Ask for the Wolfman

When discussing local commercial icons, the list begins and ends with the Wolfman (and Donna), whose low-budget ads are sorely missed.

It didn't matter that Doyle Rodgers and his daughter were selling some of the crappiest looking furniture this side of IKEA. We watched for the doggedly wooden repartee, the kind usually reserved for the likes of John Davidson and Cathy Lee Crosby (from "That's Incredible.") But it wasn't sexual tension that fueled them ... Donna was Wolfman's daughter.

While the Wolfman left us a few years back, Donna remains as manager of the Gallery Furniture store in Gainesville. She still stars in the chain's commercials, but it's just not the same without daddy.

Little surprise that Ted Turner -- a renowned curator of eccentrics -- gave Rodgers his start:

In an unlikely twist of events, the former Atlanta media mogul played a hand in the Wolfman finding a spot in television commercial history. When Rodgers started looking into television advertising, he turned to the Superstation, Turner's then struggling cable channel. As Turner's channel started growing on a national level, so did the local Wolfman's reputation, so much so that Wolfman Jack (or his lawyers) felt threatened enough to claim copyright infringement. Turner quickly took care of the situation, and so the furniture salesman Wolfman continued on, almost seeming timeless.