Before he was George Costanza, Jason Alexander paid the bills trying to sell burgers to the masses.
These days, Jason Alexander is best known as George Costanza. But before his iconic work on Seinfeld, Alexander was just another actor hoping to catch his big break and a recently resurfaced McDonald’s ad from 1985 shows a completely different side of the sitcom legend’s thespian talents.
Alexander seems to be channeling his inner Music Man in the ad, as he cheerfully rallies people around him who are all frustrated by “lettuce and tomato hamburgers in this town that don’t quite make it.”
Once he’s gathered enough burger skeptics to his cause, he introduces them to McD.L.T. sandwich in the form of a song-and-dance number that honestly rocks pretty hard. Sadly, the sandwich itself is much less of a banger, as the convoluted concept of separating the lettuce and tomato from the rest of the burger is not what people were looking for from a fast food joint like McDonald’s.
While seeing Alexander singing and dancing might be a bit of a shock to fans who know him best as George, he actually has put together a pretty prolific career in the musical theatre world. He even won a Tony and Grammy for his role as the narrator in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway and he will always hold a special place in my heart for his superb work as Lionel, the dimwitted, verbose assistant in Brandy’s Cinderella.
Big-time actors doing commercials before they were famous is a time-honored tradition in Hollywood and it’s always fun when they pop back up online. Although, in the post-sellout era, it’s also not a surprise to see an Oscar winner pop up in an ad to try and sell you Bitcoin or comedy stars reviving their most iconic characters to get you to sign up for a food delivery service. Who knows? Maybe Alexander will end up starring in a new McDonald’s commercial by the end of this year.
