Philip Roth has done business in “downnn townnn” Toledo fo r about 60 y ears.
Many Toledoans, even people who have never been to Roth Furs, still recall his radio commercials and his comically drawn-out pronunciation of those words. Mr. Roth says that memorable line was unplanned.
“I had done about 35 takes of that commercial,” he remembered, “and they kept telling me I was speaking too fast. So it started out as a joke. I really slowed down at those words. When they put it on the radio, I started to get calls from friends saying it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. So I decided I would do that again.”…