Monday, November 19, 2007

Dick Wilson, 1916-2007


Dick Wilson, who portrayed the over-fussy, hypocritical grocery-store manager Mr. Whipple in a series of more than 500 commercials for Charmin toilet paper from 1964 to 1985, has died at the age of 91. No word on the cause of death, although Mr. Wilson's casket has been described as squeezably soft.

Here's a vintage Charmin commercial in which Dick Wilson burrows into the barely concealed depravity of the Whipple character: the grocer is so obsessed with the toilet paper that he has not only measured its circumference but committed it to memory. Creepy.

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