THE FIELD GUIDE TO SPON S ORED FILM S by Rick Prelinger National Film Preservation Foundation San Francisco, California Rick Prelinger is the founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 51,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films that was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. He has partnered with the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) to make 2,000 films from his collection available online and worked with the Voyager Company to produce 14 laser discs and CD-ROMs of films drawn from his collection, including Ephemeral Films, the series Our Secret Century, and Call It Home: The House That Private Enterprise Built. In 2004, Rick and Megan Shaw Prelinger established the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. National Film Preservation Foundation 870 Market Street, Suite 1113 San Francisco, CA 94102 © 2006 by the National Film Preservation Foundation Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prelinger, Rick, 1953– The field guide to sponsored films / Rick Prelinger. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-9747099-3-X (alk. paper) 1. Industrial films—Catalogs. 2. Business—Film catalogs. 3. Motion pictures in advertis- ing. 4. Business in motion pictures. I. Title. HF1007.P863 2006 011´.372—dc22 2006029038 CIP This publication was made possible through a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It may be downloaded as a PDF file from the National Film Preservation Foundation Web site: www.filmpreservation.org. Photo credits Cover and title page (from left): Admiral Cigarette (1897), courtesy of Library of Congress; Now You’re Talking (1927), courtesy of Library of Congress; Highlights and Shadows (1938), courtesy of George Eastman Museum. Page 1 and back cover (from left): The Stenographer’s Friend: or, What Was Accomplished by an Edison Business Phonograph (1910), courtesy of Library of Congress; Tomorrow’s Drivers (1954), courtesy of Prelinger Archives; A Continent Is Bridged (1940), courtesy of Prelinger Archives. Typeset by David Wells Copyedited by Sylvia Tan Printed in the USA by Great Impressions Revised PDF version with hyperlinks, August 14, 2018 TABLE OF CONTENT S Acknowledgments iv Introduction vi How to Use This Guide xii Film Entries 1 Appendix 1: Works Frequently Cited 105 Appendix 2: Sources of Copyright Data 107 Appendix 3: Repositories Cited 108 Appendix 4: Films by Date 111 Index of Subjects, Places, and Organizations 116 Index of Personal Names 130 About the National Film Preservation Foundation 140 AC KNOWLEDGMENT S Gathering, sifting through, and evaluating information for this publication was a huge undertaking involving hundreds of individuals and institutions over the course of 18 months. Rick Prelinger tirelessly oversaw the project from start to finish, developing the research strategy, selecting and documenting films, collecting holdings data, and writing and indexing the entries. The guide is a testament to his knowledge, enthusiasm, and perse- verance. Assisting Rick in refining the methodology were a team of archivists and scholars: Dan Streible (New York University), Donald Crafton (University of Notre Dame), Michael Mashon and Amy Gallick (Library of Congress), Wendy Shay (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution), Margaret Compton (University of Georgia), Abby Smith, and the staff of the National Film Preservation Foundation. As the project took shape, this group advised on the scope and content. Several experts—Jennifer Horne (Bryn Mawr College), Steve Lubar (Brown University), Gregory Waller (Indiana University), and Charles McGovern (College of William and Mary)—critiqued the film selection in the winter and spring of 2006 and offered invaluable suggestions for improving coverage and documentation. Additional suggestions were contributed by colleagues attending the University of South Carolina’s Orphan Film Symposium, which in March 2006 featured a panel and film screening based on the project. In summer 2006, Alex Thimons, a Cornell University undergraduate who had helped in the initial stages of the project the previous summer, returned to fact-check the manuscript and assist, under the direction of the NFPF staff, in its final preparation. We owe him a special thanks for his exacting and perceptive research. Scores of scholars and preservationists generously contributed information relating to their collections and specialties: Ruta Abolins (University of Georgia), Charles Acland (Concordia University), Geoff Alexander (Academic Film Archive of North America), Bev Allen (Bessemer Historical Society), Craig Baldwin (Other Cinema), Snowden Becker (Center for Home Movies), Charles Benton (Benton Foundation), Larry Bird (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution), Henry Charles, Michele Christian (Iowa