New Bedford Company Granted Jerry Seinfeld Permission For Iconic Scene

Seinfeld was famous for weaving multiple storylines into episodes that somehow came together and intersected in unexpected, witty ways.

One of the best examples of this outstanding sitcom writing was the episode in which George pretends to be a marine biologist and somehow saves a whale after Kramer hit a golf ball into its blowhole.

For that episode to work, a New Bedford-based company had to get on board.

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The final scene of the episode was an instant classic and so perfectly written that you would have thought it had been part of the episode since Day 1.

Not true, says Jerry Seinfeld, who is on a media tour to promote his Netflix film Unfrosted. Seinfeld said the idea for George to find the golf ball in the blowhole came to him the night before filming.

Appearing on The Rich Eisen Show, Seinfeld said he ran the idea past executive producer Larry David, who liked the idea. The two quickly wrote the addition to the script -- a George monologue -- and presented it to Jason Alexander about 30 minutes before go time.  Remarkably, Alexander memorized the monologue, absolutely crushed the scene and Seinfeld fans have adored it for decades.

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"The sea was angry that day, my friends," the famous monologue begins. "Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli."

At the end, George reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out the "obstruction" he pulled from the whale: a golf ball.

"What is that, a Titleist?" Kramer nervously asks, realizing it's his. "A hole in one."

What we didn't know until now is that Seinfeld was scrambling hours earlier to get approval to use Titleist in the episode. He couldn't do so without permission from the New Bedford golf ball company.

"Going up the chain at Titleist that morning, getting someone at Titleist to let us say 'Titlelist.' We were biting our nails because it had to be Titleist. Any other brand wouldn't have been as funny. No other brand was going to work."

Thankfully, someone in New Bedford gave Seinfeld the OK and sitcom history was made.