INDUSTRIAL & SPONSORED FILM & TELEVISION
H72.1605 • section 001 • call no. 75573 • 4.0 credit hours
Tuesdays, 6:00 - 10:00 pm, in Cantor 102
Professors Anna.McCarthy@nyu.edu & Dan.Streible@nyu.edu
Office hours: McCarthy, Tues. 12:00-2:00 pm (room 311E, 719 Broadway)
Streible, Thurs. 10-12 (721 Broadway, room 626)
Required readings:
• Rick Prelinger, The Field Guide to Sponsored Films (San Francisco:
National Film Preservation Foundation, 2006).
• Articles (in .pdf form) on the course Blackboard site. Physical items will
be on reserve at Bobst Library’s Course Reserves Desk (Lower Level 2), or, for
videos on reserve, at the Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media on the 2nd
floor.
• Select web site material, as assigned.
Required screenings:
Most are presented in class, but there is also required viewing on your
own time (on-line and otherwise). Familiarize yourself with the Internet Archive
(www.archive.org) and its Moving Image ‘wing’ (www.moviearchive.org). You
are required to visit throughout the semester to view film/video outside of class
time. Identify the file formats that afford you the best viewing and listening
experience. A list of URLs for 37 of the required films is available to you on the
Blackboard site.
Description: This course examines the history of sponsored and industrial film
and broadcasting. According to one estimate, more than 300,000 such films were
produced in the U.S. in the 20th century. Encompassing a range of forms and
purposes, from government to sales, the category of the sponsored film poses
complex questions for historians, critics and theorists of the moving image. Often
didactic, composed in audiovisual languages that were foreign to mainstream
media vernaculars, and originating within an ancillary industry that was both
marginal and central to the development of commercial and nonprofit media
throughout the 20th century, these nontheatrical works cause us to re-examine
the orthodox versions of film and television histories.
What was the ideological impact of this parallel industry and its
exhibition practices? What interpretive challenges are posed by the 'obviousness'
of propaganda and sponsorship as modes of address? How does the challenge of
locating sponsored media materials place limits on what we can study and learn
from the form? What methods best allow us to historicize and theorize
sponsored film and television in its cultural context? Students complete short
archival research projects and a final research paper on a topic developed in
consultation with the instructors.
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Requirements: Course grades will be determined by performance on:
• Participation and attendance. NB: If you miss more than 3 classes, your final
course grade will be lowered by one letter. Participation may include short
written assignments. (10%)
• Midterm exam dossier: Select one entry in The Field Guide to Sponsored Films;
research and write a dossier on that film. Posted on Blackboard + paper copy to
instructors. Due October 16. (40%)
• Research proposal (with annotated bibliography): Due October 30.
• Final research paper (12-15 pages): Due December 11. (50%)
COURSE SCHEDULE
Sept 4 Intro to Sponsored History: why? how?
 The [Your Name Here] Story (ca. 1960) Calvin Communications
 Kodak Pageant promo reel (196?, Kodak)
 Powers of Ten (1977, IBM) Charles and Ray Eames
 Panorama Ephemera (2004) Rick Prelinger

 Phantom of the Operator (2005) Caroline Martel <
artifactproductions.ca/fantome >
(1) Rick Prelinger, “Introduction” and “How to Use This Guide,” The Field
Guide to Sponsored Films (National Film Preservation Foundation, 2006):
vi-xii; (“Film Entries”), 1-16.
(2) Edward Brunner, “Ersatz Truths: Variations on the Faux Documentary,”
Postmodern Culture 8.2 (January 1998): <www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc>.
Take a preliminary look at this review essay about the
Prelinger collection; we will discuss it more
thoroughly on Sept. 25.
* * * *
Sept 11 Social Problem Films: Progressivism, Industrialization, Immigration
 Land beyond the Sunset (1912, the Fresh Air Fund) Edison
 Hope, A Red Cross Seal Story (1912, National Association for the Study and
Prevention of Tuberculosis) Edison
 An American in the Making (1913, U.S. Steel; Bureau of Mines) Thanhauser
 The Making of an American (1920, Connecticut Dept. of Americanization)
 Madison News Reel (ca. 1932) ?? < oldfilm.org >
 Uncle Sam: Insurance Agent (1919, U.S. Veterans Administration)
 Pomona Uses ‘White Magic’ (1926, Chilean Nitrate of Soda Education Bureau)
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(1) Rick Prelinger and Raegan Kelly, “Panorama Ephemera,” Vectors: Journal of
Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular 2.1 (Spring 2006), the
“Ephemera” issue. (View the interactive AV and read the texts.)
(2) Daniel J. Perkins, “The Sponsored Film: A New Dimension in American
Film Research?” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 2.2 (1982):
133-40.
