{"id":16010,"date":"2014-10-06T10:10:25","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T14:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=16010"},"modified":"2014-10-06T10:10:25","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T14:10:25","slug":"hungering-for-james-beards-classic-heckers-flour-commercial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2014\/10\/06\/hungering-for-james-beards-classic-heckers-flour-commercial\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungering for James Beard’s classic Heckers flour commercial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internet, you have disappointed me.<\/p>\n

Wait … let me back that up a bit.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure exactly when I fell in love with James Beard. Perhaps it was in the early ’70s while reading his wonderful American Cookery<\/em>, in which he went off on a rant about how today’s chickens (well, the chickens of 40 years ago) just weren’t what they used to be—<\/p>\n

Few have the delicate, delicious flavor of the old barnyard chicken, which may not have been raised so pristinely and plucked so cleanly but tasted of chicken and had excellent texture. … They come to the market uniform in size, uniform in color, and uniform in lack of real flavor. They require a good deal of seasoning to give them any character, and they fail to produce a rich broth. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I loved that curmudgeonliness! Beard’s commentary surrounding the recipes were (and continue to be) as interesting as the recipes themselves.<\/p>\n

But that’s not what brings me here today.<\/p>\n

I’d wanted to show someone the famous commercial Beard did for Heckers flour … and it was nowhere to be found on YouTube or any other video hosting service. And what’s even more amazing is that I was unable to find even a photo of him holding that bag of flour and remonstrating about why unbleached flour was best, regardless of what search string I tried. In fact, the only Internet evidence that the commercial ever existed appears to be this listing<\/a> reflecting that the Paley Center for Media has a copy in its collection.<\/p>\n

And then I remembered I own a copy of The Art of Advertising<\/em>, the massive book by George Lois that contains his career highlights. (And some lowlights as well.) There’s a page devoted to that TV ad—page 150 to be exact—and because I’m offended that no image or video of this commercial seems to exist anywhere online, I wanted to change that.<\/p>\n

And so …<\/p>\n

\"JamesBeardHeckersFlourTVCommercial\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After an announcer said—”When this man speaks, master chefs listen. This is James Beard”—the chef growled (in what Lois wrote was an “hypnotic, didactic, almost angry delivery”)—<\/p>\n

This is Heckers unbleached flour. Let me tell you what unbleached means. It means: un-touched, un-artificial, un-fooled with, un-tampered with, un-messed with, un-fiddled with, un-corrected, un-perfected. Some people think they get the same results from ordinary flour. And they’re absolutely right. They think<\/em> they get the same results. You<\/em> get Heckers unbleached flour. It’s the flour with the boy on the bag! (Now<\/em> you’re cooking.)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If I’m wrong, and your Google-fu is better than mine, and you discover that the commercial or a screen grab from it exists somewhere online, please let me know. But for now, I’m going to assume the above pic is it. And if I’m right, that’s just wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Internet, you have disappointed me. Wait … let me back that up a bit. I’m not sure exactly when I fell in love with James Beard. Perhaps it was in the early ’70s while reading his wonderful American Cookery, in which he went off on a rant about how today’s chickens (well, the chickens of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49,541],"class_list":["post-16010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-food","tag-james-beard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16010"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16029,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16010\/revisions\/16029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}