out of phone booths. To place one washing machine on a second-rate show, the hustler demands a cash payment, plus five or six washers—and sells the overflow to discounters. Hoping to bypass the hustlers, some of TV's brightest stars have their own schlock-gathering teams. Ralph (This Is Your Life) Edwards has six staffers out gathering loot, has a warehouse to store it in. Says an Edwards aide: "We may use the leftovers for charities and hospitals, or just let the TV crew members draw for them."