(3) Ronald Walter Greene, “Y Movies: Film and the Modernization of Pastoral
Power,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2.1 (March 2005): 1936.
(4) Stuart Ewen, “House of Truth,” in PR! A Social History of Spin (BasicBooks,
1996), 102-27.
(5) Sean Savage, “The Eye Beholds: Silent-Era Industrial Film and the Bureau of
Commercial Economics,” (master’s thesis, New York University, 2006), 165.
(6) Jennifer Horne, “Book Bait: Motion Pictures, Public Libraries, and the Better
Films Movement,” ms. (pp. 1-20) in Useful Cinema (Duke U Press,
forthcoming).
(7) Dan Streible, “The Nontheatricality of Nontheatrical Film,” ms. (2007),
adapted from editor’s introduction to an issue of Film History devoted
to Small-Gauge and Nontheatrical Film in Europe (in press).
(8) Julius Klein (U.S. Bureau Foreign and Domestic Commerce), “What Are
Motion Pictures Doing for Industry?” in “The Motion Picture in Its
Economic and Social Aspects,” Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science 128 (November 1926:): 79-83.
* * * *
Sept 18 Labor and industry / Communication technologies [modernity]
Itinerant filmmaking / Nontheatrical exhibition [non-modernity]
 [Tribune-American Dream Picture] (1924, Oakland Tribune & the American
Theatre)
 From Southern Fields to Europe’s Idle Mills (ca. 1922, Warrant Export Co.)
 Anderson ‘Our Gang’ (1926, Egyptian Theatre) Sammy Fox [!?]
 Anderson on Parade (1935, Carolina Theatre) H. C. Kunkleman
 [Great Falls, SC] (1936-38) H. Lee Waters
 Kannapolis, NC (1941) H. Lee Waters
 [Dedication of Washington (NJ) High School] (1932, St. Cloud Theatre Circuit)
 Hackettstown, NJ: A Civic and Educational Romance (1933) Dan Dorn
 The Passaic Textile Strike (1926, International Workers Aid)
 Now You’re Talking (1927, AT&T) Max Fleischer
 From Stump to Ship (1930, Machias Lumber Co.)
 The “Local Gang” in Kidnappers Foil (ca. 1936-37, Sanitary Bakery and Gate
City Creameries, Childress, TX) Melton Barker
 Birth of a Baby (1937, American Committee on Maternal Welfare)
3
(1) Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in
America (Princeton U Press, 1998), 81-83; Ch. 6, “The Revival of the Worker
Film Movement,” 143-72.
(2) Eric Schaefer, “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!” A History of Exploitation Films,
1919-1959 (Duke U Press, 1999): Ch. 3, “Distribution, Advertising and
Exhibition of Exploitation Films,” 96-135;
(3) Eric Schaefer, Ch. 5, “The Sex Hygiene Film,” 165-208.
(4) Gregory A. Waller, “Robert Southard and the History of Traveling Film
Exhibition,” Film Quarterly 57.2 (Winter 2003-04): 2-14.
(5) Dan Streible, “Itinerant Filmmakers and Amateur Casts: A Homemade ‘Our
Gang,’ 1926,” Film History 15.2 (2003): 177-92.
(6) Janna Jones, “From Forgotten Film to a Film Archive: The Curious History
of From Stump to Ship,” Film History 15.2 (2003): 193-202.
(7) [Caroline Frick and Dwight Swanson] < MeltonBarker.com >
* * * *
Sept 25 Mechanical Bodies and Capitalist Realism
 Master Hands (1936, Chevrolet) Jam Handy Organization
 Röntgenstrahlen (1937) Ufa
 Back of the Mike (1938, Chevrolet/GM)
 The Children Must Learn (1940, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; NYU Educational
Film Institute; University of Kentucky) Willard Van Dyke
 Valley Town: A Study of Machines and Men (1940, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation;
NYU Educational Film Institute) Willard Van Dyke
 Know for Sure (1944, U.S. Public Health Service)
(1) Jean-Louis Comolli, “Mechanical Bodies, Ever More Heavenly,” tr. Annette
Michelson, October 83 (Winter 1998): 19-24.
(2) William Alexander, “Van Dyke and Valley Town,” in Film on the Left:
American Documentary Film from 1931 to 1942 (Princeton U Press, 1981),
257–70.
(3) Willard van Dyke, “The Interpretive Camera in Documentary Films,”
Hollywood Quarterly 1.4 (July 1946): 405-09.
(4) Harrison Engle, "Thirty Years of Social Inquiry: An Interview with Willard
van Dyke," originally in Film Comment 3.2 (Spring 1965); abridged version
in The Documentary Tradition, ed. Lewis Jacobs (W.W. Norton, 1971, 1979),
343-60.
