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THE AHAB-LIKE QUEST
Very early on in our friendship, (shortly after we had cable installed at the video store where we worked, so that we could watch a broader range of material) while making pop-culture observations, one or the other of us noted that The Ritz Lady seemed to have dropped from sight, her departure initially unnoted. Sightings had become less frequent as the 1980s progressed and, as we later learned, Ritz Lady had taken a two year vacation from the airwaves in mid-decade (Skiing in St. Moritz?) before making a final triumphant series of appearances. Sad to say, with network TV all but dead and cable proliferating, it was all too easy to avoid Ritz Lady during the later Reagan years and then, one day, she just wasn’t around any more.
What followed was a quest that led from 1988 until the present. The initial joking references were replaced with a strong urge to actually see the commercial again. Which proved far easier said than done. In the pre-internet days, such searches were considerably slower and more complex than they now are. Classified ads were taken out in Movie Collectors’ World and The Big Reel. Innumerable letters and phone calls were made to dealers who claimed “Video Rarities: If you want it, we have it!” all of whom responded with “Video Rarities: If you want it, we have it! Except for that.” Everyone remembered the commercial, everyone seemed to feel an odd fondness for it, and not single person in N.Y. who owned a VCR between 1977 and 1988 seemed to have caught it on tape.
A bright note appeared only to be quashed. A TV network, specializing in nostalgia, aired the commercial, once, ca. 1996. A call to their information line drew a response that suggested, by its tone, that we were requesting an inside look at the company’s balance sheet, and after two efforts, that lead was abandoned.
And, so it went. 15 years after the initial joking reference, classified ads were still being run, occasionally, and online TV discussion groups queried, in either case to no avail.
Everyone remembered the commercial fondly, but no one knew a thing about it.
