Subtle case study produced for parents, teachers, and mental health professionals on the importance of constructive parenting in overcoming childhood fears. The parents of a healthy five-year-old do not grasp why their child fears entering a cave. The mother tries to be sympathetic, but the father shows impatience. Feeling anger at his father, the child drowns his stuffed bear. After the parents take time to think about their son’s behavior, they resolve to show greater understanding, and...
Topic: sponsored film
Stark, realistic documentary showing poorly educated “mountain peoples” living in poverty and stricken with disease. Their solace comes in strong family bonds and the prospect of improved educational opportunities. Note: Shot in Kentucky, the film was made in conjunction with The Children Must Learn . John Ferno had been a cameraman for Joris Ivens and Henri Storck. Irving Lerner had a lengthy career as a producer, editor, and director; see Thomas J. Brandon, “Irving Lerner: A...
Topic: sponsored film
Driving safety film sponsored as a public service by oil companies. Of five drivers who leave home in the morning, only four return, and we wait to learn who the victim is. The film gives considerable discussion to careless driving habits and depicts Angelenos from different walks of life as well as their homes, neighborhoods, streets, and freeways. Note: And Then There Were Four was shown theatrically in first-run houses before being distributed on the nontheatrical circuit and released in...
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Topic: sponsored film
Touching melodrama in which a generations-old family rift is finally healed. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Film advocating electrically powered waste-treatment facilities. Produced as part of General Electric’s “More Power to America” campaign encouraging infrastructure investment, Clean Waters demonstrates the health and safety dangers of water pollution and presents electric-powered sewage treatment as a way to clean up America’s waterways. The film includes footage shot in 28 states and the Alaska territory. note: Clean Waters was selected “the world’s best commercially sponsored...
Topic: sponsored film
Mutt and Jeff cartoon featuring live-action shots of Bud Fisher, creator of the original comic strip. Preserved with the collaboration of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and The Museum of Modern Art.
Topics: silent film, cartoon
Safety film for heavy equipment operators that was commissioned by the construction equipment manufacturer. Reminding workers to follow procedures and stay alert, Shake Hands with Danger features simulated accidents and a memorable title song. Note: “Herk” Harvey directed the independent horror film Carnival of Souls .
Topic: sponsored film
Industrial film detailing the manufacture of automobiles at Chevrolet’s Flint plant. Master Hands shows tool and die making, founding, casting, welding, part fabrication, and final assembly. The process concludes with the consumer behind the wheel of his new car. The film is set to a Wagnerian score performed by the Detroit Philharmonic Orchestra and includes only two lines of narration; in Master Hands the elemental work of industrial production speaks for itself. Note: Part of...
Topic: sponsored film
Theatrical cartoon showing the odyssey of a gasoline drop from its entry into a Chevrolet’s fuel tank to its explosive end in the engine cylinder. Down the Gasoline Trail uses humor to leaven the technical explanation of how a fuel system works. Note: Released as part of Chevrolet’s Direct Mass Selling series. The cartoon was broadcast from NBC’s New York City experimental television station in October 1939.
Topic: sponsored film
Introduction to cockroaches and their extermination sponsored by an insecticide manufacturer. Good-bye, Mr. Roach promotes the use of Velsicol’s Chlordane both at home and in larger pest-control projects. In one scene the workers pump the insecticide directly into sewers. Dramatic music accompanies a time-lapse sequence of roaches emerging from eggs. Note: The film was a companion to Goodbye, Mrs. Ant . Originally produced in Kodachrome.
Topic: sponsored film
Longest of four dealer promotion films in a two-hour series produced to promote Westinghouse home appliances. Ellis in Freedomland breaks into two parts. In the first, a store manager has a dream in which talking appliances, speaking with the well-known voices of major film and television stars, offer tips on increasing sales. The second introduces “Freedom Fair,” Westinghouse’s spring sales event, and celebrates through a song-and-dance number how the company’s appliances free...
Topic: sponsored film
Documentary showing how to set underwater explosives, preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and The Museum of Modern Art.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Film urging the public to save money for major purchases. An ironworker learns that by building up a nest egg in a savings bank, he can eventually buy a comfortable house.
