Since I only have access to AMC, I am reduced to watching reruns. anyway, the episode I saw last was the one where the head office guys from London come to visit. they pop in on the controller, who is surprised (and dismayed) to learn that he is being transferred to Bombay. They give him a “gift”-a stuffed cobra.
was this just a polite way of firing him? Giving people (that you want to get rid of) an unpalatable assignment was big in the 1960’s-is that what happened?
Big corporations of the era often moved people from location to location as they needed them. My grandfather-in-law moved from Schenectady to Wilkes-Barre to Schenectady when he was working for GE. You weren’t forced to move, but it looked bad on your record, and they usually gave you a better position.
A large multinational corporation of the era would certainly move people around. It was likely they would discuss the assignment with you first, but they were not obligated to, and they could use it as an excuse to fire you.
As I remember the show, the transfer was actually a promotion, a reward for his good work. For a British firm, this New York office was itself unpalatable - remember his wife hated it in New York. Bombay, a former British possession still filled with British culture, was undoubtedly much higher in their hierarchy.
I believe HE didn’t see it that way. Pryce saw it as a backhanded promotion. Like being Lead Bricklayer and then being told you’re being moved to King Shit Scooper.
I don’t remember what the exact timeline was, but wasn’t the issue that the Brits were preparing to sell the company and so Lane’s job wouldn’t exist anymore? It sounded like the new position was basically a lateral move to go on and whip another backwater branch of the company into shape.
This was before that. The Brits were preparing to replace Lane with a hip, young manager…
who unfortunately for him, got his foot horribly mangled by a riding lawnmower during one of those wild Sterling-Cooper office parties.
So Lane got to stay on, much to his relief.
My problem with the idea of Lane Pryce being transferred to the Bombay office is that this was in 1963. Most products in India then were domestically produced and branded and frankly the people were poorer than they are now. Is it realistic that a multinational ad agency would have had a Bombay office?
My thoughts exactly-India in 1963 was a 3rd world, poor country. Going there to run an ad agency was probably a death sentence (career wise). In advertising, NYC was the place to be-even London was nothing close (which is why the Brits bought Don’s firm).
A developing country of close to a billion people where the entire business, social, political infratsructre was created as if it were in England, where connections and joint practices went back hundreds of years. Britain and India were very closely linked.
By the early 60s, business had taken over from the Raj itself as leading employer of the British privately educated manager class. Good career move, live like a King and shuffle paper around a few hours a day.
Seems to me pretty smart of the writers to be so attuned.
“The doctor said he’ll never golf again.”
Yes, he got to hang on a while longer.