Sunday, April 16, 2006

Life of a Salesman

Another (relatively) interesting story found while researching my television essay, this time from Mary Ann Watson's Defining Visions: Television and the American Experience Since 1945. It's a pretty average book on the whole, but it did have this rather bizarre story in a section on how professional groups have tried to influence television:
In 1966 a prominent group of sales executives offered advice on how the CBS production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman could be improved. The play, they said, could use some trimming of "needless anti-selling, anti-business" lines that added "nothing to either plot, mood, or characterization." They also suggested that a brief prologue called "Life of a Salesman" could be added pointing out that "with modern customer-oriented selling methods, Willy Lomans are ghosts of the past."
How much of Death of a Salesman would actually be left if you cut that out?!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you ever get those novel back from mr cody? I asked for them. I don't know if it was even that one. haha good times...
Katie Moss

Mads said...

Damn Mr Cody and his habit of losing books! Nope, I never got them back, and one of them is out of print and really hard to find these days. Grrrr.

Anonymous said...

yeah I was rifling through my desk and I had found the list of two that you had asked me to find, thats why I had thought of it...
Yeah mr cody is pretty special. I think I addended his class for a total of 14 days all semester. Passed with flying colours. Urg.
Kate

Mads said...

I've pretty much accepted that I will never again see my copies of The Visit and Chronicle of a Death Foretold... damn book-stealing Canadian English teachers!