Johnny Roventini; Bellboy Called for Philip Morris in Ads

Johnny Roventini, the diminutive bellboy known by generations for his advertising slogan, “Cal-l-l-l for-r-r Phil-lip Mor-ray-iisss,” has died. He was 88.

Roventini, who stood 4 feet tall, died Monday in Suffern, N.Y.

From 1933 to 1974, when he retired to sail and golf, Roventini, or “little Johnny,” was a living trademark for Philip Morris cigarettes. He appeared throughout the country in person, on billboards, in magazines and on radio and television dressed in his signature red usher’s jacket, striped trousers, black pillbox hat and white gloves.

He made his famous call more than 1 million times, intoning it officially for the last time in 1974 to open the company’s operations center in Richmond, Va.

Johnny’s well-known uniform, inspired by a 1919 poster of a bellboy, is now in the American Ad Museum in Portland, Ore. The stand-up collar of the jacket became a fashion classic that endures today, known in design circles as a “Johnny collar.”

Born to Italian immigrant parents, Roventini got a job as a bellboy at the Hotel New Yorker and earned minor fame when the hotel put his picture on postcards. He was identified as “the smallest bellboy in the world.”

When advertising agency president Milton Biow came up with the idea of having his cigarette paged as if it were a man, he stopped by New York’s Commodore Hotel and asked for the best bellhop in town. He was sent to the Hotel New Yorker and spied Johnny.

Biow gave him a dollar and told the naive youth to page Mr. Philip Morris.

“I went around the lobby yelling my head off, but Philip Morris didn’t answer my call,” Roventini would tell people for years afterward.

It was 1932 at the onset of the Depression, and Biow offered the bellboy $100 a commercial.

“I have to ask my mother,” said Roventini, who was then 22 years old.

Adeline Roventini said fine. Roventini made his radio debut accompanied by “On the Trail” from Ferde Grofe’s “Grand Canyon Suite.” The music, like the uniform, became linked to the living trademark.

For $20,000 a year, Johnny promised never to appear in public without a bodyguard and never to ride the subway during rush hour. When his salary rose to $50,000, Philip Morris insured Johnny’s voice, with its perfect B-flat call, for that amount.

By the 1950s, Philip Morris began replacing Johnny in its advertising with dancing cigarette packages.

Roventini tried to enlist in the Coast Guard Auxiliary during World War II, but was rejected when he couldn’t see over the recruiting table. He was given a special draft classification of 1/2A.

Roventini lived with his mother until her death, and never married.