Topic: sponsored film
One-reel Essanay Western, preserved with the collaboration of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and the Library of Congress.
Topic: silent film
A tour of Filmdom with glimpses of celebrities Ramon Novarro, Jack Warner, Max Linder, and Vola Vale. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Feature-length drama, written by Ida May Park, in which convicts befriend a poor family and struggle to go straight. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and The Museum of Modern Art.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Travelogue capturing the romantic landscapes of the tropics. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and George Eastman Museum.
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Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Charming one-reeler in which the family dog steps in to serve as matchmaker for two shy brothers. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
International Newsreel story about beauty pageant contestants in Los Angeles. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
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Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
First two reels of a Lois Weber feature in which a film inspires three sets of moviegoers to remake their lives. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Well-crafted film on the health problems caused by emotional stress. The drama follows a white-collar worker with a peptic ulcer through tension-filled scenes at work and at home. Linking emotional stress with physical illness, Ulcer at Work espouses the now-discredited theory that ulcers result from a child’s unsatisfied oral gratification needs. Note: The cast includes real-life doctors.
Topic: sponsored film
Refutation of the National Right to Work Committee’s And Women Must Weep , an antiunion film dramatizing a strike in Princeton, Indiana, in 1956–57.
Topic: sponsored film
Travelogue by Benjamin Brodsky spotlighting the work of Japanese women, , preserved with the collaboration of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and the George Eastman Museum.
Topics: silent film, sponsored film
Slapstick comedy about a hearing-impaired burglar and a coveted suit of clothes. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Documentary celebrating the work of the Highlander Folk School, a progressive adult education center founded in 1932 in the mountain community of Monteagle, Tennessee. People of the Cumberland demonstrates how education and the labor movement can transform an impoverished mining region and bring hope to its people. Made by activist filmmakers, the movie ends with a call for a “new kind of America.”
Topic: sponsored film
Early complete issue of the American newsreel, with stories on the veterans' bonus and election of Pope Pius XI. P reserved with the collaboration of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and UCLA Film & Television Archive.
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Topics: newsreel, silent film
Footage drawn from Frank Gilbreth’s time and motion studies. The anthology includes a clip of his family, who were often used in his work-efficiency experiments. Note: Also known as Original Films of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth . The compilation was also issued in a 26-minute version with narration by James S. Perkins. Other films by Gilbreth are held by Purdue University. For more about Gilbreth’s use of films in research, see “Many Inventions,” The Outlook , Mar. 29, 1913, 736.
Topic: sponsored film
Pacifist plea sponsored by a Quaker group. To a voice-over commentary describing the arms race, Language of Faces presents a montage of human faces and activities that culminates in a silent vigil at the Pentagon. Note: John Korty also made The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman . Teiji Ito, husband of Maya Deren, composed the score for Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon .
Topic: sponsored film
The Industry on Parade series portrayed the nation’s industrial sector during the 1950s. The films strove for a broad representation of American enterprises and even included profiles of mom-and-pop operations. This episode touts America as the most hygienic nation. It ranges from the dry-cleaning industry to soap and vacuum cleaner manufacturing. Note: Industry on Parade was a key component of a public relations campaign to promote the benefits of free enterprise. The series was...
Topic: sponsored film
Film urging parents to join forces with educators to solve school overcrowding during the 1950s baby boom. In Crowded Out , a teacher is assigned so many students that she is unable to respond to their individual needs and must resort to rote instruction. Dissatisfied, she plans to resign. The film recommends that parents work through their parent-teacher associations to secure increased school funding. Note: The credits also acknowledge the involvement of affiliated state education...
Topic: sponsored film
Science-fiction-influenced cartoon sponsored by petroleum producers to lionize their industry and promote free enterprise. “Colonel Cosmic,” an astronaut from the totalitarian planet Mars, flies to Earth, where he discovers cheap oil and the market economy. Returning home, he leads a revolution and frees Martian entrepreneurs to begin oil exploration, start small businesses, and lead the planet out of economic stagnation.
