The general public was never meant to see the irresistibly titled musical The Bathrooms Are Coming. But thanks to Steve Young — a happily obsessed veteran comedy writer who spent 25 years writing for Late Show with David Letterman — Bathrooms and other equally bizarre and obscure corporate musicals are seeing the light of day.
Back in 1990, Young was hired by the Letterman team to spearhead a segment called “Dave’s Record Collection. “I was going to thrift stores looking for the raw material, and I began coming back with souvenir albums from these corporate events,” says Young. “They were musicals selling tractors or diesel engines. I loved the collision. I fell into an alternative universe.”
This side project grew to epic proportions as Young collected albums, began interviewing cast members and writers, and started tracking down rare film clips. He gathered enough material for a book, Everything's Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals. And he’s working on a documentary, which he hopes will see a release in the next year.
On Dec. 2, Young will screen clips from his favorite vintage industrial musicals at the Majestic Theatre. Most date from the 1950s to 1980s. Isthmus spoke with Young about what to expect at the screening and Wisconsin’s contribution to the industrial musical canon.
For the uninitiated, what’s an industrial musical?
A show that superficially might seem like a Broadway show, but the subject matter would not be on Broadway — how great it is to work at a certain company and how exciting it is to sell a new line of tractors, air conditioners, bathrooms or soda. While often extremely elaborate and well produced, you were only allowed to see this if you were a company insider. They were not publicized, not reviewed; it was a hidden world of show business.
What was the quality of these shows?
Some of them aren’t great. Some are terrible, and I kind of love those too. But the top layer was astonishingly well done. The big corporate musical was a prestige thing. I talked to one of the composers, who did this for a long time. His musical introduced the ’57 Chevrolet line. It toured around to different states. The budget was several million — much larger than the budget for putting up My Fair Lady on Broadway.
And you found that well-respected composers were doing this work.
I had an album of a Ford tractor musical. I showed it to my friend, who turned it over, and his eyes widened. He said, “Do you know who these people are?” It was by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock. They wrote the music and lyrics for Fiddler on the Roof.
I have since gotten to meet and talk to Sheldon Harnick. Writing these shows was a wonderful way for up-and-coming Broadway writers and performers to work in the business, make really excellent money. Corporations were spending at a furious clip. Sheldon said as he began getting a toehold on Broadway he hoped he would still get to do industrial musicals.
Didn’t Kander and Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago) write one, too?
They wrote a GE musical: Go Fly a Kite, for electric utility executives. Ben Franklin travels through time to see how modern electrical power is doing, helps executives with modern problems. Some of the songs are great. They’re about weird electrical details.
What is “the golden age” of this form of musical? How and when did it wind down?
The Golden age is mid-’50s to mid-’80s. By the ’80s things were starting to slow down. Tastes were changing. And there was a new workforce; not everyone cared about musicals. Now people had grown up on Led Zeppelin, and corporations learned how to do things more cheaply.
What did spending so lavishly on these elaborate musicals accomplish?
I don’t know whether the bottom line was helped. People say it was, and that it built team spirit, the feeling that we’re a family and marching together into the future. I think for a while it was just an arms race — the boys across town have a dozen dancers, so we’ll put 20 dancers in the Ford tractor.
Are you aware of any Wisconsin corporations that contributed to the genre?
I did find one record album. In 1971 Trane Company from La Crosse did a musical on central air systems: Our Future’s Now!
I’m sure it’s hard to pick a favorite. But is there one musical you’ll never tire of?
I don’t think you can do much better than The Bathrooms Are Coming, the American-Standard musical from 1969. It had an absolutely talented composer named Sid Siegel. The film itself, other than the music, is a pile of bewildering nonsense that gets howls of laughter that it was not supposed to.
What’s the plot?
A Greek goddess named Femma comes to life to help modern women lead a bathroom revolution. It’s Classic Greek.
What do you enjoy about touring with the industrial musicals?
I love the adventure of going out with these and introducing people to these. It seems like something comedy writers must be making up. It’s bewildering, surreal. It just lands on people like something from outer space.
