Dec. 03--A cavalcade of song-and-dance brunettes in groovy bell-bottom jumpsuits star in a 1974 industrial musical for the liquor company Hiram Walker. "How to make it happen for your greatest year," the film promises, and, after some perfunctory remarks from an executive, the dancing girls sweep into frame like something out of an alternate-universe variety show about selling booze: "We're providing super special promo pieces that work at point-of-sale in every waaaaaay!"
Cast albums of a similar type are floating around here and there, artifacts of a bygone era of the industrial musical, created for (and performed live at) sales meetings as a kind of motivational entertainment.
"Many of them were one-shot deals -- one night in a hotel ballroom or convention center -- and then, if you were lucky, 500 copies of a record were pressed, most of which disappeared into the ether," said Steve Young, who stumbled upon these albums during his years working as a writer for David Letterman.
Two years ago he collected them into a book called "Everything's Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals." More recently Young got his hands on several film versions of these musicals, which he brings to the Music Box Theatre on Thursday and to the Art Theater in Champaign Friday. They are among the weirdest things ever put to film.
"The mid-'50s was the full-flowering of it, with original music and lyrics and a big cast and choreography and the whole shebang," per Young, who said he came across the genre 20 years ago during his tenure with Letterman (which would include both of the host's late-night talk shows.) "I was asked to head up a comedy bit called 'Dave's Record Collection,' with real, unintentionally funny record albums that we would hunt down in thrift stores and used record shops. I was the one going out and finding the raw material, and occasionally I would come back with one of these bizarre, souvenir record albums from a corporate event or meeting -- things like 'Diesel Dazzle,' which was an entire musical about selling and servicing diesel engines."
Young has not yet found a movie component for that one (if one even exists), but he has unearthed plenty of others that are just as odd, including a 1967 film for Purina touting the company's "most spectacular promotion in pet food history!"
A Citgo film from 1965 is full of song parodies, including "Everything's Coming up Citgo!" sung to the tune of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from the musical "Gypsy," and "I Could Have Zoomed All Night" sung to "I Could Have Danced All Night" from "My Fair Lady." The bit feels incessantly corny but you wonder, how did it play 50 years ago?
"It's very unclear to me whether people loved this stuff," Young told me. "I think of lot of it was just, 'Eh, that was kind of funny.' But the better versions, the upper echelon, it was so astounding to me that corporations were doling out money to very talented people" -- we're talking major talent in some cases, including Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock pre-"Fiddler on the Roof" and John Kander and Fred Ebb pre-"Cabaret" -- "who put on these staggeringly well-crafted musicals that just happen to be about this wildly improbable subject matter."
As improbable as industrial-grade silicone. (That film, made for GE, actually won me over because, apparently -- according to a catchily exhaustive song -- silicone is used in everything.) Or plumbing fixtures. (If you told me that the makers of the 1969 film for American Standard called "The Bathrooms Are Coming" had snorted a few lines of Comet before embarking on the thing, I wouldn't be surprised.) According to Young, at least one of the stars from "Bathrooms" is expected to be at the screening.
"I think during the golden age (of these industrial musicals) corporations thought that this was such a prestigious thing to do," Young said. "They could say, 'Look, we hired real Broadway talent for this year's big convention.' They were happy to boast about that on the record albums.
"And this stuff was a lifeline for so many people. I've talked to many writers and performers who said this was a wonderful way to practice their craft. And the money was terrific. You would make more money doing an industrial show than you would as a mid-level Broadway person."
By the 1980s, industrial musicals were starting to peter out. "A few things were happening," Young said. "Tastes were changing -- you had more people who grew up on the Beatles and Led Zeppelin than Broadway musicals -- and there were cheaper, newer ways to put on a show, with laser light shows or whatever. So companies would use generic material that had some flash to it, but it was never as complicated or expensive as commissioning an entire musical about selling lawn mowers. Companies eventually decided, 'We don't need special material' -- everyone's fine with Coldplay or Green Day or Tony Bennett to come out and say, 'Hello, IBM!' or whatever."
The industrial show still exists, albeit in a less extravagant form. Both Second City and iO Theater have corporate arms, and performers will tailor their material depending on the client. It's not nearly as expensive or elaborate -- no orchestras or bespoke costumes -- but the basic idea is the same. And Young mentioned that there is a film called "Wal-Mart: The Musical" from 2006 that was "pretty much an old-line industrial musical with New York talent and original music and everything."
Back to the films Young is screening: It seems extra-weird that these one-time stage shows were also turned into films.
"It doesn't seem to make much economic sense for something that is so ephemeral," Young said. Then again, very little about these shows make sense. "I have a 1979 record from what claims to be the first disco sales meeting," he said. "That may have been the smoking gun that finally killed off disco. If an office furniture company is trying to use it to be hip, it's dead."
Steve Young screens a selection of retro industrial musicals 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., and 9:30 p.m. Friday at the Art Theater in Champaign, 126 W. Church St. Go to www.musicboxtheatre.com and www.arttheater.coop.
