Word: salesmen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sunny California, some of the world's sharpest auto salesmen provide a deal of shade. Last week the shadiest of them all was popped into the cooler. Convicted on charges of conspiracy, grand theft and forgery, Auto Dealer Henry J. Caruso-billed as "the greatest" in his radio and TV singing commercials-was packed off to jail for a year, fined $10,000, and enjoined for the next ten years from entering any business in which he would be selling to the public. After Caruso, wary Californians agreed, the public needed a ten-year respite...
...used-and-new Dodge. Pontiac and Plymouth car lots in Compton. Pasadena, Long Beach and Hollywood, Caruso refined cheating, double-dealing and intimidation into such a formalized art that he actually conducted regular classroom sessions to teach his salesmen (nine of whom got lighter sentences) how to go about it. Salesmen were instructed to get customers to sign blank contracts, later cut the trade-in allowance and raise the new car price they wrote in on the contract. They were taught to spout figures at a torrential rate to confuse the buyer, and to never put a deal in writing...
...Salesmen were also instructed to get the ignition key of the automobile the customer intended to trade in. Some timid customers were not able to get their cars back, were forced to go ahead with the deal. Others recovered their keys and cars only to discover that good tires and battery had been switched for worn-out items. A long procession of witnesses testified to other ingenious ways in which they had been cheated. On the Rev. Bert D. Crouch, Caruso played all the tricks in his bag. Caruso's salesmen upped the price of Crouch...
Cooks & Giants. Over the years they worked in the rich fields, got jobs as salesmen, short-order cooks, orange-juice stand attendants, worked for wineries, warehouses and cotton gins, bought homes and farms, raised good crops, joined Rotary Clubs, sent their sons to become lawyers, accountants, teachers...
...source of exuberance is that, rather than seeming sung or danced or chanted, a lot of production numbers seem spieled or shilled; they have a contagious carnival air, a ballyhoo rhythm. Opening with a jingly, jabbery railroad-car recitative of traveling salesmen, the show soon catapults Actor Preston into River City. There he first catches the town's eye with a kind of stylish evangelical pitch called Trouble, then clutches the town by the lapels with a rousing Seventy Six Trombones. Later in a gay, public-library ballet, Preston soft-shoes a hard sell of love-making...