TV ads first began airing in the 1940s, and since then, we've seen some pretty iconic
characters.
Many of these stars have sadly passed away, but they will forever be remembered for the
memorable commercials they were in.
Here are the commercial stars you might not know died.
Who better to advertise major fast-food chain Wendy's than the founder and CEO himself,
Dave Thomas?
Thomas opened his first restaurant in 1969 in Columbus, Ohio, after he had no luck finding
a tasty hamburger.
Naming the restaurant after his daughter, Thomas had her greet his first customers wearing
her famous blue-and-white striped dress with her red hair in pigtails.
With just under 6,000 Wendy's across the nation, it has become a fast-food favorite among Americans,
with Forbes reporting that it had "dethroned" Burger King to become the second biggest hamburger
chain behind McDonald's.
Thomas was widely known as the man behind Wendy's because he starred in more than 800
television commercials for the hamburger restaurant.
Thomas would often wear a white button-down t-shirt with a red tie in his commercials.
The Guinness Book of World Records even recognized Thomas with "Most TV commercials starring
[the] company founder."
According to a Wendy's news release, Thomas was 69-years-old when he died in 2002 after
a long battle with liver cancer.
Jack Schuessler, the retired chairman and, CEO of Wendy's International Inc., shared,
"Dave was our patriarch, a great, big lovable man.
[...] Although Dave was widely popular, he was never very comfortable as a celebrity.
He kept reminding us he was simply a hamburger cook."
Geoffrey Holder was a man of many talents who was most recognized for his work as a
dancer, designer, actor, and artist.
After leaving his native Trinidad and Tobago behind, he danced on Broadway and worked with
New York's Metropolitan Opera Ballet in the '50s and later won two Tony Awards in 1975
for The Wiz, an all-Black retelling of the Judy Garland classic, The Wizard of Oz.
Holder also worked in movies starring in films like 1967's Doctor Dolittle and 1973's Live
and Let Die, where he played the villain.
However, viewers watching television in the '70s and '80s would likely recognize Holder
as the man behind the 7Up ads.
Holder, dressed in a white suit with a matching white hat, would entice viewers in his smooth
and seductive voice to go out and try the soft drink.
Holder was part of one of the most memorable commercials ever made, and it also made history.
Ad Age stated,
"Mr. Holder made the spot one of the most remembered commercials of all time.
But behind the scenes, the project also represented a dramatic change in the marketing culture
of the soft-drink company — the first time it allowed a person of color to be cast in
its TV ad."
Holder died at the age of 84 in 2014 after complications due to pneumonia, per The New
York Times.
Fans of the classic Western television show Bonanza will remember actor Michael Landon
starring as the handsome Joseph "Little Joe" Cartwright.
Landon played the role for 14 seasons.
A year after Bonanza aired its final episode in 1973, Landon starred as Charles Ingalls
in the NBC television show Little House on the Prairie and would later go on to star
in the television series Highway to Heaven, on which he was also the co-executive producer.
Landon was a breakout star in Hollywood, and besides his many roles, he became the face
of Kodak film and starred in many commercials throughout the late '70s and early '80s.
Several of his commercials were Christmas-themed, one in which showed the star Christmas shopping
with his real son Chris who picks out a Kodak camera to give to his grandmother.
Landon famously ends the commercial with the line,
"Kodak, America's Storyteller."
Sadly, Landon discovered that he had cancer in 1991, which had spread to his liver, and
died on July 1st that same year.
He was 54-years-old.
Arthur Anderson was not a big-name Hollywood star, but viewers may have recognized his
voice when commercials for Lucky Charms cereal aired.
Anderson was the voice behind the cereal's mascot, Lucky the Leprechaun, and would famously
recite the lines,
"Frosted Lucky Charms – they're magically delicious."
Interestingly enough, having voiced the character from 1963 to 1992, Anderson was not Irish
at all and was born in Staten Island, New York, to parents from England and Denmark,
per The New York Times.
Having voiced the popular leprechaun for so many years, Anderson told ABC News in 2005
that he was delighted to sing a few lines for those who asked him too.
He shared,
"I never got free cereal.
But they gave me lots of green money.
And it was a fun character to play.
Hardly a day goes by when somebody doesn't ask me to sing the Lucky Charms jingle, and
I'm proud of that."
Besides his devotion to the frolicsome leprechaun, Anderson worked in radio, on Broadway, and
made guest spots on television shows.
Anderson died in 2016 at the age of 93.
Billy Mays was all over television screens in the early 2000s pitching household cleaning
products like OxiClean, Orange Glo, and Kaboom.
Mays was known for his louder-than-life personality which was showcased through his pitches.
According to NPR, Mays started out selling "As Seen on TV" products on the Atlantic City
boardwalk in New Jersey and then found work on the Home Shopping Network.
Soon enough, millions of viewers would watch him on television selling his infamous cleaning
products in commercials.
His ability to sell anything and everything landed him a show on the Discovery Channel
called Pitchmen, which also followed Anthony Sullivan, a memorable pitchman who earned
the nickname The OxiClean Man.
Mays sadly died in June 2009, shortly after wrapping up filming of the first season.
NPR reported that an autopsy showed that Mays died of a heart attack in his sleep which
was attributed to cocaine use.
