Way back in the seventies the business school mantra was "nothing happens until a sale is made". So how does American ingenuity foster ever greater sales? Turns out there was a unique thing designed to do just that. The Industrial Musical Theater. The biggest juggernauts of industry signed on to a new way in the years post WW II. They hired some of Broadway's best song and theater talent to make a kind of double secret type of sales motivation in the form of Broadway show productions just to fire up the guys and gals in the trenches selling a wide variety of wares. These shows were just for sales meetings and often the budgets were much greater than the Broadway hits of the day. To provide a souvenir that kept motivating afterwards the biggest productions pressed record albums chock full of all of the creative jingles which made up the productions. Largely lost to time and obscurity it took a unique, off-kilter, person to act as a archaeological excavator. That would be long-time comedy writer Steve Young. Young spent several decades exclusively writing for The David Letterman Show. Dave's oft used record collection segments became Young's exclusive territory. Young would find obscure, often unintentionally hilarious, records to feature on the segment. It opened up a world Young never knew existed. Like a moth to a flame Young became obsessed with the genre of the Industrial Musical. This film sheds a spotlight on this singular sales tool which combined Broadway musical productions with overtly clever sales pitches. Now, this film isn't for everyone. Few will find a deep interest I think it's safe to say in the utterly over-the-top method of selling more bath fixtures by way of a slick song and dance number. Or will they? I surprised myself by watching it all. It turns out a lot happens before a sale is made and to insure that final result American ingenuity went to a bit of strange and wonderful creativity. There may even be a message buried in the film as to why America innovated and led the world for a pivotal period and how we need to return to a new era of immense pride in what we make. The present day song and dance production at the end is quite up-lifting. I'm glad Steve Young was able to bring his passion on forgotten Americana to the written page and the screen. If it's worth doing it's worth singing about.

To some, the idea that there were whole musical productions that were practically enormous advertisements for companies seems absurd. Since I grew up listening to Stan Freberg, I already knew that musicals could sell products (take his "Omaha" musical, for instance, since it was basically a 15-minute radio ad for Butternut coffee). At any rate, Bathtubs Over Broadway (2018) explores these oddities that most people never realize existed up until only a decade or two ago. It's a little sad to see these ridiculous odes to corporate marketing go by the wayside...but it also makes sense as well.

If there's anything that Bathtubs Over Broadway gets across, it's that these musicals were serious business, even if the companies they were selling weren't. There were songs about bathrooms-repeated throughout its runtime-if that gives you an idea of the content. It is a little awe-inspiring to see famous names tied to these theatrical productions. One wonders how many legendary songwriters, producers, and actors got their start on the "advertising circuit" before breaking through to more significant (and more publically-available) roles.

While this documentary follows one of the most avid collectors of these musicals, it felt a little too long to be a full-length feature (albeit just barely, only clocking in at 87 minutes). Consequently, a number of the sequences felt repetitive as it drove home the point of how ridiculous these musicals were. It probably would have worked better as a documentary short, at least to keep it focused on the main idea (marketing musicals). Instead, it ballooned out of scope to include its own original song and dance number-which itself is a little cringe-worthy as well. In the end, I have a feeling this documentary might remain as obscure as the musicals it uncovered.

A curious look into the quirky world of "marketing musicals" that's just a bit too long, I give Bathtubs Over Broadway 3.0 stars out of 5.

I watched Bathtubs Over Broadway a few weeks after watching the Maysles Brothers' 1969 sobering documentary, Salesman. The two documentaries would make an interesting double feature. I never knew about industrial musicals before, and Bathtubs Over Broadway explains why. Like the best documentaries, including Salesman and the other Maysles' documentaries, it lets us enter a world we typically would not see. As David Letterman's head writer, we already know Steve Young had a deadpan yet extremely witty sense of humor, and it shines in this documentary. How he became obsessed with the music from industrial musicals is perfectly explained too (trying to find bizarre albums for Dave to plug on his show). 9 stars....one star taken off because the end of the documentary, the big musical number, was just too cutesy-cutesy for my taste. But well worth a look, especially if you liked Salesman and David Byrne's movie True Stories.