He then turned to selling used cars in front of a Texas post office, making folksy pitches when people got their mail.
In , Worthington moved to Huntington Park, Calif. When television became more established and sponsorship of entire programs was too expensive, he turned to doing commercials.
The "dog" Spot came to life to counter a Chevrolet dealer in the San Fernando Valley who was using a large German shepherd named Storm as a prop. The first Spot was a gorilla that roared. Later, Spot became a killer whale, a lion, a monkey, an elephant and a goose that, in a memorable appearance on The Tonight Show, laid something other than an egg on host Johnny Carson's suit.
Off-screen, Worthington is far different than he acts on television. Instead of a zany cowboy pitching cars, he's soft-spoken and modest, inclined to listen more than he talks. Although his large, log cabin-style home is gracious, it isn't ostentatious. I try to be honest with people, down to earth, and make sure customers are happy.
That's the best advertising I can do. But I use it. It's not just a joy. I can be at my ranch in Nevada in 45 minutes.
I also have businesses all over the West Coast. I'm in Alaska several times a month. Married and divorced three times, the year-old Worthington has six children and four grandchildren. His oldest child is 59; his youngest is 5. His older son, a retired American Airlines pilot, lives on the ranch and oversees much of the operations. Most of Worthington's children, in fact, are involved in the family's various businesses.
On weekends, the airstrip in front of Worthington's home is busy with the takeoffs and landings of his children in their own aircraft. This summer his middle son will marry in Monaco and all the Worthington children plan to pilot in for the event. I enjoy my family. When it's all said and done, I enjoy my family most, by far.
Family is what life's all about. You can have everything in the world and if you don't have anybody to share with, you don't have much.
He left home to become a bomber pilot during World War II. Worthington claimed to sell 1 million cars in the span of his career and once owned nearly two dozen auto dealerships from Houston to California, Nevada, Washington and Alaska. Southard said Worthington had four dealerships: his main Long Beach dealership at Bellflower Blvd.
Southard said Worthington had not yet retired from his businesses before his death. His love was just unbelievable and unconditional. Lungren commented on how Worthington died — during halftime watching one of his favorite teams, the San Francisco 49ers, play the Green Bay Packers. After the war, he applied to be a pilot with the major commercial airlines but was rejected because he lacked a college degree. He began buying cars, fixing them up and then selling them from a dirt parking lot near the local post office.
After a few months of sales success, he knew he would be a car salesman. By , Worthington had made enough money to buy a car dealership in Huntington Park. The ads caught the eye of Hollywood. In the s, and during the energy crunch of the mid-'70s, he tried to boost sagging sales by giving live Southern California traffic updates from a helicopter. And for a short time, he even sold motorized pogo sticks. In , Worthington divorced his wife of 37 years, Barbara, and married Susan Henning, an actress and model.
The second marriage ended in a bitter divorce seven years later. In the early s, he left his Southern California headquarters in Long Beach and moved his operations to his 24,acre Big W Ranch and office complex in Orland.
In , Worthington married disc jockey Bonnie Reese, about 40 years his junior. The couple divorced in As he aged, Worthington stopped his practice of flying his Learjet to dealerships in Houston, Phoenix and Seattle to shoot his commercials.
In recent years, he stood before a green screen at his Northern California ranch and let a computer superimpose his 6-foot-4 image into an Alaska snowstorm for his Anchorage dealership or a sunset for his Long Beach or Carlsbad lots.
Elaine Woo is a Los Angeles native who has written for her hometown paper since She left The Times in
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