Actor fights for Hollywood balls

By Chris Vallance, BBC News

Hollywood actor Michael Madsen, best known for his roles in films such as Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill and Sin City, has thrown his weight behind a web-based campaign to save an iconic piece of Americana.

The Union 76 petrol station signs, otherwise known as the "76 Ball", have been a feature of the Los Angeles landscape for nearly 50 years.

The large orange spheres were created by designer Ray Pedersen for the 1962 Seattle World's fair.

The signs have even had cameo appearances in Hollywood movies - one was knocked down by a rampaging T-Rex in the film Jurassic Park: The Lost World.

But the 76 balls, which adorn petrol stations across the Western US, are being replaced with more conservative flat signs by Union 76's Texan parent company ConocoPhillips, sparking a blog-based campaign for their preservation.

Madsen said he decided to join the cause after seeing a newspaper report detailing blogger Kim Cooper's efforts to save the historic signs.

"There seems to be this driving force to tear down everything that's a little old", he told the BBC.

"These are things that were landmarks, it's a symbol that I remember from childhood. What's the point of smashing them and putting up flat signs?"

Film talent

In Madsen's view Los Angeles' increasingly bland environment is representative of a process of thoughtless modernisation that is taking over the movies too, "everything is just getting completely homogenised", the actor said.

"I grew up in a time when I watched actors like Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum... those are the movies that I liked and I responded to.

"They're all gone now and there's no talent like that anymore, there's no immensity of talent that exists like that in the motion picture industry.

The same thing is happening to the motion picture industry that is happening to the landscape

"Even the movies are turning into a bunch of junk.

"They think if they put a handsome face in there or a good-looking body and they surround it with enough cars blowing up, that it is going to be entertaining... but in the long run it's just not going to last.

"It's all empty, there's no story anymore... the same thing is happening to the motion picture industry that is happening to the landscape."

Phone box

As well as lending his voice to the campaign Madsen has made a personal effort to save the signs from destruction.

Having been tipped off about a facility where dismantled balls we being kept he attempted to purchase one, but was told that they were all going to be crushed.

He said, "I get so mystified by things like that. Not only do they want to take them down, but they are going to make sure they smash everyone of them into pieces."

The 76 Ball is not the first piece of disappearing street furniture that the star has attempted to save.

He is also buying one of Britain's old red telephone boxes in an effort to preserve a little bit of the London that he remembers.

"I'm in the process of purchasing one of the phone boxes for myself and having it put up in the front of the garden. My kids aren't going to see the same London that I saw, my kids aren't going to see the same California that I saw."

Cooper has a ball in effort to save brand icon
by Randi Schmelzer - 5 Jun 2006 10:53

Burma-Shave rhyme signs, Howard Johnson's orange roofs, KFC's revolving chicken buckets: all pieces of modern Americana that today exist mostly in memory alone. Now, the iconic orange-and-blue Union 76 gas-station ball is on its way to joining them - unless Kim Cooper can stop it.

Cooper, 39, is a native Angelino and self-proclaimed "ultimate dilettante." From editing and publishing Scram, a journal of un- popular culture, to co-hosting the "1947project," a blog and bus-tour series highlighting LA's off-the-beaten-path crime sites, "my job is rescuing the underdog from neglect and destruction," she says.

The underdog this time is the 76 ball, the 45-year-old victim of a quiet marketing shift that began just after the 2002 merger of gas giants Conoco and Phillips.

According to its 2004 annual report, ConocoPhillips, which operates Conoco and Phillips gas stations, as well as 76, that year initiated a project to streamline the three brands' marketing efforts. So while its Web site refers to the 76 logo as "a long-trusted symbol [that] means something special to our customers," its most recent graphic-standards manual calls for a brand-consistent red-and-blue color scheme, rather than the historic, eye-popping orange.

"They began knocking down the 76 balls," Cooper recalls. These omnipresent symbols for gasoline in many parts of the US were methodically being substituted with ground-level "monuments" or taller, disc-shaped signage. Many of the LA area's 400 spheres have already been replaced, including the one that rose above Dodger Stadium for decades.

Cooper teamed with LA author Nathan Marsak in January to launch www.savethe76ball.com, a Web site dedicated to preserving the 76 balls "for generations to come." Featuring 76 sphere-related news, history, photos, and discussion, the site includes downloadable "I love your 76 ball" calling cards and a link to an online petition urging ball lovers to boycott ConocoPhillips-brand outlets if the company "does not demonstrate greater respect for the history and good will associated with the 76 ball."

Orb enthusiasts have responded in droves. The petition has 2,100-plus signatures, many accompanied by wistful, ball-inspired recollections and pledges to pump at Exxon or Shell. |

Cooper's endeavor has been showcased by media outlets from the LA Times to the BBC. Actor Michael Madsen even offered to help out, then asked where he could get his hands on a retired sphere. And following a Seattle radio interview, Cooper was contacted by former Young & Rubicam art director Ray Pederson - the man who designed the original ball as signage for a Union Oil Co.-sponsored sky-tram ride at the 1962 World's Fair - who offered his enthusiastic support.

Although ConocoPhillips has issued a statement thanking 76 ball junkies for their patronage, the company has yet to discontinue its icon-devastating, brand-continuity effort. But "the fact that people feel as strongly as they do about the balls," Cooper says, is a testament to their resonance.

"Children look for the 76 pumpkin every Halloween, and it makes them happy," she says. And the company's ubiquitous car-antenna mini-balls, introduced in 1967, became both a promotional coup and a still-strong fad: By the late 1990s, 76 was dolling out 4 million toppers every year.

Cooper admits that on some level, the effort is prank-like and "silly." She says she's "been attacked by people for putting my energies into this rather frivolous and highly charged campaign."

But saving the 76 sphere is about more than a gas-station sign. "If you don't look at what's around you, it's very easy to not care if things get knocked down and destroyed, things that actually reflect the culture, history, and changes of your place," she explains. "I think it's a tragedy."

Kim Cooper

2005-present
Cofounder, Explosive PR/Dumplingfeed media consultancy

1995-2000
Exhibition coordinator and librarian, LA Museum of Contemporary Art

1991-1992
Researcher, The Oakland Museum of California
 
Copyright © 2005  PRWeek

photo by Ricardo DeAratanha, LA Times

WANTED: for a major opportunity to help Save the 76 Ball, any 76 Ball fans in Indianapolis who have some 76 memorabilia handy and would be willing to loan it to our Earl Ma before Monday, please contact us immediately. This is your chance to be part of a very cool, celebrity surprise that will be posted on this site presently. Antenna toppers, keychains, magic 76/8 balls, decals, t-shirts, anything will do, and we are grateful for your help. Thanks!

What a thrill for this native Angeleno to pick up the "bulldog" (Saturday's preview) edition of the Sunday L.A. Times and discover that reporter Steve Gold's delightful story about the 76 Ball was on the front page, under the fold!

Welcome, L.A. Times readers, and for those who haven't seen the piece yet, you can read it online here. (But to see the silly photo of me posing like Atlas with a 76 meatball in my palm, you'll have to pick up the paper.)

And there are so many terrific comments on the  petition this morning. Please sign if you haven't already, and spread the word to your friends. If the 76 Ball is going to be saved, it's up to people like you to quickly show the new owners that this is just bad business.