Rufkahr's halting delivery was so genuine that people actually wrote to help Ed pay off the second mortgage he had allegedly taken on his house to get the business started. The two made 230 ads in seven years. Rufkahr died of a heart attack in 1996. Cherokee Indian Iron Eyes Cody paddles his canoe past smokestacks and stands by a highway as litter is thrown at his feet. A single tear runs down his cheek.
People start pollution, people can stop it.
This is probably the most hauntingly memorable public- service advertisement, with an estimated 24 billion household viewings. But when he died in 1999, Cody turned out to have been an Italian-American from Louisiana, who changed his name from Oscar DeCorti when he got to Hollywood. A guy on his porch is trying to sing the blues. Woke up this morning, the sun shone down on me . . . Row, row, row your boat .