CLAIRTON
2025 - CANADA - 73 MINUTES - COLOUR/B&W - 4K - 5.1 AUDIO
A FILM BY RON MANN
“Clairtone was already history by the time I was a child. By the time I was old enough to talk about those kinds of things to my father. But for him, it loomed large. It had always loomed large right to the end of his life.
He would say “Clairtone was my first great love.” And you never forget your first love.”
So begins Clairtone, Ron Mann’s new archival documentary about the rise and fall of the Clairtone Sound Corporation. For a decade, in the 1960s, Clairtone Sound Corporation captured the spirit of the times: sophisticated, cosmopolitan, liberated. From its modern oiled-walnut and teak stereos to its minimalist logos and promotional materials, Clairtone produced a powerful and enduring body of design work.
Founded in 1958 by Peter Munk and David Gilmour, Clairtone quickly became known for its iconic designs and masterful advertising campaigns. Its acclaimed Project G stereo, with its space-age styling, epitomized the Swinging Sixties. Famously, Hugh Hefner owned a Project G. So did Frank Sinatra. Oscar Peterson affirmed that his music sounded as good on a G as it did live.
Peter Munk was 16 when the Nazi’s marched into Hungary. His grandfather managed to secure a place on the Kastner train, a secret rescue operation that saved over 1500 Jewish citizens. Escaping to Switzerland, Peter quickly moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto where he studied electrical engineering. There, he met David Gilmour and the two became fast friends. While Peter was already involved in the world of high-fidelity sound, David was well underway with his own business of importing Scandinavian furniture; they decided to start something that melded their strengths together - a high-fidelity stereo system housed within beautiful wood consoles.
What follows is the stuff of Canadian history, as their one-of-a-kind stylish stereo consoles paired with brand-new modernist advertising techniques allowed the business to soar astronomically. Frank Sinatra and Hugh Hefner had Clairtones in their homes - Oscar Peterson touted their stereos as sounding as good as hearing him live. However, that quick ascension was met with a swift downfall. Costs mounted, manufacturing problems persisted, and a heartbreakingly premature gamble on the colour TV industry, left the company nearly bankrupt and forced the two founders to give up control to the Nova Scotia government.
Though while they lost the company, their entrepreneurship didn’t end there. They went on to found a real-estate company (TrizecHahn) and the world’s largest gold-mining operation (Barrick Gold) and ended their lives still the greatest of friends. Clairtone remains a design icon to this day, with its most enduring stereo - the Project G - still considered a collector’s item in a class all its own.