Cracking open history…carefully

Don’t you just love when exploration leads to unexpected pleasures?

During the creation and development process for DAISY, one of HHG Theatre’s works-in-development, I’ve been very fortunate to have gained ridiculous access to historical archives, documents and recordings that center around the infamous ‘Daisy Girl’ ad that was the ground-breaking centerpiece of the 1964 U.S. Presidential election. I’ve sat in the board room of the world’s most prominent advertising firm DDB and met with ad executives who helped create the ad. I’ve been to the Library of Congress Tony Schwartz Collection (Tony Schwartz is a central character in the play, and one of the principal creators of the ‘Daisy Girl’ ad.) I’ve had long talks with friends and family members of Tony Schwartz. I’ve got audio tapes that should be in a museum. It goes on and on.

John Carey, a professor of Communications & Media at NYC’s Fordham University, and a long-time colleague of Tony Schwartz, has been extremely generous in providing me with many of these materials. One time I came home to find a parcel had been mailed to me from NYC which contained an authentic Nagra audio recorder (seen below).

The crazy thing is that this tape recorder was the very same machine owned and operated  by Tony Schwartz, who is known as one of the most influential political media consultants of all time, as well as being a revolutionary media theorist, admired by Marshall McLuhan, and creator one of the largest collection of sound recordings and folk music in the world. It’s quite likely that this machine recorded the ‘Daisy Girl’ audio, for the most infamous political ad of all time. Here’s a photo of Tony Schwartz below using this very same machine as he recorded a political commercial for Senator Ted Kennedy inside the famous Manhattan studio that I visited in 2008.

Last night at my home in Ottawa, HHG Theatre frequent associate and DAISY sound designer Noah Drew stopped over for a vist. Since I hadn’t yet been able to show off any of these incredible archive materials to anyone on the creative team, I eagerly showed Noah the various audio tapes, microphones and the famous Tony Schwartz Nagra recorder that I have in my possession.

As we inspected the machine and tried to figure out if we could ever get it to operate, we decided to take a look inside to see if there was a place for batteries. After very carefully opening it up, what we discovered inside was so much more dazzling and complex, and so much more vibrant and colorful, than we could have possibly imagine.

As the 1964 election campaign waged on in the dark shadow of the threat of nuclear war, itself the most inhumane manifestation of the unstoppable advance of technology that practically defines what it is to be human, a group of advertising men and women set their sights on using the new technological medium of television – and exploring the full scientific potential of its impact on human behavior – to help elect a man who would keep the country from slipping forever into the dark. We all know what happened when Lyndon Johnson won the election after campaigning on a platform of peace.