Orson Welles For Paul Masson Wine (April 2, 1979)
The Paul Masson brand is best remembered for its 1970s marketing association with Orson Welles, who promised for Masson: “We will sell no wine before its time.” An infamous outtake for one commercial from the Orson Welles campaign features Welles attempting to deliver his lines while inebriated.
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This slogan was on Wheel of Fortune and I was wondering what it was from.
All I could remember was “We will DRINK no wine before its time… ITS TIME!”
AH, THE FRENCH!
PAAHHHH the…French.
Yeees, an excellent choice.
Whether you take it on the rocks, or straight up, this classy wine goes down smooth at all hours of the day.
This commercial actually got me a passing grade once. I was studying business administration, and one of our assignments was to deliver a Powerpoint presentation as if we were trying to promote ourselves to an established company as a social media consultant. I had intended to do a fitness company, but several other people were also doing such an idea, and I wanted to stand out. Literally the day before presentation I amused myself by looking up these old commercials and realized that was it-so overnight I made up a whole new presentation about the Paul Masson wine company, and included this commercial as part of my presentation. Got myself an A.
Haaaa~ the french champagne ….
This is where the line “we shall serve NO FRIES before their time” from Fast Times At Ridgemont High came from!
And now for the real magic I shall make this jug disappear.
We will sell no wine until you’ve paid for it.
Johnny Carson lampooned this fairly well.
You know, Welles could’ve shilled for Pabst Blue Ribbon and I would have bought it. There’s something about his faux classiness that’s very approachable and appealing.
For fun, mentally substitute his Beethoven with, say, Slayer’s “Raining Blood”.
“It took Tom Araya two months to compose this song…”
mahaaa the frensh
maaaah the frenshampain
I remember these ads from my childhood. I didn’t know that he had actually acted in movies and stuff. Thought he was just the fat wine guy.
It would have been great if Orson Welles and John Lennon had lived into the You Tube era. Could you imagine what cutting edge stuff they could have done.
Johnny Carson did a skit one night that included takeoffs on several ubiquitous commercials of the day – Karl Malden’s American Express card commercials (“Don’t leave home without it”); Robert Conrad’s Eveready battery commercials ( “I dare you to knock this battery off my shoulder…c’mon, I dare you”); and this Orson Wells Paul Masson wine commercial (“We will sell no wine before its time”). Carson dressed in character and imitated the spokesmen for each commercial. The punch line on the Wells skit after he said the final line was to switch to a scene of a disheveled Wino in a back alley lifting a bottle of Paul Masson and saying “It’s Time!” Pat McCormick was one of principal writers on Carson’s Tonight…not sure if the wrote those pieces, but the guy was a helluva writer. Carson was worth watching if for nothing else, to marvel at this guy’s comedic writing.
BRAWWWWWWHHH theFffrrennchampaigne….
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