Topic: sponsored film
Exploration of juvenile delinquency in San Francisco featuring interviews with teenagers from different racial and ethnic groups about their neighborhoods and gangs. The documentary offers community projects, such as the “Youth for Service” program, as a constructive way to draw teenagers back into the community. Ask Me, Don’t Tell Me is a revealing portrayal of multicultural San Francisco through the eyes of disenfranchised residents. Note: Received first prize in the “Film as...
Topic: sponsored film
Episode from Ford Educational Weekly , a documentary series showcasing American industries, cities, and tourist destinations.
Topic: sponsored film
Series of some 20 episodes, some with animation, illustrating news events and Ford-related subjects. This episode shows Buffalo Bill and the 101 Ranch Wild West Show, a celebration of the opening of the Ford Assembly Plant in Oklahoma City, a patriotic parade by Ford employees in Detroit, and President Woodrow Wilson attending a memorial service for Yuan Shikai, president of the Republic of China. Note: Film World and A-V News reported that the series was distributed for virtually no fee...
Topic: sponsored film
A 970-foot fragment, from Benjamin Brodsky’s ten-reel documentary, showing Peking in the 1910s. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Travelogue sponsored by a railroad company serving New York City. Approaching the metropolis by rail, the film covers major tourist destinations such as Coney Island, Times Square, celebrated nightclubs, and Rockefeller Center, where NBC provides an experimental television demonstration. Note: Produced in Technicolor. Also released in 16mm. Revised in 1948.
Topic: sponsored film
Slapstick short featuring Snub Pollard, preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Historical survey tracing the use of natural fibers from ancient times to the present. Commissioned by a synthetic textile manufacturer, the film was praised for its high production values and few references to its sponsor. Note: Fibers and Civilizations was shown in the U.S. Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair.
Topic: sponsored film
Drama about a restless convent girl whose fling in high society teaches her a lesson. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and George Eastman Museum.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Comedy about a writer’s neglected wife who devises her own story to make her point. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the George Eastman Museum.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
A comprehensive, behind-the-scenes tour of NBC’s radio, television, and sound recording studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Note: Distributed theatrically and nontheatrically and broadcast by NBC television stations.
Topic: sponsored film
Right-wing film arguing that the civil rights movement and urban disturbances of the 1960s were evidence of a worldwide communist revolution and growing dominance at home. The polemic warns that communists may be planning to create an independent African American state. Note: A narchy, U.S.A. incorporates purchased news footage.
Topic: sponsored film
Short detailing how the City of Baltimore overcame lethargy to launch a slum rehabilitation campaign. Note: Received a Freedoms Foundation award in 1953. John Barnes made films for Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, which produced and distributed The Baltimore Plan at the urging of the Fight Blight Fund.
Topic: sponsored film
Film promoting consumption of coffee in youth-oriented coffee houses. Accompanied by a folk music sound track, Coffee House Rendezvous profiles seven coffee houses located near churches and college campuses and illustrates the wholesome activities that occur in these public places. Note: The film was made as part of the “Think Drink” campaign mounted by the Coffee Information Service, whose objective was to turn 17- to 20-year-olds into coffee drinkers. Produced in Eastmancolor. The...
Topic: sponsored film
Advertising short for Chevrolet combining live action and animation. The film relates the story of Gilbert Willoughby, who, exasperated by his stubborn boxspring mattress, imprudently wishes for the disappearance of springs. Coily, the animated spring sprite, grants his wish, and Gilbert is bedeviled by once-familar appliances that no longer function. Apologizing to Coily, Gilbert acknowledges the contribution of springs to daily life, especially in the Chevrolet. Note: From the Direct...
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Topic: sponsored film
film highlights the history of the telephone, from Alexander Graham Bell’s invention to the linking of New York City and San Francisco by transcontinental voice line on January 25, 1915, with the final connection made at the Nevada-Utah state line. The short details how AT&T departments worked together to achieve long-distance telephony. Note: A Continent Is Bridged was intended for both corporate and public screenings and in March 1940 was broadcast from NBC’s experimental TV...
Topic: sponsored film
Animated critique of New Deal–type liberalism. In a dream “Albert,” a worker in a statist economy, is forced to watch a state-sponsored “free movie” on national planning. On awakening, he is convinced of the failings of excessive government control.
