8 More Movies Added to the Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films
Eight movies now join the Online Field Guide to Sponsored Films, the free screening room of entries from The Field Guide to Sponsored Films, written by Rick Prelinger and published by the NFPF in 2006.
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Video conferencing and other joys of the future are predicted in Living Unlimited (1951).
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Viewers can enjoy 185 sponsored films in the screening room. They were commissioned during the 20th century by a grab-bag of organizations: businesses promoting commercial products, charities highlighting good works, advocacy groups bringing attention to social causes, and state and local governments explaining their programs. All eight new additions are derived from HD scans created by the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center of the Library of Congress.
Two of these films have never before appeared online. Memo to Mars (1954), made by Wilding Picture Productions for the U.S. Rubber Co., advocates road construction and improvement through humor and a bit of science fiction: a Martian automaker hears from a scout who has visited earth and found the streets too rough and crowded for Martian convertibles. Living Unlimited (1951), from John Sutherland Productions and sponsored by the Frigidaire Division of General Motors, promotes appliances for the “housewife of the future.” Live-action footage of the “Kitchen of Tomorrow” joins animated sequences that look 25 years into the future to predict flying cars, videophones, and spanking machines.
Industry motivates another pair of films. RFD Greenwich Village (ca. 1969), sponsored by the Cotton Producers Association, promotes cotton clothing through a tour of trendy Bohemian life in Greenwich Village. Walter Brennan plays an old steel worker in To Each Other (1943), produced by Jam Handy for U.S. Steel to urge retired workers to rejoin the workforce during World War II. Brennan reads a letter from his soldier son overseas and explains his own efforts to support the troops.
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The importance of early cancer detection and treatment is stressed in Francis Thompson's Time Is Life (1946).
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Medical matters predominate in two other films. Subject: Narcotics (1951), produced for the Anti-Narcotic League of America by Denis Sanders and Terry Sanders, trains law enforcement personnel in handling drug users. Technical advice was given by the narcotics unit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department. The expressionist drama Time is Life (1946), directed by Francis Thompson for the American Cancer Society, encourages the public to seek early treatment for cancer and join the society’s “Field Army” of volunteers.
The last two films are the most eccentric in the bunch. Dating from the 1920s and cosponsored by the Oakland Tribune and American Theatre is Tribune-American Dream Picture, part of a series whose scenarios were based on dreams submitted by the public. In this episode a couple misplaces their baby during a ferry ride across San Francisco Bay. Why Man Creates (1968), created by Saul Bass, is an off-beat examination of inventive creators and how new ideas arise, sponsored by the Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp. It received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1968 and was selected for the National Film Registry in 2002.