365 Days #114 - Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation - The Challenge of Change (mp3s)

MP3:
1. There Is Nothing Like a Dame (3:13)
2. Makin Whoopee (3:03)

When I discovered that in 1970 the Ortho Corporation produced an in-house musical, I practically had a heart attack. Could it be? Yes, it was: a hitherto unknown corporate musical made for salesmen, about selling birth control to women.

The souvenir LP was titled "The Challenge of Change" and has no credits - actors, musicians, or otherwise. All the songs are parodies. The show looks and sounds like a low-budget affair, as does the jacket, which is a slapdash paste-on sheet with a few tiny black and white shots of the mutton-chopped audience and the meager stage show (two photos are reproduced here). I know of only one other copy, though they're probably languishing out there, somewhere.

Ortho's parody of "There Is Nothing Like a Dame" is simply jaw-dropping. It's right up there in the pantheon of criminally weird corporate tunes. My theory is that it may never have been intended for the album or show, as it's clearly a muffled demo recording. The second, er, slightly more subtle track, "Makin' Whoopee," has a backup band accompaniment and a more professional sound, as does the rest of the album.

Interestingly, the lyrics pretty much indicate that Ortho, as early as 1970, thought they were doing God's work by spreading birth control everywhere they could. It wasn't just a job - they won't stop until every woman's got some! Oh, wait - only "happily married" women. Hmmmmmmmm.

- Contributed by: Jonathan Ward

Images: Ortho!, Ortho!!

Media: LP
Album: The Challenge of Change
Date: 1970

Comments

[Listener Kliph]

Two photos are produced where?

[365]

Scroll up and see under "- Contributed by: Jonathan Ward" the text:

Images: Ortho!, Ortho!!

Links to large scans.

[Rocketboy]

This is a classic! Had me laughing my ass off!

[Duncan Walls]

My Dad was a salesman for Ortho in the late 1950s and early 1960s for the 16 (as I remember it)westernmost counties of New York State. He took the job after bowing out of a transfer from Buffalo to Binghampton with Gerber Baby Foods because the housing market was too expensive in the Binghampton area for our family of 5. I was 10 in '61, my brother 7 and sister 4 and we rarely saw my Dad Monday through Thursday. When he could he would come home early on Friday if he had a good week. We moved to Fairport, NY outside of Rochester.

And yes, as you said, Ortho's mission was to spread contraception everywhere they could. My Dad was proud that he landed numerous new Doctors' accounts. He had a tie clip I remember well that said YCDBSOYA across its widt ( I think I still have it somewhere; it made an impression)...You Can Do Better Selling Ortho Year Around...I can't believe I remember that! He sold diaphragms and oral contraceptives and I remember he had cardboard boxes of 'cutaway' plastic models of the female torso from the side that was clear and obviously showed how to insert a diaphragm. Being the oldest and into models I asked what it was and as I was too young to know (soon enough I would know something) he said they were models of KNEES (which they kind of looked like). It satisfied my curiousity. Apparently there were a lot of Doctors promoting these to their patients that needed a teaching aid to demonstrate how to use them. He also sold Masse Cream, which was nipple cream for nursing mothers to ease their sore over-worked nipples. We used it as we would have used first aid cream which it was substitutable for, outside of being slightly yellow.
I remember seeing his paycheck for two weeks once. It was $209. I hope he got commission checks, too. I don't know how we made it except Mom started substitute teaching.

Dad kept the job with Ortho for about five years as I remember until he got his Master's in Education and started working at Rochester Institute of Technology as the Director of Student activities. That was a big change for him and us as he was home a lot more and we got to go to concerts at RIT that he helped book and he signed all the contracts for RIT and the students. But that's another story.