Michael Vale, the character actor who starred in more than 100 Dunkin’ Donuts commercials as the early-rising “Fred the baker” and joked that he got paid in doughnuts, has died. He was 83.
Mr. Vale died Saturday in a New York City hospital of complications from diabetes, said his son, Tracy Vale of Los Angeles.
The Brooklyn-born character actor was a veteran of a dozen Broadway shows, a handful of movies and about 1,000 commercials when he joined some 300 other actors for a Dunkin’ Donuts casting call in 1982.
About 40 of the contenders, including the short, folksy Mr. Vale, were called back to try their lines as the self-sacrificing Fred, who would rise each morning at 4 o’clock to help boost Dunkin’ Donuts into the world’s largest coffee and doughnut chain.
“The first time he said, `Time to make the doughnuts,’ we were hysterical,” Ron Berger, partner and creative director of the company’s advertising agency, Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer Euro RSCG, told the Boston Herald in 1997.
Mr. Vale’s long run as doughnut spokesman put him into advertising annals along with other durable fictional characters such as Madge the manicurist for Palmolive dishwashing detergent and the Maytag repair man.
He became such a marketing icon that when the company wanted a new advertising campaign, it first surveyed customers to determine the reaction to Mr. Vale’s possible departure. Customers said he could leave–if he were treated like an honored friend and employee. So Dunkin’ Donuts devised an official “retirement” celebration for him, including a Boston parade and free doughnuts for an estimated 6 million customers on Sept. 22, 1997.
Asked by Entertainment Weekly whether he had ever actually made doughnuts, Mr. Vale quipped: “I’m on record as having made one. I didn’t add the sprinkles or frosting–I was too exhausted.”
