Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: A Sign of the Times

Before TV stars became TV stars, you can see them in the darndest places! One of those places is industrial films.

Bewitched’s Dick York was cast in a number of Coronet Instructional Films in the late 1940s in Chicago, where he was on radio. Harvey Korman co-starred in the 1959 Swift and Company-funded Carving Magic, where he learns how to carve meat sold by you-know-who (the film would have benefitted from Tim Conway as the meat-carving friend). Fame awaited them. And before his television fame, Martin Milner played a young suitor in the Bell Telephone industrial Of Many Voices, a 1951 John Sutherland production which also included Whit Bissell in the cast.

All these roles were uncredited.

You can add another one to the list.

Gulf Oil sponsored A Sign of the Times, a 1963 film urging gas station operators to maintain competitive prices. A little more than a quarter of the way into the film, a uniformed pump jockey walks up to a 1959 Chevrolet. He’s known better for a string of sitcom failures (Tim Conway would fit that, too) and one large success—as Col. Blake on M*A*S*H. Yes, it’s McLean Stevenson.

While some of the other actors in this industrial film seem familiar, there’s something in it that sounded familiar to viewers watching this in 1963, and maybe even today. Depicto Films of New York used the Capitol Hi-Q music library in the background, and one of the cues is ‘TC-430 Domestic’ by Bill Loose, better known as the theme for The Donna Reed Show. Likely, the contract terms with Reed’s producers gave the show exclusive television rights to use the cue, but that wouldn’t have covered films.

The film opens with ‘C-20 Light Activity’ (Loose). At 3:38, you’ll hear ‘TC-431 Light Activity’ (Loose-John Seely) and at 5:58 ‘LM-11A Metro Main Title’ (Spencer Moore).

This film isn’t all that campy, like other industrial films (okay, maybe that the tacky imitiation of a Top 40 rock jock is). But it gives you a chance to watch Stevenson being friendly and earnest, check out the late ‘50s/early ‘60s cars, and cringe at the price of gas and groceries.