WALTER BURKE

Walter Burke was an easily placed face if not name in movies. He's perhaps best remembered as Sugar Boy, Willie Stark's silent, reptilian bodyguard in "All the King's Men," the classic 1949 movie about the rise and fall of a corrupt Southern politician. He played a number of characters in the '40s and '50s you wouldn’t want to turn your back, but later in his career he made a big reputation playing small characters such as leprechauns because his slight stature and wizened features, not to mention Irish heritage, made him a natural for such roles.

     Which is why, in the ‘70s, I cast Walter as the "Magic Elf” in a Neuhoff Meats TV commercial that I had written especially for him. His “job” at Neuhoff was to magically turn sandwich meats into Dagwood-style sandwiches, and he did so with feats of magic that to this day look pretty good considering we created them, in that prehistoric pre-digital era, in real time on-camera with no optical trickery.   

     This was one of my earliest commercials, and I've never forgotten how much fun it was to make, and how pleased I was to become friends, if only briefly, with an actor I'd admired for years. It was a magical experience for a young copywriter all around.