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
We are indebted to independent scholar Charles “Buckey” Grimm for identifying this 11-minute piece of the celebrated “lost” three-reel documentary U.S. Navy of 1915 , produced by the Lyman H. Howe Company. (The piece had formerly been known only as “U.S. Navy Fragment.”) The film was made with the full support of the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, who believed in the power of motion pictures to convince isolationists of the importance of building a strong American...
Topics: navy, military
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
A whimsical yet serious-minded look into the future sponsored by the appliance and radio manufacturer. In the “1999 House of Tomorrow,” each family member’s activities are enabled by a central computer and revolve around products remarkably similar to those made by the sponsor. Power comes from a self-contained fuel cell, which supports environmental controls, an automatic cooking system, and a computer-assisted “education room.” Note: Produced in Eastmancolor. Renowned interior...
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Topic: sponsored 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
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
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
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
Promotional film celebrating the 1959 Chevrolet automobile line as an exemplar of American industrial design and styling. American Look highlights the contribution of interior, industrial, product, and automobile designers to the “populuxe” era; the term was coined by writer Thomas Hine to describe the late-1950s stylistic fusion of luxury and mass-produced consumer goods. This wide-screen spectacular showcases an array of contemporary architectural exteriors, interiors, packaging,...
Topic: sponsored 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
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
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
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
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
Early sex education film sponsored by the national group created to inform the public about sexuality and venereal disease. In Gift of Life a scientist helps a boy observe the reproductive processes of tiny plants and animals under a microscope and uses animated diagrams to explain the reproductive processes of higher animals and humans. Note: The film was made for high school and college students, PTA groups, and similar audiences and praised by state educational authorities. It was...
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
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
Promotional film introducing self-service long-distance dialing. Showing the prototype service in Englewood, New Jersey, The Nation at Your Fingertips demonstrates how direct dial and the new area code system enable callers to make contact instantly without operator assistance. The film ends with a corporate promise to continue the AT&T tradition of technological innovation.
Topic: sponsored film
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
Surviving reels of a feature with Clara Bow in an early role. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
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
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
Good-grooming film for women that was funded by the meatpacking and consumer products giant to showcase the company’s Dial soap. The Clean Look teaches how to apply makeup, bathe, develop proper posture, apply shampoo, and comb one’s hair. Note: The short was produced in Kodachrome and distributed to schools and women’s groups.
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
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
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
Two-reel comedy with the “McDougall Alley Kids” about a rich boy who gets his comeuppance, preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the George Eastman Museum.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Melodrama about an actress who must choose between career and family. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Animated tall tale in which the colonel recounts how he single-handedly ended the “Great Banana Famine of 1923”. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and The Museum of Modern Art.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
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
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
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
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
Case study documenting a patient’s treatment for paranoid schizophrenia. Made for health professionals, Mental Hospital shows daily life at the state facility, including hydrotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy sessions. The film ends with the patient’s discharge. Note: Shot at the Central State Hospital in Norman, Oklahoma. Since patients were not legally competent to sign releases, the producer recruited crew and friends for the cast.
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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
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
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
This early sponsored film by Southern Pacific Railroad offers views of tourists at the opulent resort in Monterey, California. Note: Among the other early titles promoting the sponsor are Southern Pacific Overland Mail and Going Through the Tunnel .
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Topic: sponsored film
Film sponsored by the radio network to assert the continued relevance of radio advertising at a time when television was emerging as a major broadcast medium. More Than Meets the Eye visualizes sound through symbols and was lauded by Modern Industry as borrowing effectively from abstract art. Note: For more information about the production company, see Bosley Crowther, “McBoing Boing, Magoo and Bosustow,” New York Times , Dec. 21, 1952, SM14.
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
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
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
Anti-union film dramatizing a strike staged by the International Association of Machinists in Princeton, Indiana, in 1956–57. Note: The film was based on a fictionalized pamphlet by Rev. Edward Greenfield, an anti-strike movement leader who worked as a propagandist for a right-to-work organization in California. And Women Must Weep was used to counter union organizing campaigns; in 1963, the National Labor Relations Board nullified a union representation election because the film was...
Topic: sponsored film
Drama arguing for more sympathetic treatment of troubled adolescents. A social worker reaches out to Jerry, a disturbed youngster in an unhappy home dominated by an uncaring stepmother. During a melodramatic confrontation, Jerry takes out his anger by attacking sofa cushions with a switchblade. Shot like a low-budget Hollywood feature, the film mirrors the period’s growing concern with juvenile delinquency. Note: Boy with a Knife was made as a fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Community...
