When a TV star arrived up in 1970 Anchorage to record a commercial, the whole town showed up

Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.

On Dec. 14, 1970, the portly, hirsute Sebastian Cabot, star of the long-running “Family Affair” sitcom, exited his plane and entered the Anchorage airport where a throng of waiting fans immediately engulfed him. The actor was in town to record a commercial for the Hotel Captain Cook, and his arrival had been trumpeted for days with large advertisements printed in the local newspapers.

Anchorage had been the largest city in Alaska since its 1940s military buildup and construction boom, but cultural relevance was something apart and slower to obtain. In 1970, Anchorage had only just begun to acquire some of the touchstones long since familiar to significant Outside cities. The first live satellite broadcast here was the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969. The next such live broadcast was a Jan. 3, 1971 NFL playoff game between the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys. The first McDonald’s here opened in the summer of 1970, but the first local multi-screen movie theater was still two years away. It would be more than a decade before Anchorage had an arena nice enough to entice major performing artists, those not content to play at a high school. So, a visiting TV star was like an unexpected holiday in 1970 Anchorage.

The London-born Cabot had acted for years before unexpectedly finding popular acclaim with a television comedy. There were minor movie roles and guest appearances on shows like “Bonanza,” “Beverly Hillbillies,” “My Three Sons,” “Red Skelton Hour,” and “The Twilight Zone.” Then he won the breakout role on “Family Affair,” which aired from 1966 to 1971. Longtime residents might recall it playing on KTVA Channel 11. He played Mr. French, an effete manservant for a committed bachelor. When the bachelor’s nephew and two nieces are sent to live with him, Mr. French became a combination butler and nanny. Heartwarming comedy ensued.

The Mr. French role was of a once common trope, the butler or nanny to an extended or found family. Later examples include Robert Guillaume as Benson on “Soap” and its spinoff “Benson,” Christopher Hewett as Mr. Belvedere on “Mr. Belvedere,” and Fran Drescher as the nanny on “The Nanny.” Indeed, television butlers were once so prominent on sitcoms that it raises the question: were butlers ever common in upper middle- and higher-class American families? Long ago, yes. In recent decades, including when these shows aired, not so much.

Younger media consumers are more likely to recognize Cabot from his voice. He was Sir Ector and the narrator in the 1963 animated Disney feature “The Sword in the Stone,” which was coincidentally playing at the Fourth Avenue Theatre when the 1964 Good Friday earthquake struck. Arthur was not pulling Excalibur from the stone when the quake hit, despite an enduring urban legend. Cabot was also Bagheera in the 1967 “Jungle Book.” And he was the narrator for several 1960s and 1970s “Winnie the Pooh” films.

Cabot was in Anchorage, his first visit to Alaska, to shoot a commercial for the Crow’s Nest restaurant at the Hotel Captain Cook. Management there chose Cabot for two main reasons. First, his urbane public persona mirrored the sort of mannered, high-end clientele they sought. In other words, they wanted the rub, the positive association with some as obviously cultured as Cabot. He had already recorded several radio commercials for the hotel. Second, he was willing to travel to Anchorage in December. Preferences and practicalities rule all our lives.

The Hotel Captain Cook was constructed in a downtown Anchorage devastated by the 1964 earthquake. The original building and the Crow’s Nest opened in 1965. The second and third towers were completed in 1972 and 1978.

Upon Cabot’s arrival, fans noted he seemed notably older in appearance and shorter than expected. The quality of television broadcasts then hid many a blemish and wrinkle. And production magic continues to make many actors seem taller than they are in reality. More importantly, he acted like a generous star, professional and kind to everyone he met.

He landed Monday evening with his wife Kay and their 13-year-old daughter Yvonne. On Tuesday, he appeared at the Jesse Lee Home and elsewhere around town. On Wednesday, he and family enjoyed a flight to Talkeetna where they lunched. Back in Anchorage that afternoon, he signed more than 1,000 autographs at a public event in the hotel’s Discovery Room. That evening, he charmed the local press at a cocktail party. The event featured hors d’oeuvres personally prepared by Cabot, who had worked as a chef before the acting career took off. He also shopped for some of the ingredients and was shocked at the fresh vegetable prices.

His Wednesday schedule focused on the commercial shoot, but he found time to try mushing. Unsurprisingly, he struggled and was dumped on his rear at the first turn. His daughter, however, ran her six-dog team around the course with little issue. Work and fun concluded, the family returned home that Thursday.

The commercial thankfully survives as a record of this time. A young, fashionable couple visiting the hotel for a meal at the Crow’s Nest enter and encounter Cabot several times. He is exiting an elevator when they arrive. At the entrance to the restaurant, he is the maître d’. As the increasingly bewildered couple is led to the table, they pass Cabot as the bartender and are then greeted by Cabot as the waiter. The commercial cuts to the kitchen to reveal Cabot as the chef.

Cabot, of course, narrates. “There are some of us who simply do not enjoy the barbarism of rolling up our shirtsleeves and digging into a meal as if it were an excavation site.” Instead, Cabot suggests, “Take your regal appreciations to the Crow’s Nest of the Captain Cook Hotel. Besides the lavish dinner and wine menu, the Crow’s Nest offers a kind of aestheticism that you simply don’t often find in the colonies.” Yes, the term “colonies” stands out for its inclusion in a scripted commercial intended for an American audience.

Mike Ellis Advertising and Public Relations produced the commercial. While four and a half hours were scheduled for Cabot’s scenes, the crew completed shooting in less than half that. The director, Darrell Comstock, said, “Cabot was high professional. Many times we did just one take of a scene. He knew what was wanted and did it.” The Daily News quoted an unnamed crewmember: “Very pleasant, professional, not stuffy, competent, a real guy.” The couple there for dinner in the advertisement were filmed separately, later.

Most local commercials, particularly from before the internet, are now lost media, perhaps more so in Alaska than elsewhere. Copies, if they exist, are forgotten in closets and basements, or incidentally captured on similarly forgotten VHS recordings. More likely, any copies were long since trashed, taped over, or taped over and trashed. Anchorage’s lost media treasures currently include commercials for No Frills furniture and Mafia Mike’s Pizza Parlor, the original version of the local Pizza Hut jingle (“337-2-3-2-3”), the legendary 1989 match between Mr. Perfect and Bret “The Hitman” Hart at the Sullivan Arena, or anything Cal Worthington got up to. If you are sitting on a stash of local broadcast recordings, please reach out.

Still, there are the occasional surprise discoveries. The Cabot commercial for the Crow’s Nest was found on a VHS tape recovered from a dumpster and sold on Facebook, making its way to Elizabeth Kell and Kevin Allen of the YouTube channel Taku for Two, which is devoted to recovering and archiving analog media on Alaska. Kell and Allen digitized and preserved this odd little moment of local cultural history. Thus, old memories are recovered and new experiences are made.

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