See how many well-known ’60s character actors you can spot in the all-star cast of this memorable 1969 Pontiac commercial. Break away!

This 1969 commercial is more notable for its cast than for the actual product it was selling. Pontiac’s marketing tagline for ’69 was “Break Away,” and the prison work detail in this spot is fixing to do just that on a trainload of new Pontiacs. Now check out the actors: Broderick Crawford Of Highway Patrol is the guard on the chain gang, and the inmates are the veteran actors Mike Mazurki, Elisha Cook Jr., Lon Chaney Jr., Robert Strauss, and Leo Gorcey. If you grew up on the movies and television of the time, these are all familiar faces indeed. We saw them regularly in everything from The Bowery Boys to Star Trek and Kung Fu. TV viewers no doubt got a big kick out of seeing them all together.

Meanwhile, here’s what was happening at Pontiac for 1969. The General Motors division had a firm grip on the number three spot in U.S. auto sales, trailing only Chevrolet and Ford. The GM brass had taken notice, and on February 15 of that year general manager John  Z DeLorean was promoted to the top spot at Chevrolet, one of the corporation’s most prestigious positions.

New models at Pontiac for ’69 included the GTO Judge and the Firebird Trans Am, two cars that would make muscle-era history. However, the division’s best seller by a wide margin was the newly downsized Grand Prix, which moved a staggering 112,000 units, more than tripling the sales of the previous full-sized GP. It was results like these that propelled DeLorean up the GM ladder, despite his growing reputation as a corporate maverick. Video follows.