Bonnie Henry : Hard-hat kind of guy had soft touch for Ivory Snow

Nah. Not even those fictional advertising geniuses of the 1960s would have come up with something that far-fetched.

But that's exactly what happened in the fall of '67, when Cornell "Corky" Collins and his baby girl were featured during a 60-second commercial for Ivory Snow laundry detergent.

"I had to watch several episodes of 'As the World Turns' before I saw it," says Collins, 70, who recently retired from a 44-year career with Sundt Construction.

A Tucson native, Collins originally worked for Sundt as an errand boy in the late '50s. In 1965, he went to work for Sundt full time, rising to the position of manager of Sundt International, a subsidiary working outside the United States.

It was a career that would take him from Saudi Arabia to Moscow, Australia to the Philippines.

Much earlier in his career — the fall of '67 — Collins was working out of Sundt's Tucson office when the company president called him into a meeting.

"He introduced me to this woman, and she said she was with a firm in Tucson that was trying to locate men in the construction industry with diaper-aged babies," recalls Collins.

Whereupon his boss told the woman, "Here's your man."

Says Collins: "My mouth dropped open. I told her how old my baby was, and she said she would take my name, and, if interested, they would be in touch."

One week later he got the call. It was from the New York advertising firm Benton & Bowles. "They said they would be in Tucson and wanted to see me, see the baby and meet my wife."

Collins — along with his wife, Carole; and their 7-month-old daughter, Carrie — met with the ad men at the Hiway House motor hotel on North Miracle Mile. There, Collins found out the ad agency was representing Procter & Gamble.

Next came a critical test. "They sat Carole with the baby in one room and sat me in another room," says Collins. "There were two stacks of diapers on a table. They said, 'Mr. Collins, we want you to feel the diapers and tell us which ones are softer.' So I patted them, felt around and said, 'This stack.' They moved the stack and under it was a card that said 'Ivory Snow.' "

A couple of weeks later, he and Carrie underwent a screen test at the old Cliff Manor hotel on North Oracle Road. The Procter & Gamble and Benton & Bowles people were there. So was a film crew from Old Tucson.

"We went inside," recalls Collins. "I had the baby. It was all 'goo-goo.' Then we went outside by the pool. They wanted me talking. Then they said, 'Thank you, Mr. Collins.' "

Another week or so, another call. "They said they wanted to use me."

At the time, Sundt was building a computer center for Southern Arizona Bank on East Grant Road.

Perfect.

"They wanted an actual construction site," says Collins, who scrambled up and down scaffolding all day long, pausing just long enough to explain how even his construction-roughened hands could discern the softest diaper.

Meanwhile, two other Tucson dads were also being filmed for Ivory Snow commercials. "One was a crop-duster and his baby; the other was a geologist," says Collins. "They got the cropduster up in the air, and took the geologist to Mount Lemmon."

Interior shots for all three commercials were then filmed at the White Stallion Ranch.

As Collins re-enacted his diaper touch-test while cuddling with Carrie on a couch, an actress sitting next to them extolled the wonders of Ivory Snow and its built-in softener.

Both Collins and Carrie nailed their parts and were rewarded handsomely. "We were paid about $10,000 total," says Collins, who stashed the money in Carrie's college fund.

A few months later he was bidding on a job in New Mexico about the same time he'd been told the commercial would air. "For three days straight I was running back to the hotel room to watch the TV," says Collins. "I saw the commercial once."

The 60-second clip was then mailed to him. But it was 16 mm film, and Collins had no projector to run it. "We put it in a box and forgot about it."

Carrie grew up and used her Ivory Snow money to attend the Art Center of Tucson. Now Carrie Barcom, married, and the mother of two, she lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

Last summer, she came back to Tucson for a retirement party that Sundt was throwing for her dad. Unbeknownst to her, he had converted the old Ivory Snow film clip to a DVD format.

"When we got home, he played it for me," says Carrie, who recently returned to Tucson for yet another visit. "We both cried."

Not surprisingly, the Ivory Snow commercial wound up as the main feature at Collins' retirement party.

"They had this slide show of Dad and all the places he had worked," says Carrie. "Then they brought out the commercial and played it over and over. They just loved it."

Full disclosure here: One thing the Collins family obviously never got out of the deal was a year's supply of Ivory Snow.

Says Carrie's mom, Carole: "No, I never used it."

Did you know

Sundt Construction had its Tucson beginnings in the 1930s. Its earlier projects include the University of Arizona stables, Jácome's Department Store and a runway at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.