"I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Nov 18 01:21:17 UTC 2010


At 3:14 PM -0500 11/17/10, victor steinbok wrote:
>Although I was not around in the seventies to see the commercials by
>Robert Young (location, not age), I do wonder if this would have been
>a comment actually used in an ad. It stands to reason that it would be
>jokes and criticism of the campaign that would include the phrase "I'm
>not a doctor, but I play one on TV"--sounds like something for Police
>Squad! or Kentucky Fried Movie humor.

Or perhaps Mad Magazine, which was fond of mock/satiric ads dating
back to the Marcus Welby era.  (Not commercials, of course, but with
the same point being made.)  Any database for Mad?

LH

>  I'll check KFM later, along with
>Amazon Women on the Moon. Given the topic of the parody in these two,
>it sounds like an ideal environment for precisely this kind of humor.
>Another source to check would be SNL, as its early period coincides
>precisely with early Young ad campaigns. This is a resource someone
>else will have to review--I have KFM and AWM on disk, but not SNL.
>
>VS-)

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