Topic: sponsored film
Film produced to acquaint minority workers with the sponsor’s services and promote a diverse workplace. In the story a laborer threatens a walkout after his foreman hires an African American but learns acceptance after he observes the on-the-job skills of the new hire. An Equal Chance also illustrates the process through which the commission resolves bias complaints. Note: The film was shown in theaters throughout New York State.
Topic: sponsored film
Film for the Household Finance Corporation featuring its spokesperson Edgar A. Guest, the popular poet and radio personality. Guest performs without making any explicit reference to the sponsor or its products. Note: The short was shown under the title A Heap o’ Livin’ at the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair.
Topic: sponsored film
Training film for police officers explaining how to recognize and handle the mentally disturbed and developmentally disabled. At the time of the film’s making, the police were generally the first responders in psychiatric emergencies. The film uses dramatized scenes featuring New Orleans police officers and nonprofessional actors to illustrate how to communicate and control anxious, confused, and possibly violent people. Note: Based on a pamphlet by Lloyd Rowland, director of the Louisiana...
Topic: sponsored film
Animated short promoting Bristol-Myers’s Ipana toothpaste. The cartoon uses characters from Gene Byrne’s comic strip, Reg’lar Fellers . Note: Produced in Technicolor, Boy Meets Dog was said to have been one of the most expensive commercials ever made for theatrical distribution as an “added attraction.” For more about Caravel Films, see Arthur Edwin Krows, “Motion Pictures—Not for Theatres,” Educational Screen 18 (Dec. 1939): 363.
Topic: sponsored film
Pro-labor film blasting the greed and cunning of the “big boys” in government and in the National Association of Manufacturers who oppose organized labor. For the Record sees strikes as an important way to protect worker interests and explains how collective-bargaining gains were lost through the Taft-Hartley Act.
Topic: sponsored film
Public health film informing African Americans about syphilis and its prevention. Feeling All Right contextualizes the problem by focusing on a community affected by the disease and the local organizations that are leading the fight against it. The film ends as it begins, with images of home, family, and neighbors. “Its frank and simple appeal is a welcome relief from the histrionics with which producers usually overburden the subject of syphilis,” wrote Raymond Spottiswoode. Note: The...
Topic: sponsored film
Documentary sponsored by the Rochester Public Library illustrating the range of community services offered by public libraries. Not by Books Alone shows how libraries advance education, provide recreational opportunities, help job seekers, and promote good citizenship. Note: The film was translated into several languages and shown at UNESCO conferences in Paris and Mexico City. Produced in Kodachrome.
Topic: sponsored film
Made by San Francisco–based producer Maurice Blaché, the Buy at Home series promoted local small town commerce across the western United States during the Great Depression. This example was made in Burlingame, California. It features ads for merchants and various citizens—from firefighters and police officers to students of McKinley Elementary School and members of the Burlingame–San Mateo Lions Club.
Topic: sponsored film
1,000 feet from an educational documentary showing everyday life in China. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and The Museum of Modern Art.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Animated history of the American economic system told from a pro–free enterprise perspective. Free enterprise, the narrator argues, can be traced to the Bill of Rights, and the Founding Fathers regarded “political and economic freedom” as “interlocking inseparably.” However, in contrast to what the film characterizes as the favorable economic climate of colonial America (where individuals had the “freedom to go into business”), today’s government imposes taxes and...
Topic: sponsored film
Science film positioning atomic energy as both a peaceful and a warlike force. Sponsored by a corporation involved in the nascent nuclear industry, the film is an animated introduction to atomic energy and designed to be, as a Business Screen reviewer reported, “entertaining but scientifically accurate.” The periodic table, represented as “Element Town,” depicts each element in a distinctive shape suggesting its use by humans. Radium, whose giant head resembles an atomic nucleus, decays...
Topic: sponsored film
Documentary about the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Told in flashbacks, the story recounts the life of a worker about to retire with a union pension. The veteran unionist looks back to the abuses common before unionization, the great organizing drives of the 1930s, and the benefits and stability brought by the union. Note: Originally planned for showing to ILGWU locals, With These Hands opened instead on Broadway and played four weeks as a theatrical feature. Nominated for...
