1985 Cadillac DeVille Commercial – The Building of a Car

April 8, 1984

“GEORGE Washington” attempts to evoke the life and times of the giant who became the first American president. As it happens, the eight-hour CBS mini-series evokes the times in spirited fashion but the life a little flatly. Washington’s teeth were not made of wood but in this version, try as it may to animate the face on the dollar bill, George pretty much is.

“George Washington” cost about $19.5 million to produce. General Motors bought full sponsorship of all eight hours for $11 to $14 million. John McNulty, vice president of public relations for GM, says from Detroit that there will be 48 minutes of commercials over the three nights and that 16 minutes of that will be a mini-series within the mini-series, “The Building of a Car,” which is “public affairs advertising” and not hard sell for any of GM’s divisions.

This is the first time a mini-series has been identified as having a single sponsor on the air, McNulty said; Procter & Gamble has picked up such tabs, but merely filled the shows with spot advertising and never did a “Procter & Gamble Presents” sort of thing. “We were looking for a chunk of television that’s really significant to put our name on,” McNulty says. “Something that will have an impact on American thought.”

It is hard to imagine a more significant chunk than “George Washington.”

With this extraordinary gesture, GM hopes to erase a blot on its record that occurred in 1977, when it hastily withdrew from sponsorship of the NBC mini-series “Jesus of Nazareth” because a few crackpot pressure groups issued premature condemnations of a program they had never seen.

“I was involved in that decision,” McNulty says. “Our first thought was, this is an ambitious project inappropriate for any commercials. We couldn’t see interrupting The Last Supper for ‘Chevy Takes Charge,’ or something like that. So we knew we could only run institutional advertising. Then when these groups began protesting that the producers were trying to ‘humanize’ Jesus, and they sent thousands and thousands of letters threatening boycotts of General Motors cars, we decided the risk was too great.” (Who picked up the tab for “Jesus”? Procter & Gamble, at bargain rates.)

Burned by that experience, GM hired Flexner as a consultant to read the Fielder scripts and ensure historical accuracy.

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