Show Business: The Homelies

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Squiggly Mouth. It may look like fun, but making commercials is usually one long, exhausting series of takes and retakes. Philip Bruns recalls the horrors of struggling to twist his squiggly mouth into a satisfied grin as he munched through five quarts of Heinz Kosher Pickles. Howard Mann, a nightclub comic with a Kosher dill nose, once had to sit patiently while makeup men reworked his uneven toes, then ran up and down a steep hill 20 times to celebrate the joys of Ting foot deodorant. During practice takes for one commercial, shmoo-shaped Peter Gumeny strung a hammock between two wooden blocks stuck to the walls with Weldwood Contact Glue, slipped his 240 lbs. into the sling, and then lay helplessly as the blocks separated and he went crashing to the floor.

But the rewards are worth the rigors. If a commercial has a long run, a Homely can make $7,500 for one day's work; many make more than $40,000 a year. The competition is sharp, especially since such established Homelies as Wally Cox, Jane Withers, Bert Lahr and Phyllis Diller have mugged their way into the act. A casting call for a street worker, for example, will attract 100 candidates, some lugging along shovels and jackhammers for that authentic look. But in the end, as the Homely homily has it, it's the face that launches a thousand trips to the shopping center.