The Maharajah of Alleebaba

Murder by Milkshake is now a two-episode Cold Case Canada podcast:

Last week, Bob Shiell sent me a note telling me that he worked with Rene Castellani at CKNW in the early 1960s, and was a huge force in one of the station’s most visible promotions—the Maharajah of Alleebaba.

I wrote about Rene the Maharajah in Murder by Milkshake, but Bob added a personal twist.

In 1963, Bob was 22 and worked in the promotions department for CKNW. Rival station CKLG had brought up Marvin Miller, an actor in a US-show called the Millionaire (1955-1960) where Miller give away money to people he’d never met. CKLG saw this as a great way to boost ratings in the upcoming BBM wars and had Miller go around town handing out cash.

“We had to come up with an idea for something that would counter that,” says Bob, and the Maharajah was born. “The idea was that he was coming over to buy the province of British Columbia.”

When I was researching Murder by Milkshake, Tony Antonias (who just died on Friday at age 89 and will always be remembered for Woodwards $1.49 day jingle), told me that he had come up with the title Maharajah of Alleebaba.

Rene was hired and dressed up as the Maharajah. Bob played Ugie, his driver and wore a red tunic and striped pants. The black Rolls Royce was a loan from one of the station’s owners—Robert Ballard, of Dr. Ballard’s dog food. They hired an off-duty motorcycle cop who provided an escort, and two women who normally did in-store food demonstrations for the station were dressed up as harem girls.

“We had a crossed sword logo made with sticky tape and we put that on the passenger and the driver’s door, and I found a little flag—the kind of embassy flag that you see on the President’s car. It was actually the flag of the Republic of Germany, but nobody noticed,” says Bob.

They stashed the Rolls at Bob’s Mum’s house on Granville Street, met there each morning and got changed in the basement. For two weeks the entourage drove around Vancouver—to clubs, restaurants, hotels, drive-ins, and a BC Lions game at Empire Stadium, often accompanied by a CKNW reporter named Sherwin Shragge (yes, that’s his real name) who would interview them on radio.

“I had this big leather suitcase handcuffed to my wrist full of silver dollars,” says Bob. “I would go around and give people a silver dollar from the Maharajah.”

Rene, says Bob, was a great guy to work with. “He just loved it, he was a born Maharajah, he loved the attention, he loved the harem girls, he loved riding around in the rolls Royce, it was the ideal role for him.”

In fact, it was so successful that locals got out with their hand made signs that said “Keep BC British.”

“A lot of people took it really seriously, they really bought into this whole idea, they did a really good job of selling this concept of a guy coming in to buy the province,” says Bob.

A little over a year later, Rene Castellani would become famous for poisoning his wife Esther with arsenic milkshakes . Read the story in Murder by Milkshake.

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