Go See Cal

Cal Worthington died last Sunday- I remember hearing some of his car ads. Since I have so many car commercials, it is only fitting I include one of his ads since they pioneered so many car ads. I also found his lfe story so interesting, it is posted below. Sometimes we deal the best with what we are given and our life impacts so many around us. I just hope he was right with his maker.

Cal Worthington, a car dealer whose off-the-wall commercials, first broadcast in the 1950s, bombarded California television viewers for more than half a century and made him a pop culture legend, died on Sunday at his ranch in Orland, Calif. He was 92.

His family confirmed his death.

Mr. Worthington sold a lot of cars — more than a million of them, by his count — and at his peak in the 1960s ran an empire of 29 dealerships from San Diego to Anchorage. But it was the way he sold them that made him a byword for creative hard-sell salesmanship in the great American tradition.

Stuck with a dud location when he bought his first dealership, Mr. Worthington decided that the only way to attract customers was to hit the airwaves hard with radio and television commercials that stood out from the pack. This turned out to be his ticket to fame and fortune.

In relentless campaigns that treated television viewers to as many as 100 commercials a day, Mr. Worthington proclaimed the virtues of the latest gem on the lot while, for example, strapped to the wing of a soaring biplane or standing on his head on the hood of a car — a visible demonstration of his motto, “I will stand upon my head until my ears are turning red to make a deal.”

In the background, a chorus of male voices and frantic banjo pickers sang a jingle to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” each of its many verses ending with the tag line: “Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal.”

The madness only escalated. When a rival dealer began using a pet dog in his television advertisements in the early 1970s, Mr. Worthington rustled up a gorilla and told the audience: “Howdy, I’m Cal Worthington and this is my dog Spot. I found this little fella down at the pound and he’s so full of love.”

Spot reappeared as a hippo, an iguana and a snake, but never a dog. In other Spot spots, which ran until the 1980s, Mr. Worthington rode Shamu the killer whale at an aquatic theme park while waving his cowboy hat, chauffeured a tiger in a golf cart and sat astride an elephant. All the while, the Cal chorus belted out the promise of fabulous deals:

If you need a better car, go see Cal.
For the best deal by far, go see Cal.
If you want your payments low, if you want to save some dough,
Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal.

The exuberant cheesiness of Mr. Worthington’s ads made him a folk hero, as much a part of California popular culture as Woodies with surfboards on the roof or Orange Julius stands. He was a frequent guest on “The Tonight Show,” where Johnny Carson performed ad parodies. He appeared as himself in the 1973 Jack Lemmon film “Save the Tiger” and was the model for the car salesman played by Ted Danson in the 1993 film “Made in America.” He even infiltrated Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Inherent Vice.”

Calvin Coolidge Worthington was born on Nov. 27, 1920, in Bly, Okla., a tiny town that no longer exists. He was one of nine children living in a shotgun house with no plumbing. He wore clothes made from old flour bags. “We were starving and barefooted,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2010. “I had a very awful childhood.”

His father moved the family to Kilgore, Tex., where there was work in the oil fields. Cal dropped out of school at 13 and, after working as a water boy on a road crew, signed on with the Civilian Conservation Corps, blazing trails in what would become Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

Keen on becoming a pilot, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942 and flew B-17 Flying Fortresses on 29 bombing missions over Germany. He left the military with the rank of captain, a Distinguished Flying Cross and hopes of becoming a commercial pilot, but lack of a college degree disqualified him.

Instead, using the $500 he made from selling his car, he bought a gas station in Corpus Christi, where his family had moved. The station did not prosper, but he sold used cars on the side and, after getting rid of the station, established his first dealership, Dependable Used Cars.

In 1948 he bid on a load of welding rods being sold off as war surplus in Hawaii, sold his car dealership to pay for them and drove out to Los Angeles to take delivery, hoping to save money by shortening the distance. A longshoreman’s strike stranded the rods, and by the time they were unloaded they were so water-damaged that it took Mr. Worthington two years to sell them off.

Improvising, he bought a Hudson dealership on Slauson Avenue in Huntington Park for $2,600 from Earl Muntz, also known as Madman, who pioneered the kind of lunatic hard-sell commercials on radio that Mr. Worthington would perfect on television.

Initially he made commercials with himself as the star, but in 1959 he began broadcasting a live three-hour country-music show from the dealership on Friday and Saturday nights. “Cal’s Corral,” which ran until 1972, featured performers like Johnny Cash, Buck Owens and Roger Miller, who shared airtime with the car commercials.

The rising cost of television time forced Mr. Worthington to give up that show and concentrate on 90-second ads. He eventually created his own company, Spot Advertising, to film as many as 40 ads a week at a studio on his ranch in Orland, near Chico. This prolific output led to a love-hate relationship with Californians, who sometimes felt as if they were slowly being driven mad by his nonstop assault.

At the same time, there was no denying the genius of the famous Cal jingle. Rare was the listener who could not manage a smile when hearing:

If your axle is a-saggin’, go see Cal.
Maybe you need a station wagon, go see Cal.
If your wife has started naggin’, and your tail pipe is a-draggin’
Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal.

“I try to make my commercials a little less obnoxious than the other guy,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2003. “They’re obnoxious, but I try to make them a little less obnoxious.”

Through the 1960s he was the top-selling Dodge dealer in the United States. He overextended, however, and the oil embargo of the early ’70s hit hard. To supplement his income he sold motorized pogo sticks and flew a helicopter, delivering live traffic reports to radio stations.

He rebounded, selling $200 million to $300 million worth of cars annually in the ’80s. Over the years he acquired eight ranches in California and Nevada, shopping centers and an office building. At his death, he owned five dealerships, including the flagship Ford dealership in Long Beach, which he bought in 1974.

In 1978 California sued him for deceptive advertising. The case was settled without an admission of guilt by Mr. Worthington, who faced a similar suit the next year. This also resulted in a settlement, and he complained that if his ads included all the disclaimers required by state regulators, there would be no time left to sell a car.

His four marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his sons, Rod, Cal Jr., and Coldren; his daughters, Barbara Worthington, Susan Skellenger and Courtney Worthington Shepherd; and nine grandchildren.

The nation’s most famous car dealer never bothered to own a car — he simply borrowed one from the lot. And he was not too crazy about selling them, either.

“I never much liked the car business,” Mr. Worthington said in 2007. “I just kind of got trapped in it after the war. I didn’t have the skills to do anything else. I just wanted to fly.”