State University), Liz Coffey (Rhode Island Historical Society), Sid Davis, Melissa Dollman (UCLA Film and Television Archive), Mary Durkee, Paul Eisloeffel (Nebraska State His tor- ical Society), Skip Elsheimer (AV Geeks), Bob Finehout, David Marc Fischer, Bill Geerhart (Conelrad.com), Allan Goodrich (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum), Charles Grimm, Christine Hennig, Charles Hopkins (UCLA Film and Television Archive), Jan-Christopher Horak (University of California, Los Angeles), Ann L. Horton-Line (Yale University), Ken House (Weyerhaeuser Company), Paul Ivester, John Jack, Jeff Joseph (Sabucat Productions), Gary Kaboly (Pittsburgh Filmmakers), Kim Klausner (University of California, San Francisco), Christina Kovac (National Archives), Jeff Kreines, Andrew Lampert (Anthology Film Archives), Steve Leggett (Library of Congress), Erica Levin (University of California, Berkeley), Arel Lucas (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University), J. Fred MacDonald (MacDonald and Associates), Steven Mandeville-Gamble (North Carolina State University), Sarah Ziebell Mann (New York University), Caroline Martel (Artifact Productions), Karen E. Martin (Nature Society), Eef Masson (Utrecht University), Barbara Mathe (American Museum of Natural History), Anna McCarthy (New York University), Joe Morrison (Pittsburgh Filmmakers), Bill Murphy (AVArchives Services), Bill O’Farrell, Stephen O’Riordan (University of California, San Diego), Stephen Parr (San Francisco Media Archive), Martin Pernick (University of Michigan), Greg Pierce (Orgone Archives), Zak Piper (Kartemquin Films), Steve Polta (San Francisco iv Acknowledgments Cinematheque), Megan Shaw Prelinger (Prelinger Archives), Bradley Reeves (Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound), Eddie Richmond (UCLA Film and Television Archive), Linda Ries (Pennsylvania State Archives), Amy Rudersdorf (North Carolina State University), John Sanford, Eli Savada (Motion Picture Information Service), Sean Savage (New York University), Valarie Schwan (University of Southern California), Jay Schwartz (Secret Cinema), Karan Sheldon (Northeast Historic Film), Lee Shoulders (Getty Images), Bob Shuster (Wheaton College), Scott Simmon (University of California, Davis), Todd Southern, Paul Spehr, Cecile Starr, Albert Steg, Rob Stone (UCLA Film and Television Archive), George Stoney (New York University), Henry Strauss, Bob Summers, Dwight Swanson (Appalshop), Tad Tadlock, Bill Taylor, Mark Taylor (National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution), Charles Tepperman (University of Chicago), Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), Louisa Trott (Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound), Frederick M. Veith (Swarthmore College), Nancy Watrous (Chicago Film Archives), David Weiss (Northeast Historic Film), Sam Wells, Liz Wiatr (Boise State University), Pam Wintle (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution), Bret Wood, Frank Wylie (Library of Congress), Tanya Zanish-Belcher (Iowa State University), Jennifer Zwarich, and the many others who helped along the way. This project was funded through a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and would not have been possible without the encouragement and support of the foundation and its program officers. Thank you. Annette Melville, Director National Film Preservation Foundation v INTRODU C TION The Field Guide to Sponsored Films is a first effort to review and assess the thousands of industrial and institutional films sponsored by American businesses, charities, educational institutions, and advocacy groups over the last century. In the tradition of the naturalist’s field guides, it describes examples discovered by patient observation and points out their identifying characteristics. In so doing, The Field Guide calls attention to historically sig- nificant but neglected titles, makes an argument for reclaiming their rightful place in film history, and suggests directions for scholarship. Sponsored films are as old as film itself. From the earliest years of cinema, motion pictures have been produced to record, orient, train, sell, and persuade. Though it is estimated that 300,000 industrial and institutional films have been made in the United States—far more than any other type of motion picture—the film type is little known. Almost every major company, national business association, and educational institution produced or commis- sioned titles intended for staff, customers, or the public. Today these films are valuable both as documentation of past places, events, and practices and as examples of changing styles of rhetoric. Although it is tempting to characterize sponsored films as specimens of extinct media, it is more accurate to see them as part of a continuum that today includes video