Al Greenwood; TV Ads Established His Reign as ‘the Bedspread King’

Al Greenwood, known to Southern Californians as “the Bedspread King,” has died. He was 93.

Greenwood, a longtime Long Beach resident, died of congestive heart failure Wednesday night at his daughter’s and son-in-law’s home in Seal Beach.

A Massachusetts native who made his way west during the Great Depression, Greenwood became known in his later years for his kitschy late-night TV advertisements. His low-budget spots, which always starred the velvet-robed salesman with a twinkle in his eye, helped his two Bedspread Kingdom stores, in Long Beach and South Gate, sell more than a million bedspreads.

Among the last of the old-style pitchmen, Greenwood once described himself as a cross between P.T. Barnum and Neiman Marcus. He reveled in his role as the little guy up against giant corporate competitors out to gobble up mom-and-pop stores.

“Al’s style is a throwback to the carnivalesque sales approach, which was prominent around the Civil War and up through the 1920s,” said Mary Wolfinbarger, a professor of marketing at Cal State Long Beach in a 1998 Times profile of Greenwood. “Its appeal is its vividness. It cuts through the clutter of ordinary advertising.”

Behind the playfulness, though, was an industrious man who built a successful business against stiff competition by working every day, even past the age of 90. Within the last year, when he was forced to spend part of his days in a wheelchair, Greenwood still made it to his store seven days a week.

“Al always joked he wouldn’t stop working until they took him out sideways,” said Bob Laio, his son-in-law.

For most of his life, Greenwood held a variety of nondescript sales jobs in relative obscurity. He started working steadily at age 10 when he sold newspapers for a couple pennies on the streets of Boston.

He arrived in Los Angeles during the Herbert Hoover administration and got a job selling shoes at the Harvard Shoe Store on Main Street. In the decades that followed, he would work as a sign painter, a chaplain’s assistant during World War II, a door-to-door housewares salesman and a rug salesman.

It wasn’t until his 70s that he mistakenly stumbled across his alter ego as the Bedspread King and became something of a Southland celebrity. He founded his bedspread business in the 1980s and needed a gimmick to help sell his wares. He came up with the concept of “Bedspread Man,” a cowboy hat-wearing entrepreneur, and hired an artist to draw up some samples.

When the artist returned, he had Greenwood in a regal gown and a crown. Greenwood hated it immediately, but his wife, Mary, who died in 1985, convinced him it would work. It did.

From his faux throne, Greenwood would often satirize current events in newspaper advertisements. After a rash of gang shootings, he joked that everyone should buy a bulletproof bedspread from him.

Some, even those who should have known better, took him seriously. Greenwood received inquiries to buy the fictional bulletproof bedspread from Northern Ireland and from writers on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”

In another newspaper ad, Greenwood went after the vast market of unmarried couples who lived together.

“You don’t know how the relationship is going to turn out, and you don’t want to spend a lot of cash,” the ad started.

His flair for showmanship and his unconventional sense of humor landed the Bedspread King a bit role on the television show “Sisters.” He also was an unofficial commentator for radio station KROQ-FM (106.7).

In 1999 and 2000, when he was in his 90s, Greenwood served as a consumer advocate reporter for Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” He would gleefully skewer businesses on such topics as half-full cereal boxes and sexual enhancement creams.

“We march to the beat of a different drummer around here,” said Greenwood, who delighted in handing out 8-by-10 autographed glossies of himself to customers. “We do a lot by gut feeling. There’s no motors, no wheels, no computers running things. Just people.”

He is survived by two daughters and five grandchildren.

Services are scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday at Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary in Culver City.