Topic: sponsored film
Film promoting television sets and the broadcast of New York’s first regularly scheduled programs. The short shows RCA’s production studios in Rockefeller Center, television demonstrations at the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair, RCA’s Empire State Building transmitter, and remote mobile broadcast units.
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Topic: sponsored film
Promotional film for Seventeen intended to show how well the magazine knows and serves its teenage audience. The film observes teenage girls at home, in school, at work and play, and alone and with friends, zeroing in on teen concerns about dating, marriage, and adulthood. At one point, high school newspaper editors fire questions at Seventeen editor in chief Enid Haupt. Note: Produced in Eastmancolor. Shot near Philadelphia and at Seventeen ’s New York City office. Mia Farrow is featured in...
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Topic: sponsored film
Promotional film for the pioneering American plastics company that surveys the contribution of plastics to everyday life. Flight to the Future is structured as a discussion on a transcontinental flight, during which three plastics experts (a manufacturer, an engineer, and a designer) tell the flight attendant about their industry. Over the course of the film, a multitude of plastics products are shown.
Topic: sponsored film
Glossy musical made to promote color “decorator” telephones. The short tells the story of newlyweds whose honeymoon must be delayed until the husband completes a new song for his client. As the husband struggles with writer’s block, his wife dreams about a remodeled home with color phones in every room, from the bedroom to the kitchen. Fortunately the telephone dial clicks provide the needed musical inspiration for the husband, and the couple jubilantly sing his new song “Castle in the...
Topic: sponsored film
Best-known of the films presenting “Motorama,” General Motors’ annual traveling automobile and appliance trade show. This example introduces the 1956 automobile models, Frigidaire’s “Kitchen of Tomorrow,” electronic highways of the future, and GM “dream cars” the Oldsmobile Golden Rocket and the turbine-powered Pontiac Firebird II. An amalgam of styles drawn from industrial stage shows and Hollywood musicals, Design for Dreaming has become emblematic of 1950s futuristic...
Topic: sponsored film
Promotional film demonstrating the importance of newspapers in everyday life. Sponsored by New York’s largest-circulation newspaper, 17 Days is set during the citywide strike of newspaper delivery truck drivers in the summer of 1945. The film shows how the public literally went the extra mile to get their papers directly from the Daily News . Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia does his part by reading aloud the Dick Tracy comic strip on the radio.
Topic: sponsored film
Short sponsored by the United Fruit Company to blunt “communist propaganda claims” in the American and Latin American press. Using animation and live action, the short describes the benefits of the “living circle” of interdependent trade between Central America and the United States. Note: The companion to Bananas? Si, Señor! , The Living Circle was reportedly seen by more than 17 million viewers during its first eight months of release. Both films were distributed with Spanish...
Topic: sponsored film
Partly animated technical film illustrating how radio works. After tracing the history of communications, from smoke signals to the telephone, The Wizardry of Wireless explains the principles of radio transmission and shows the operations of WGY, GE’s pioneering radio station in Schenectady, New York.
Topic: sponsored film
Self-improvement film funded by a paper company. In the story a dissatisfied factory worker imagines what it would be like to become a company foreman or the company president. The worker comes to learn that every employee, regardless of position, must be productive to succeed. Through this parable, 1104 Sutton Road argues that improving personal relations and communications in the workplace increases productivity and makes each employee a better person. Note: Released in Technicolor...
Topic: sponsored film
Insurance company–sponsored safety film targeting teenage drivers. The drama centers on a reckless driver, who together with his girlfriend, takes one risk too many. Like other safety films made for teenagers, Last Date implies that death is preferable to disfigurement. The dramatic accident sequence and surprise ending have often been emulated by other films targeting the same audience.
