The Terry Twins (and The Toni Twins)

Today is opening day of the Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio. We thought it an appropriate time to recall the Toni Twins advertising campaign, and the most famous of those who were among their representatives, the Terry Twins.

The Toni Home Permanent Company had a famous ad campaign that lasted decades, in which sets of identical twins wore perms. One of them had hers done by a hairdresser; the other did it herself with the hair care products of Toni. And you were to guess which was which. It was just like that time Vidal Sassoon teamed up with Dr. Josef Mengele! There were print campaigns in magazines, and TV commercials with this premise. And for 13 weeks in 1950, a TV variety show called Toni Twin Time.

This was still the era when many radio and TV shows were identified with a single sponsor. In this case the sponsor dominated the show to a maximum degree, for the show itself was co-presented by two of the products’ spokesmodels: The Terry Twins, Arlene and Ardelle. Posterity remembers the show at all though because they co-hosted the program with none other than a young Jack Lemmon, whose movie career was just about to take off, but hadn’t yet. This two gals and a guy format can’t help but remind me of a much later show from my own time, Pink Lady and Jeff, and I can’t but imagine the material had to have been somewhat similar “How’d you like to take home a pair of these, hey, fellahs?” And in between the commericials there were segments with special guest stars, which included Carl Reiner, the Canadian comedy team Wayne and Shuster, Bob Fosse, Darla Hood, James Kirkwood, and future New York Post columinist Cindy Adams, wife of Joey.

The Terry Twins were both singers. Apart from this show, they made some records, toured with the U.S.O., hosted the game show Twenty One, sang in a Chiquita Banana ad, and appeared in the films Stairway for a Star (1947, with Cornel Wilde) and The Rage of Burlesque (1951). Each later married; their married names were Ardelle Dame and Arlene Wolf.

Read about over a dozen other famous pairs of show biz twins here.

For more on variety entertainment, including television variety, please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous; and keep an eye out for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.