ORIGINATOR OF GLENFED ADS CASHING IN.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

Those whiny Glendale Federal Bank radio commercials, which have slammed Bank of America and Wells Fargo for the past two years, might make April Winchell a star.

Winchell, who stars in and writes the spots, recently began working as a writer for the ``Roseanne'' television show after Roseanne Arnold heard the ads and sought her services.

``Roseanne has been nothing but great,'' said the 37-year-old Winchell, who has been hired for the rest of the current season. ``We have a similar sensibility.''

Additionally, Comcast Corp.'s C3 programming arm, which recently gained control of the E! cable network, has expressed interest in creating a sitcom centered on Winchell's character. As Winchell sees it, the work on ``Roseanne'' will give her the network accreditation needed for her to write scripts for the new show.

``This whole experience, starting with the ads for Glenfed, has been amazing,'' said Winchell, who reports she is occasionally recognized by her voice. ``And it's so ironic that in this computer age, I wound up getting discovered on radio.''

Winchell comes from a show business background. She is the daughter of Paul Winchell, a ventriloquist who gained fame in the 1960s on the ``Winchell Mahoney Time'' children's show with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. He continues to work occasionally and is the voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh cartoons.

April Winchell, who had been working as an ad agency contract writer, debuted in the Glendale Federal commercials in April 1995, basing the spots on her own poor experiences with larger banks. A Glendale Federal spokesman said the ads have helped the thrift boost the number of new checking accounts to an average of more than 12,000 a month, compared with 3,000 a month before the campaign began.

Many of the spots have hit Wells Fargo, which completed buying First Interstate Bancorp in April for $13 billion in the largest banking takeover in U.S. history. Wells Fargo has closed or sold 320 branches since the merger and disclosed last month it had boosted the number of expected job cuts to 10,800 from the original target of 7,200.

The deal has been fodder for Winchell, who still keeps an account with one of the big banks. She won't say which one it is, but noted, ``Every time I go in there, I get treated so badly that I come out with plenty of material for new ads.''

Winchell plans to keep her job as the Glendale Federal announcer and said there are four new ads that will air soon.

One of her previous spots, dubbed ``Cattle Song,'' featured sound effects of cows lowing and whips cracking while Winchell sang in a Country Western voice:

``Merging, merging.

My old bank is merging

And I'm going out of my mind.

Every time I go there

Things are really slow there

Seems I'm always waiting in a line.

It's an uphill battle

They're treating me like cattle

And they're simply wastin' my time.

If this is stagecoach banking

I'd rather have a spanking

I'm waitin' waitin' waitin' in line.

Move them in, hang around, check your watch, get annoyed, stand in line, check your nails, look around, stand in line.

Analyst Barry Reubens, president of bank industry tracker California Research, said the commercials are helping Glendale Federal's bottom line by distinguishing the thrift from its rivals.

``There's a lot of shouting in this business, so if everyone's shouting, who cares?'' Reubens said. ``But these ads are getting talked about because people love humor. It's very difficult to correlate advertising with profits, but there's no doubt the spots are getting noticed.''

Glendale Federal, which has $15 billion in assets and more than 150 branches, recently beat Wall Street's estimates by reporting earnings of $23.2 million, or 29 cents a share, for its second quarter ended Dec. 31. It reported checking account business was up 32 percent over the year-earlier quarter.

Reubens said Glendale Federal continues to make progress in strengthening its balance sheet and improving performance. Like many other thrifts, it was clobbered by the collapse of the real estate market in the early 1990s.

Glendale Federal has also been hit recently with complaints about low loan volumes to low-income and minority customers but has insisted its performance has improved over the past year.