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Topic: sponsored film
Australian preview for a now-lost American film from 1917, preserved with the collaboration of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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Topics: silent film, lost film
Melodrama about a woman trapped in a loveless marriage, preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
First breast-cancer-awareness film released for wide distribution. Promoting self-examination as an early detection technique, the film shows women how to check for breast cancer symptoms. Note: The ACS reported 1,300 prints in circulation in the first year of release. The film was said to have reached 1 million women over the age of 35. Also distributed in a 16-minute version. Revised version, Time and Two Women , released in 1958.
Topic: sponsored film
Newsreel with stories about burglar-proof mail containers, golfing moms, a prototype car phone, the Princeton crew team, and the latest fashions. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive.
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Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Film sponsored by the trade association to show how livestock and poultry are raised on farms and ranches and brought to the American dinner table. The film portrays mealtimes across the country and emphasizes the importance of meat protein for human growth.
Topic: sponsored film
Update of the classic fairy tale, set in a boarding house and featuring Mary Fuller. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Fragment from a drama about the friendship between a white boy and the daughter of his family’s African American servant. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
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Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Animated film speaking out for racial tolerance. Using small green demons to caricature racial prejudice, the cartoon argues that the only real difference among the races is skin color and that underneath, all people are the same. Bosley Crowther wrote that the UAW, seeking to widen labor support in the auto industry, sponsored the film “to counteract a critical race-relations problem among the workers in Detroit.” Note: Based on the pamphlet Races of Mankind by Ruth Benedict and Gene...
Topic: sponsored film
Melodrama in which a wronged man, played by Monte Blue, changes his appearance through plastic surgery and returns home to reclaim his good name and win his girl. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and George Eastman Museum.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Film about the planning, construction, and operation of the Lincoln Tunnel. Released one year after the structure opened, Conquest of the Hudson shows the tunnel shield, sandhogs in the airlock, and the tunnel service between New York City and New Jersey. Note: Also released in a silent version.
Topic: sponsored film
Internationalist film exploring the economic and political importance of Latin America to the United States. A document of the “Good Neighbor Policy” era, The Bridge shows the endemic poverty and recent industrialization of Latin America and looks to such postwar advances as air travel, the “bridge” that will eventually link the United States with its neighbors to the south. The New York Times quoted Willard Van Dyke as saying, “We cannot expect to do much trade with South...
Topic: sponsored film
Produced to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Model T Ford, The American Road highlights the role of automobiles, highway construction, and Ford Motor’s leadership in the development of transportation in the United States. The production mixes archival footage with reenactments and has a contemporary ending in color. Note: Received a Freedoms Foundation award in 1954 and a Golden Reel Award from the American Film Assembly in 1954.
Topic: sponsored film
Docudrama encouraging immigrants to master English and become successful, assimilated Americans. In the story the poor English-language skills of an Italian immigrant limit his employment possibilities and lead to an on-the-job accident. Learning from his experience, the immigrant puts himself through night school, lands a factory job, advances to foreman, and becomes a community leader. The film includes scenes shot at the Hartford Rubber Works Co. Note: According to Jan-Christopher Horak, ...
Topic: sponsored film
Documentary about the 1938–39 Tool and Die Makers strike affecting eight General Motors plants. Told from the point of view of the strikers, the film shows the picket lines and Detroit police and ends with a question to Henry Ford: “Want to know who’s next?” Note: The UAW called the strike to secure its position after it split from the American Federation of Labor. The Tool and Die Makers were a key group because their work was necessary for the first phase of production. The UAW...
Topic: sponsored film
Cartoon in which Buddy, Susie, and a cat scheme for a taste of homemade jam. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive.
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Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project, animation
Wide-ranging film explaining the role of oil companies in advancing America and securing the nation’s high standard of living. Linking free enterprise with freedom and democracy, 24 Hours of Progress shows the oil industry at work and Americans using oil-based products.
Topic: sponsored film
Short in which a woman turns the tables on an overly amorous date by stealing his car. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
One of many films sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers during the Depression to foster faith in the economic leadership of its corporate members. Let’s Go America! suggests that the creative spirit that led to America’s development will continue to shape its economy. It ends with two young men and a woman driving a swank roadster toward the glowing future, which promises television, air conditioning, air travel, and innovative home design.
