Pint-Sized Pitchman

If you pinched his ample jowls and told him he was cute, he would probably kick you in the shins. Not that Mason Reese, a red-headed seven-year-old who looks uncannily like a 3-ft., 8-in. Arthur Godfrey, is an unfriendly chap. It is simply that Mason does not like to be embarrassed. All that fuss about his being on TV commercials, for example. When other kids recognize him on the street, he would rather play ball than sign autographs. He is suspicious of interviews. He squinted up at one reporter and said, "You're here to look into my brain, aren't you?"

In 1970, when Mason could barely lisp the word detergent, an advertising woman who lived in the same Manhattan apartment building as his parents auditioned him for an Ivory Snow commercial. He got the job. The first week the tape was telecast the manufacturer received 400 letters -- for Mason. After three years of amiably declaiming the virtues of Underwood Chicken Spread, Post Raisin Bran and other products in his preternaturally deep, adenoidal voice, Mason has a fan club and a five-figure savings account, and this year won a Clio award at the American TV and Radio Commercials Festival for the best male performance in a television commercial. Last month New York's WNBC-TV offered him a spot as a children's news correspondent.

All of which is but a casual sideline to Mason. His real passion is magic. Whenever he does a commercial, his parents allow him to pick out a toy (top price: $8.99), and he invariably chooses some magic trick. Between takes on the set he demonstrates his prowess to the crews, and they in turn have taught him to play craps.

When the camera is rolling, Mason's reactions are highly professional. He has an instinctive sense of where to stand and how to move, and he often translates scripts into his own words to make them sound more childlike. "I suspect that Mason will become another Peter Ustinov or Orson Welles," says Andy Dole, producer of the Underwood Chicken Spread commercial. "He has a directorial sense already."

Mason's parents do not want commercials to dominate his life, even though both of them have had brushes with show business. His father William, a partner in a marketing services company, once designed theater sets. His mother Sonja is a former film and TV actress. So far, Mason has made ten commercials, causing little interruption of his normal round of activities at home and his classes at St. Michael's Montessori School, where he is about to enter third grade.

This is fine with Mason, since he does not intend to become a newscaster or director but a detective when he grows up. Recently, during the shooting of an Underwood commercial, Mason showed his insight into the criminal mind in the great Cookie Caper. Consigned by his mother to a low-calorie diet, he conspired with Producer Dole to procure some cookies baked in the studio kitchen. Drawing a diagram of the studio, Mason plotted a path to the refrigerator. Between takes, while Dole distracted his mother, Mason sneaked along the prearranged route and snatched the cookies. The plan went smoothly until Mason and Dole met behind the kitchen to split the loot. "Sorry," Mason told his partner, "I only got one--and it's for me."

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