American Telecast hired a company that takes the infomercial and runs it on different tv stations in the United States and Canada. When you do one of these shows, the results are instant. Either the phone rings or it doesn’t. Well… the phone did ring. When I asked how many Deal A Meals were sold they simply said …a lot. That was a mysterious answer. Couldn’t they just tell me how many?
They asked me to do a thirty minute infomercial. I called it The History of Dieting. They built a long narrow hallway. In the hallway were several gray podiums. I started with the first, I talked about laxatives, and I moved to each one describing other diets. The last podium was empty which represented starving. I knew a lot about these diets because I was on them . One time I got down to 119 lbs- and thought I looked great. Boy I was wrong I was killing myself.
I needed two more products to complete the offer. I said what about a Deal A Meal cookbook? It was recipes for Breakfast lunch and dinner. At the bottom of each page were the Deal A Meal cards that you would move over.
Then I thought why not create an exercise video? I named that workout Sweatin to the Oldies. All the other workout videos on the market used elevator music, that was not good enough for me…I wanted real songs.
I was intraduced to Barbara Montgomery. She looked like a Michelle Pfiffer. She was a jazz singer and on the side cleared music. She told me to make a list of songs that I wanted to dance to. She was so amazing and cleared 95% of the music I wanted.
Then I met the director…Ed S. He was married to the daughter of the owner of the company. Her name was Lori. She wore very little make up. Dressed very nice and looked like Princess Diana.
Now what was I going to wear? They hired Leslie W. to help me with wardrobe. I still had a little excess skin around my belly. Wait…I have an idea! What about a tank top like what the basketball players wear? Leslie bought a Hanes shirt and cut it into a tank top.
On the front of the tank top was the logo of Yale’s bulldog. I did this without the permission of the university…they were livid. I had to pay them $5000.00.
I was in a sporting goods store and there was a rack of Dolphin shorts. I bought these shorts in different colors. So now a I had the outfit…. And I had the music.
We taped the video at a meeting hall in Santa Monica, CA. We hung crepe paper and there were balloons decorated around the columns in the hall.
They hired a band who was going to play the music live. The head of the band was Steve T. They hired the singers. I had an audition and hired the dancers behind me.
Everything was live. If the band made a mistake we had to start over. If the singers made a mistake we would do another take. If one of the dancers made a mistake …we did it again.
Then there was me and I made quite a few mistakes. LOL. I did Dancing in the Streets 19 times.
That was the only song we danced to the first day. I was wondering how we would do the other 9 songs. To be continued…