Topic: sponsored film
Pro-business cartoon explaining the role of investment capital in building America’s prosperity. Because of far-sighted investment in industry, the American worker, personified by Brooklyn-accented Joe, is “king of the workers of the world” and has higher wages and shorter hours than his counterparts abroad. Meet King Joe argues that in view of the rewards workers reap from the American economic system, it is in labor’s best interest to cooperate with management. Note: Part of...
Topic: sponsored film
Sensitive film produced for the training of mental health workers. Man to Man portrays the bond that develops between an aide in a psychiatric hospital and a severely depressed patient.
Topic: sponsored film
dvertising film for tobacco products profiling the modern Sioux people of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Fallen Eagle includes reenactments of traditional ceremonies but also points to the economic plight of the current-day Sioux. Improved opportunities, the film suggests, could come from the development made possible by the damming of the Missouri River. Note: Part of an award-winning series of seven films. According to Business Screen , the sponsor chose a Native American...
Topic: sponsored film
Film sponsored by the Troy, New York–based manufacturer of Arrow shirts to explain its reasons for moving its business down south. Enterprise tells the true story of how two World War II veterans invited the company to occupy an industrial plant that they had built in the hope of revitalizing Buchanan, Georgia. Five hundred residents signed a pledge stating that they were willing to work in the new factory. Cluett, Peabody & Co. eventually employed one-third of the townspeople.
Topic: sponsored film
Animated demonstration showing how the Western Electric motion picture sound system works. In this lively cartoon, “Talkie” brings “Mutie” to “Dr. Western,” who gives him a voice. The team shows how sound motion pictures are made and reproduced. Note: Carlyle Ellis, the early industrial and educational filmmaker, contributes the voice for Dr. Western.
Topic: sponsored film
Advertising cartoon filled with double entendres and suggestive imagery. Leonard Maltin called it “a delightful short, with a bouncing-ball chorus, that ranks alongside any contemporary Fleischer cartoon in terms of quality and content.” Note: In My Merry Oldsmobile takes its title from the 1905 song by Gus Edwards and Vincent P. Bryan. The film was distributed theatrically.
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Topic: sponsored film
Film produced for a coalition of public service groups to combat racial and ethnic hatred. The narrative follows an emotionally insecure Chicago teenager whose bigoted thinking leads him to violence. The High Wall explores how prejudices are passed like “a contagious disease” from parent to child, teacher to pupils, and youth to youth, and suggests strategies for breaking the cycle.
Topic: sponsored film
Advocacy film commissioned by the civil rights organization to discourage ethnic and racial prejudice. Caught in a dispute that assumes ethnic dimensions, a group of boys find common interests through the intervention of Frank Sinatra, who tells a story and sings two songs. Note: The title number was written by Earl Robinson and Lewis Allan [Abel Meeropol]. This widely distributed film, produced at the end of World War II, discourages prejudice but disparages people of Japanese ancestry.
Topic: sponsored film
Film commissioned by a leading architectural journal to discuss major trends in its field. Among the 16 architects, planners, and builders appearing are Eero Saarinen, Edward Durell Stone, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Topic: sponsored film
Drama illustrating the contribution of free enterprise, technology, and Westinghouse products to the American way of life. The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair pits a bohemian artist boyfriend against an all-American electrical engineer who believes in improving society by working through corporations. In experiencing together Westinghouse’s technological marvels at the fair, the family win back their daughter from her left-leaning boyfriend. Among the memorable moments are...
Topic: sponsored film
Promotional film showing the role of atomic energy in medicine, agriculture, industry, and research and the potential for nuclear-generated electrical power. Produced in Eastmancolor.
Topic: sponsored film
Only surviving fiction film made by the Oklahoma-based Wild West Show managed by the Miller Brothers. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
St. Louis’s annual report to taxpayers. The Big City visually illustrated how tax dollars were put to good use and was considered a “graphic, fluent and compact documentary” by Howard Thompson. Note: Sixteen prints were made for exhibition by schools, civic organizations, and church groups. For more on the filmmaker, see Shelby Coffey III, “Politics as an Art Form: Guggenheim and the Movies,” Washington Post , Feb. 9, 1969, 262.
Topic: sponsored film
