Certainly the best-known commercial we ever did was for our wonderful longtime sponsor, Alpo dog food. Whenever possible I liked to test a product before I agreed to do their commercials. That worked fine in the case of Anheuser-Busch, for example—actually the cases of Anheuser-Busch; however, with Alpo, I took our dog’s bark for it. I always had a warm spot in my heart for Alpo. The name came from the fact that it was invented in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was just being sold locally when I started in Philadelphia and it was one of my early sponsors. I loved the fact that I started doing Alpo commercials when it was a small company and grew with it as it became the largest selling dog food in America.
Alpo was one of our first sponsors when Johnny and I started doing The Tonight Show. The spots never changed very much; as I read my copy, a very hungry dog would demonstrate just how much dogs loved Alpo by gulping it down. Now, the truth is that we made sure that the dog would love Alpo by giving him only a small taste of it during the afternoon rehearsal. By the time we did the show in the evening, I guarantee you, that dog was hungry. Although we used all kinds of breeds, for a long time our regular was a beautiful English sheepdog name Patrick. One night Patrick must have had other plans, because we were using a beagle named Hernandez. The commercial started normally enough; I was sitting on a chair on a raised platform holding up a can of dog food. “Alpo is the only one of the leading dog foods that has real beef….,” I began, and at that point the dog was supposed to run to his bowl and start eating. But Hernandez had stage fright. As I continued, “The real beef could be the reason Hernandez here…..,” Hernandez walked away. I tried to coax him back, “Com’ere, come on, come here, here it is, come on up, come on ....” He took one bite, then turned and walked away. The audience started laughing, but I persisted. I took my commercials seriously. “He’s a little frightened,” I apologized for the dong. “Come on, come on, dog … well, Hernandez is a little ….”
And then I saw Johnny come into my little commercial area. He got down on his hands and knees and came over to me. “Come right up, nice Hernandez,” I said as I started to pet Johnny. Nice boss, I was thinking as I pet him on the head, nice boss. By this point the audience was hysterical. Carson wagged his rump to show how much he loved Alpo. I just kept going. I was going to get my commercial done. “The next time you’re looking at the canned dog food …” –he rubbed his cheek against my leg --- “…… nice Hernandez ….reach for the can that contains real beef….” Johnny got up on his knees and started begging for more. I started petting him again … and then he licked my hand. Good boss, good.
And I still managed to conclude, gratefully, “And doesn’t your dog deserve Alpo?”
Source: Ed McMahon with David Fisher, For Laughing out Loud (New York:Warner Books, 1998) pages 151-152.