Cinema: Lesson in Salesmanship

Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man 'way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat and you're finished...

—Death of a Salesman

When Salesman Robert Whitney, head of the National Sales Executives organization, heard about this graveside elegy to the American traveling man, he rushed off to see Producer Stanley Kramer. Such a gloomy fadeout, Whitney argued, would horrify the peppy, up-to-the-minute salesman of today. Kramer would not tamper with the grim plot of his forthcoming film version of Death of a Salesman. But he offered a sop. Columbia would make a special ten-minute short for Whitney's organization, showing that salesmen these days are not like Willy Loman at all, but happy, well-trained technicians who are a valuable natural resource in the U.S.

Last week a script was all ready for shooting, and Kramer had agreed to narrate it himself. When he turns it over to Whitney, for showing at schools and sales meetings, he will have made a neat little sale himself. Thousands of salesmen (and potential movie customers) will hear Producer Kramer explain: "Death of a Salesman was a great play. It will be a great picture."