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Topic: sponsored film
Simple, affecting case study produced for social workers and psychologists and illustrating how counseling can help children come to terms with anger. Young Tommy Randall has been caught stealing money from his teacher’s purse and receives help from a psychiatrist. A psychiatric social worker enables his mother to better understand her relationship with her son. This sensitive documentary is filled with revealing behavioral details. Note: Shot in the Huron Valley Child Guidance Clinic near...
Topic: sponsored film
Animated tale, inspired by Aesop, in which a tomcat falls for Mademoiselle Kittie. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
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Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
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
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
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
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
Advocacy film encouraging communities to establish probation services and become more involved in the juvenile justice system. A detailed look at the workings of juvenile court, Boy in Court follows the life of a delinquent charged with auto theft. Because of the timely intervention of a probation officer, Johnny reforms and considers a career in aviation. A product of the New Deal ethos, this film takes place in a progressive, engaged community with a juvenile court and a probation system.
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Topic: sponsored film
Educational film surveying the instruction of the fine and performing arts at leading African American institutions, including Calhoun, Dillard, Fisk, Hampton, and Howard. The film argues that exposure to theater, music, dance, and the fine arts produces well-rounded students and enriches their lives. Note: Art in the Negro Schools was part of the sponsor’s Negro Education for American Living series. The foundation provided funds for parks, established the Religious Film Association,...
Topic: sponsored film
Film promoting television at a time when the medium was still in limited use. It shows how television works and tours GE’s flagship station, WRGB, in Schenectady, New York.
Topic: sponsored film
Film surveying the role of chemistry in American life and the central role of the people, products, and plants of Monsanto. Intended for nontheatrical use and broadcast, Decision for Chemistry is structured around questions asked by a young boy. Note: Also released in 33-minute nontheatrical and 28-minute television versions. A 16-minute version was shown in 1954 on NBC’s Omnibus . The film was selected as one of 20 contemporary American documentaries to be shown at New York’s...
Topic: sponsored film
Film sponsored by Western Electric (AT&T’s equipment manufacturing division), the builder of the United States Air Force’s White Alice Communications System in Alaska. Land of White Alice introduces the people and geography of the new state as well as the Western Electric radio-relay system, which links far-flung military sites, alert stations, and missile-warning facilities. Ralph Caplan praised the film’s “intrinsically dramatic and highly photogenic” portrayal of...
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
Two-reeler in which Snooky the Humanzee, a chimp with the smarts of Rin Tin Tin, plies his detective skills to find kidnapped twins. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Medical film sponsored by the Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical firm to illustrate how obesity affects the performance of simple everyday tasks. This unusual short made for physicians shows the struggle of an overweight traveler ascending the stairs at Pennsylvania station and trying to enter a phone booth to make a call. Fed up and exhausted, the man seeks medical advice. Note: The Ordeal of Thomas Moon was shot on location and used natural sound. The film contains no direct...
Topic: sponsored film
Warning about the threat of nuclear war. Sponsored by atomic scientists, One World or None uses animation to explain the development of atomic energy and the devastation that would result if a bomb were dropped on the United States. Atomic weapons were created by an international effort, and the only defense, the narrator argues, is for the world community to come together to seek their control. Note: The Federation of American Scientists prepared a book by the same title; see Dexter...
Topic: sponsored film
Two parts of an epic industrial film chronicling the manufacture of automobiles. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Civil defense film promoting the well-maintained house as part of America’s line of defense against nuclear attack. Cosponsored by the paint and coating industry’s national trade association and the federal government, The House in the Middle uses footage shot at the Nevada Proving Ground (now the Nevada Test Site) to demonstrate how a clean, freshly painted house has the survival edge in the event of a nuclear blast. Note: Released in 16mm Kodachrome and in black and white. Abridged...
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Topic: sponsored film
Documentary, with some dramatized sequences, covering the racial integration of St. Louis public schools after the 1954 Brown decision. William J. Sloan wrote, “The film was noteworthy in that it revealed, at least briefly, the fears of Negro parents in having their children attend school with white children.” Note: The film employed nonprofessional actors and voice-over narration by a local schoolteacher. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1956.
Topic: sponsored film
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
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 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
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
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
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
