BOY IN COURT (1940, 10:15)
The National Probation and Parole Association produced this film in order to convince the public that Juvenile Court was an enlightened, humane and effective means of dealing with youth crime. Its focus is upon 15-year-old Johnny, who goes straight after stealing cars with his hoodlum friends results in his being sentenced by an avuncular Judge to probation under the tutelage of a kindly probation officer. What wonders church & social services bred in 1940!
FINANCING THE AMERICAN FAMILY (1935, 10:20)
Household Finance sponsored this film to educate struggling families on how obtaining a low-cost loan from their corporation would help them get out of debt more easily than obtaining other low-cost loans from other lending institutions.
FROM DAWN TO SUNSET (1937, 24:58)
In the 1930s, if you had a steady paying job, you had reason to feel fortunate! General Motors though so, too, and they wanted their workers to know it and have no doubt or confusion (or lack of gratitude) about it, so they had Handy Jam produce this film so that they would realize the wonderful lives they had and that they better all well appreciate it.
FRONTIERS OF THE FUTURE (A SCREEN EDITORIAL WITH LOWELL THOMAS) (1937, 9:57)
The National Industrial Council got the great Lowell Thomas to narrate this excellent period film document about research, development and manufacturing history over the life of the nation in general and during the 1930s in particular. A real treat!
GRIFFITH PARK RELIEF WORKERS DEMONSTRATION (1933, 2:31)
A newreel of a demonstration held against the city & officials of Los Angeles to protest the death of about 100 relief workers at the Griffith Park Fire of 1933.
MASTER HANDS (1936, 27:20)
From the town that gave us the United Auto Workers and Michael Moore, Handy Jam does another propaganda piece for General Motors in their Flint, Michigan plant to dramatize the same reasons workers there ought to appreciate their jobs as they gave in FROM DAWN TO SUNSET above. That the town broke down two months later into sit-down strikes celebrated through the newsreels worldwide is not simply incidental.
SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL STRIKE (1934, 2:41)
Newsreel of a city-wide general strike, held to support striking San Franscisco longshoreman during the 1934 San Francisco Maritime Strike, that became became quite a disorderly mess.
STEEL: A SYMPHONY OF INDUSTRY (1936, 17:50)
The American Iron and Steel Institue captured the essence of steel manufacturing techniques in the 1930s, while unintentionally documenting the lackadaisical attitude towards worker safety consistent with the period.
VALLEY TOWN (1940, 24:32)
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation sponsored this New York University production which sought earnestly to document how new technology was destabilizing the economic and social underpinnings of many steel towns of this era through the story of one such unnamed Pennsylvania town, here known as Valley Town. An extraordinary and unique film, both in content and message, presaging the outcry against automation a generation later, while firmly documenting both the boomtown phenomenon and the technological progress of this bleak industrial age.