When it comes to comedians who make the big money, San Francisco actress and comedian Diane Amos scrubs away the competition. That’s because since 1993 Amos has gained renown — and wads of cash — as “The Pine-Sol Lady” in national television and print ads for the popular liquid cleanser.
She politely declines to disclose the amount of her current three-year contract, her third with Clorox Co., which produces Pine-Sol. Still, it would seem safe to say that, thanks to Pine-Sol, Amos has really cleaned up.
“We’re No. 1, baby,” Amos, 44, says with a laugh — and, apparently, no little pride — over coffee at cafe in the Inner Sunset, where she lives.
She says that when she auditioned for the part in 1993, Clorox, a $3.9 billion multinational household-products manufacturer, was concerned because Pine-Sol’s market share had slipped to third place.
The company chose Amos because she seemed like someone viewers would believe used the cleanser, according to Jill Murray, a veteran copywriter in the San Francisco offices of DDB Worldwide, the advertising agency responsible for the Pine-Sol ads.
“If you cast (a celebrity like) Jennifer Lopez, you would know she never used the product,” Murray says.
For Amos, there is another level of sweetness to the lucrative gig.
“I am one of the few national black spokespeople in the country, and I have pride in that,” she says.
Indeed, Amos brings a uniquely San Francisco-style history to her job pitching cleansers to middle America. Two years after she was born in Indianapolis, Amos’ father divorced her mother, Pearl Amos, who raised Amos and her sister, Becky, now 39, alone.
When Amos was 7, her mother met and fell in love with a woman who also had two kids. The couple and the four kids moved to San Francisco to avoid the dangers faced by gay men and lesbians in Indiana 30 years ago.
“Being in a mixed-race relationship would have gotten them killed,” says Amos, referring to her mother and her mother’s Jewish partner, who were teachers. “The (Ku Klux) Klan was big there. They were both educators. They would have been fired.”
As a child, Amos didn’t know what “lesbian” meant, but she knew her mother was enjoying life again. “It had been crazy all the time,” she says. “Now, she was singing and happy. ” (Pearl Amos died of complications from breast cancer in 1993, but not before seeing the first of her daughter’s Pine-Sol ads.)
The family settled in San Francisco, first on Fulton Street near Masonic and eventually on 33rd Avenue in the Richmond. Amos https://www.ncahcsp.org/buy-ambien-online/ attended Notre Dame Elementary School, a Catholic girls school in the Mission. She then went to Lafayette Elementary School, Presidio Middle School and Washington High School.
Having two moms presented few obstacles when it came to having friends over, she says. “In the early ’70s, women who were divorced were accepted,” she says. “So women living together as roommates were accepted. People didn’t even think it was a lesbian thing.”
Like many stand-up comedians, Amos — who has been married for 13 years and has two children — uses her childhood experiences in her act. That endears her to participants on Olivia cruises — weeklong getaways for women, most of them lesbians, during which Amos performs to rapt audiences, said Judy Dlugacz of Olivia.
“It’s a remarkable person who can come from all those dilemmas and not have a chip on their shoulder,” she says. “And Diane has no chip. Her own history gives her just this warmth and insight into everybody without having big judgments about people.”
Amos started doing improvisational comedy in high school. She later joined the National Theater of the Deranged, a local improv troupe. Amos says friends and fellow performers urged her to try stand-up comedy, so in 1986 she had first gig, at an Oakland museum commemorating Black History Month.
Amos eventually made a living as a stand-up comedian, even as she limited her touring because she was raising a child. (Her son, Kelvin Amos, is now 16. Her daughter, Cassie Amos-Medellin, is 4. Her husband, Jim Medellin, is a voice-over actor and writer.)
She brought in extra scratch in the mid-to-late 1980s by, of all things, kicking booty on syndicated game shows. She won $14,750 at “Wheel of Fortune,” $13,000 and a trip to London on “The $25,000 Pyramid” and $18,400 and, best of all, a La-Z-Boy recliner from “Super Password.”
“I love winning money, honey,” she says, again laughing. “It’s the most amazing feeling. I’ve never had crack, but this must be what it’s like.”
But her primary source of income remains those Pine-Sol ads. They get her recognized wherever she goes, she says — including in places like Jamaica and Belize. Which seems like it could get irritating.
“Not really,” she says. “In this business, people have to know you. Anyway, people are very nice. Sometimes it takes my time, but I’ve learned how to get away. I always say, ‘Thank you,’ and give them coupons.”
And you can take that to the bank, because it’s the clean truth. (Profile/Diane Amos/Making a tidy living as the Pine Sol Lady)