The show aired a tribute episode to Mays and would go on to produce a second season without
him.
However, the show's second season would be the last.
Jim Varney was best known for his iconic character, Ernest, who was more than just a commercial
spokesperson.
Always dressed in a t-shirt, blue vest, jeans, and a baseball cap, Ernest was loved by children
and adults alike throughout the '80s and '90s.
According to Biography, his character first came to life in a commercial in 1972 and would
later be featured in hundreds of commercials from auto sales, dairy products, and ads for
Sprite, with his famous catchphrase,
"Know what I mean?"
In the late '80s, Varney's character landed a movie with Disney titled Ernest Goes to
Camp, and it was followed by three more films under the Disney label, while five others
were independently produced.
While becoming Ernest was his most notable role, Varney also took part in Disney's Toy
Story and Toy Story 2 where he voiced Slinky Dog, and starred as Jed Clampett in the film
version of The Beverly Hillbillies.
According to The Washington Post, Varney was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1998 and even
underwent surgery where he had two-thirds of his right lung removed.
He later died in February 2000 at his home in Tennessee at the age of 50.
Herschel Bernardi was born into a family of entertainers so it only made sense for him
to plan a career in acting.
Bernardi was best known for his work on Broadway, namely portraying Tevye in Fiddler on the
Roof, which he performed more than 1,300 times between 1980 and 1983, and Zorba, in the original
Broadway show Zorba the Greek.
However, before he found work on Broadway, Bernardi was essentially blacklisted from
Hollywood in the 1940s for joining the Actors Lab, "a gathering place for Hollywood radicals,"
but still managed to find work in commercials.
The actor is most famous for voicing the Jolly Green Giant of Green Giant vegetables, where
he's heard shouting,
"Ho Ho Ho."
For two decades, Bernardi voiced Charlie the Tuna for Starkist.
Bernardi had found work in a few television shows, portraying Lt. Jacoby in 1958's Peter
Gunn and the early 1970's sitcom Arnie, playing the lead character.
He later died in 1986 from a heart attack at the age of 62.
Ron Popeil wasn't a famous Hollywood actor, but he was quite well known on television
thanks to his late-night commercials and infomercials selling everything from a bagel cutter, a
rotisserie oven, and the Electric Food Dehydrator.
According to his website, not only did Popeil invent some of the items he was pitching on
television, but he also invented the infomercial when he created the first minute-long commercial
for the Ronco Chop-o-Matic in the 1950s.
It wasn't long until Popeil was becoming a familiar face in people's homes and by the
'80s, CNN reported that Popeil was doing 30-minute long infomercials, selling popular items like
the Showtime Rotisserie with the pitchman using the memorable catchphrase,
"Set it and forget it."
Popeil's website notes that his products "grossed in the billions" and the famous line "As Seen
on TV" which can be seen on several household products to this day was created because of
Popeil's products.
While Popeil had his fair share of nicknames, he became a huge success and shared in 1995,
"I've gone by many titles: King of Hair, King of Pasta, King of Dehydration, or to use a
more colloquial phrase, a pitchman or a hawker.
I don't like those phrases, but I am what I am."
Popeil's sister, Lisa Popeil told The New York Times that the inventor died at the age
of 86 from a brain hemorrhage in July 2021.
Dena Dietrich appeared in numerous television shows, was on Broadway, and had a few movie
roles, with her most notable roles including the 1971 Broadway production The Prisoner
of Second Avenue and films like 1979's History of the World: Part I.
Dietrich had several acting credits, but her most memorable character is portraying Mother
Nature in commercials for Chiffon margarine.
In the commercials, the actor, wearing a long and flowy white dress with daisies, strolls
through a forest dipping her pinky finger in a bowl of what she believes to be her butter,
when in fact, a voice tells her she's tasting Chiffon margarine.
Sternly, Mother Nature famously states,
"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."
The commercials for Chiffon margarine appeared on television screens for nearly a decade.
During an interview in 2005 with Skip E. Lowe, Dietrich shared that being Mother Nature opened
more doors for her in Hollywood.
"The minute that the Mother Nature commercial came out, all the phone calls started to come
in from Hollywood."
The actor's union, SAG-AFTRA announced on Twitter that Dietrich had died in 2020 at
the age of 91.
Nick Kamen found instant fame when he landed the starring role in a Levi's commercial in
1985.
In the commercial, Kamen is seen walking into a laundromat and stripping down to his boxers,
while women glare at him.
According to the Huffington Post, the commercial is regarded as one of the most influential
of all time and helped to increase sales for Levi's.
Ever since then, Kamen has been branded a sex symbol with Yahoo!
Entertainment reporting that Madonna quickly took him under her wing as he had inspirations
to become a singer.
Kamen did find success in the music industry in the U.K. when he released the song "Each
Time You Break My Heart" which was co-written by Madonna.
BBC reported that Kamen released four albums from 1987 to 1992, with his song "I Promised
Myself" off of his third album becoming one of his top hits in Europe where it landed
on the No.1 spot in Austria and Sweden.
A family friend told the BBC that Kamen died in May 2021 at the age of 59, with the Huffington
Post reporting that he had died from a, quote, "long illness."
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