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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Film from the leading American producer of aluminum illustrating the versatility of the material in building and design. Color and Texture in Aluminum Finishes was singled out in the trade press for its avant-garde qualities and considered by Howard Thompson as “probably the most strikingly imaginative industrial short subject ever filmed in the United States.” Note: Although originally targeted at design professionals, the short was also successfully shown to general audiences. On...
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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
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
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
Highly praised industrial film showing the production of steel. Steel: Man’s Servant was shot in U.S. Steel mines and mills in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania and was considered by documentarian Pare Lorentz “the most beautiful color picture ever made” ( Business Screen 1, no. 2). Note: Produced in 35mm three-strip Technicolor at a cost of $250,000. Steel: Man’s Servant was shot in ten weeks and became the company’s major informational film, replacing...
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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
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
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 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
Documentary celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America by outlining the improvements the union has won for clothing workers over its five decades. The Inheritance draws from archival and modern live-action footage and features songs contributed by popular artists. Note: The film premiered theatrically in New York City and was shown widely to unions and community organizations. It was also distributed in 40- and 16-minute versions.
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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
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
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
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.
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
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
Promotional film for the all-purpose tractor introduced by Henry Ford & Son in 1917. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Big-budget film about iron and steel that was produced as part of U.S. Steel’s campaign against competing steel imports and alternative materials like aluminum. Told with animation and few words, Rhapsody of Steel presents the panoply of products made from steel, including a rocket that blasts into space. Note: The film had a production budget of $350,000 and was shown theatrically in Pittsburgh and seven other cities. Dimitri Tiomkin’s score was also made available by U.S. Steel...
Topic: sponsored film
Institutional profile of Manteno State Hospital in Illinois. Produced for health care workers, Working and Playing to Health shows the mental hospital’s occupational, recreational, and industrial therapy programs. One of the largest facilities of its kind in the United States, in 1953 it treated some 7,900 patients with illnesses ranging from schizophrenia to Parkinson’s disease. Note: Received a Golden Reel Award from the American Film Assembly in 1954. For more about the hospital,...
Topic: sponsored film
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
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
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
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
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
Farce in which a prospective suitor wins a second look from his sweetheart’s father. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Early Pearl White vehicle in which a disgruntled suitor, claiming to hate all women, changes his tune after his girlfriend saves him from Indians. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and George Eastman Museum.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Early advertising film. Various national symbols—an American Indian, John Bull, Uncle Sam—appear in front of an ADMIRAL CIGARETTE sign. A showgirl leaps out to shower cigarettes on the group and unfolds a banner reading WE ALL SMOKE.
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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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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...
Topic: sponsored film
A one-reel farce, starring Billy Bletcher, in which a wife plots to keep her husband at home. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and The Museum of Modern Art.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Long section from a Western filmed in Tucson, Arizona. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and The Museum of Modern Art.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
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
One of the Bell Telephone System’s many films instructing the public on proper use of the telephone. Bobby finds his lost dog with the help of the residents of Telezonia, who teach him how to use directory assistance, party lines, and proper phone manners. Note: Adventure in Telezonia was the Bairds’ second film for AT&T; “Telezonia” was the name of an instructional package on good telephone habits that was prepared for schools. It contained this film as well as practice...
Topic: sponsored film
Overview of the bituminous coal industry sponsored by a major coal carrier. The Power behind the Nation explores coal’s geological origins and its many uses as a fuel and a source of chemical by-products. The coal production process is traced from mining to transport and ends with a scene at the coal terminal at Lambert Point, Virginia.
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
Comedy set in a dance studio in which three rivals vie for the girl. Preserved in collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive and the Library of Congress.
Topics: silent film, New Zealand Project
Film showing the role of AT&T in facilitating network television transmission in the years before communications satellites. The live television broadcast of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet is sent from New York City to Wisconsin via AT&T’s coaxial cable and microwave relay system. Note: Also released in 16mm. According to a report in Business Screen , excerpts from Stepping Along with Television were included in the first program sent by AT&T’s relay system...
Topic: sponsored film
Film promoting the automobile industry as a pillar of the American economy. By showing the number and range of businesses and industries that produce materials for the modern Chevrolet, American Harvest demonstrates the interdependence of industry, commerce, and agriculture and argues that large integrated manufacturing enterprises are ideally suited to satisfy consumer needs. This panoramic survey illuminates national concerns about materials shortages during the Korean War. Note:...
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
