Clairtone: Remembering the Canadian 60s Stereo Console with Big Shiny Balls

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B-

The essential takeaway from Clairtone, the new Ron Mann documentary about a Canadian-made stereo console which had a brief pop moment in the 1960s, is that its creators — future billionaires and philanthropists Peter Munk and David Gilmour — did something shocking. They took the until-then demure home stereo console and provided it with a pair of big shiny balls.

Technically, these metallic gonads were functional spherical speakers. But they looked as startling as the introduction of full-frontal nudity. Until then, homeowners preferred to discretely hide speakers and other dangling audio parts inside a wooden cabinet with cloth over the speakers. Then, after a few evening cocktails, Dad could lift the wooden lid, slap on a Frank Sinatra or Harry Belafonte album, and the gang could cut loose.

The Clairtone speaker balls were introduced on the company’s “Project G” model at the National Furniture Show in Chicago in 1964 which looked like a missile silo, swollen at both ends.

Through a vigorous publicity campaign by Clairtone, the Project G got endorsements from swingers like Sinatra and Oscar Peterson, and later product placement in movies like Sinatra’s Marriage on the Rocks, and A Fine Madness starring Mr. Virility himself, Sean Connery.

The Project G stereo was also included in the seduction scene in The Graduate. Hugh Hefner got one for The Playboy Mansion where, presumably, it took its place among all the other globes on display.

“It didn’t look like any other stereo,” says narrator Nina Munk. “It looked like it came from outer space.”

Or perhaps under the desk. The space-age influence on post-war design was considerable, but it was also an era of rampant biomorphic design. Ms. Munk narrates the film while nestled in Arne Jacobsen’s 1958 Egg chair, in an homage to ads for the Clairtone stereos, designed by then-adman and political fixer Dalton Camp.

Director Ron Mann’s entertaining and insightful documentaries typically focus on counterculture creativity — on free jazz, spoken word poetry, van painting, the history of marijuana laws, a New York guitar shop — and Clairtone is consistent with his patented retro-pop culture aesthetic.

It’s fizzy and eclectic, with bits of animation, original and period music, zippy montages of archival material. Most notably, the film is punctuated by scenes of lissome dancer-choreographer Mairêad Filgate frisking about in various costumes and hairdos, representing something like something like the “evolving spirit of Clairtone.”

The rest of the film isn’t as light on its feet as the parts with Ms. Filgate and the narrative perspective is strictly in mono. The film, written by Len Blum, is based on Nina Munk’s 2008 book, co-written with curator Rachel Gotlieb, and it’s tethered to her point of view.

Her narration is broadly celebratory, a tribute to her father’s irrepressible spirit, combined with a Canadian Heritage Moment (the Clairtone was “Canada’s most seductive export”) along with an infomercial for a product you can no longer buy.

She oversells the originality of Munk and Gilmour’s original Clairtone, essentially a high-end audio equipment placed in a cabinet. In the late 1950s, a number of renowned international designers, including Charles and Ray Eaves and Braun’s Dieter Rams designed some gorgeous stereo consoles and more of that context would help.

On the other hand, those 1964 speaker balls, created with the help of designer Hugh Spencer, caught the horny-for-technology spirit of the moment.

Another drag on the film’s momentum is an entangled political-business story about Clairtone’s demise, after the company moved to Nova Scotia in a disastrous partnership with the province’s government from 1966 to 1970.

The story, which involves a private-public co-venture involving Clairtone, the promise of manufacturing Toyota cars, the new colour television market and too many factors to summarize, also involves Conservative political heavy-hitters including future PM Robert Stanfield and supermarket magnate Frank Sobey. A few more voices and perspectives here would help clear the logjam.

Though it’s sad, as Nina Munk reports, that her father had to sell his house and move into a rental apartment after the company’s failure, it was doubtless also unfortunate that 1,200 employees lost their jobs due to the company’s mismanagement, to say nothing of the $25 to $30 million loss suffered by the Nova Scotia economy.

Ms. Munk is not always positive. She acknowledges her father’s overenthusiastic risk-taking. And she holds a grudge against J.W. (Bill) Mangels, who took over the indebted company after the founders were removed and tried a fire sale approach by selling cheaper products under the Clairtone name.

“Mangels only lasted a year,” she declares, “but in that time he destroyed everything my father had created.” Customers who loved the Clairtone brand, she tells us, “Were not only confused, they were aghast.”

I would have been interested in hearing from some “aghast” customers but perhaps they’ve moved on and are now listening to music on their phones like most of the rest of us.

Clairtone concludes with an account of Peter Munk’s later business triumphs in real estate and goldmining, leaving him and his family with a quirky story about his early stumble, and a legacy of a handful of movies that show the retro stereo with the big metal knobs, which he helped create.

Long may they ring.

Clairtone. Directed by Ron Mann. With Nina Munk. Available on demand December 22.