The most interesting thing about this tape, to me, is that I have no idea for what purpose it was recorded. It was part of a huge batch of tapes I bought a few years ago, most of which contain raw audio tracks from various media recordings from the 1950's and early 1960's. I've shared several other tapes from this batch, including an interview with Albert Gore, Sr., a Sound Effects tape and a CBS radio sales presentation.
This tape is clearly of the same vintage, and yet I can't fathom what its purpose was. It portrays a very 1950-60's management meeting, in which the hiring of a new Marketing Manager is being considered, and like some of the other reels, this may have been audio from a film or video piece. There are no clues on the tape box, seen at right - the edge of the box says "Stock OK for Tests".
It's fun to hear the interplay here, and the way these marketing men spoke to each other, jockeying for position, alternately agreeing with and disagreeing, with various levels of sucking up to the boss (who finally tells one of them to call him by his first name), and their "honest" appraisal of their chances when the boss leaves for a minute or so.
But it sure is an oddball recording: They seem to go out of their way to not mention what product they work for. And this certainly couldn't have been intended for broadcast in that era, not with the use of the words "piss" and "shit" each being used once - both were clearly right in the script, too. And yes, this is all from a script - as you'll hear, there are a few places where they stop to get a line right, and after the "meeting" stops (which is quite sudden), the tape ends with several edit pieces, re-recordings of lines that were flubbed, unclear or otherwise needed to be read again.
Who and what was this for???
Oh, and the first line, directed to "Mr. Wagner", seems to be unrelated to the marketing meeting, but I left it there, right before the meeting, because it seems to make it just a bit weirder.
I've left the first minute of this tape for last, because it seems to be more of an "odds and ends" piece. Before what you've heard above, there is a small segment in which a man adopts what is apparently a fake Italian accent, to render a rewritten version of the last line of the famous poem about Gunga Din, in this case paying tribute instead to Italian World War I hero Enrico Toti. Another mystery!
Unknown - Tribute to Enrico Toti (MP3)
It's just not immediately available on the display tube!
Posted by: danomatika | December 11, 2013 at 11:24 AM