(5) “Willard Van Dyke,” filmography and interview [1970], in G. Roy Levin,
Documentary Explorations (Doubleday, 1971), 175-93.
(6) Thomas J. Brandon, “Irving Lerner: A Filmography and Bibliography,”
Cinema Journal 18.1 (Autumn 1978): 53-60.
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(7) Edward Brunner, “Ersatz Truths: Variations on the Faux Documentary,”
Postmodern Culture 8.2 (January 1998): especially parts 3-12.
(8) Henry Habley, “Industrially Sponsored Films: Telephone Film
Distribution,” in Ideas on Film, ed. Cecile Starr (Funk & Wagnalls,
1951/1971), 123-25.
(9) Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the
Twentieth Century (Verso, 1997), 51-122.
* * * *
Oct 2 The World of Tomorrow [belongs to Industry]:
Transforming the American family in the ideology of Progress
 The City (1939, Amer. Inst. of Planners) Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke
 Television: An RCA Presentation (1939)
 The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair (1939, Westinghouse)
 [Amateur film New York World's Fair, 1939-40]
 On to Jupiter (1939, GM)
 The World of Tomorrow (1984) Lance Bird & Tom Johnson
(1) Charlie Keil, “American Documentary Finds Its Voice: Persuasion and
Expression in The Plow That Broke the Plains and The City,” in Documenting
the Documentary, ed. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski (Wayne
State U Press), 119-35.
(2) Warren I. Susman, “The People’s Fair: Cultural Contradictions of a
Consumer Society,” in Culture as History: The Transformation of American
Society in the Twentieth Century (Pantheon, 1984), 211-29.
(3) Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling and Kimberly D. Pelle, Fair America:
World's Fairs in the United States (Smithsonian, 2000), Ch. 4 “Fairs Between
the World Wars,” 72-99.
(4) Daniel J. Perkins, "Sponsored Business Films: An Overview, 1895-1955," Film
Reader 6 (1985): 125-32.
(5) Archer Winsten, "’The City’ Goes to the Fair,” New York Post, June 23, 1939
(transcribed by Nicole Huffman, 2001).
<virginia.edu/~MA01/Huffman/Frontier/cityreview.html>
(6) David E. Nye, The American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1994), 199-224
* * * *
Oct 9 Wartime Persuasion and Training: State-Sponsored Films
 Lambeth Walk -- Nazi Style (1942, British Ministry of Information) Charles A.
Ridley [editor at British Movietone News]
 Tanks (1942, Office of Emergency Management; Chrysler Tank Arsenal)
 Why We Fight, part 7: War Comes to America (1945, U.S. Army Pictorial
Services) Frank Capra, Anatole Litvak.
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The Town (1945, OWI Overseas Motion Picture Bureau) Josef von Sternberg
The House I Live In (1945, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith) Mervyn
Leroy, Albert Maltz
 Victory Is Our Business (1942, General Motors)
 It’s Everybody’s War (1945, Office of War Information)
 It’s Your America (1945, U.S. Dept. of War)


(1) George C. Stoney, “Documentary in the United States in the Immediate
Post-World War II Years; A Supplement to Chapter 11,” in Jack C. Ellis,
The Documentary Idea : A Critical History Of English-Language Documentary
Film and Video (Prentice Hall, 1989), 302.
(2) Eric Smoodin, “Coercive Viewings: Soldiers and Prisoners Watch Movies,”
Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity & American Film Studies, 19301960 (Duke U Press, 2004), 160-82.
(3) Walter Wanger, “OWI and Motion Pictures,” Public Opinion Quarterly 7.1
(Spring 1943): 100-10.
(4) Arthur L. Mayer, “Fact into Film,” Public Opinion Quarterly 8.2 (Summer
1944): 206-25.
(5) Fanning Hearon, “The Motion-Picture Program and Policy of the United
States Government,” Journal of Educational Sociology 12.3 (November
1938): 147-62.
(6) William Friedman Fagelson, “Fighting Films: The Everyday Tactics of
World War II Soldiers,” Cinema Journal 40.3 (Spring 2001): 94-112.
(7) Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World
War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999),60-84.
(8) David R. Farber, Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002), 186-244
* * * *
Oct 16 Matériel Culture and Postwar Materialism
MIDTERM DUE
 Homes for Veterans (1946, National Housing Agency)
 Deadline for Action (1946, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers)
 The Great Swindle (1948, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers)
 An Old Chinese Proverb: One Picture Is Worth 20,000 Words (1946) Jerry
Fairbanks
 Today’s News, Tomorrow’s Men (1946, Knoxville News Sentinel)
(1) George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s
(University of Illinois Press, 1994), 100-81.
(2) Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in
Postwar America (New York: Vintage, 2004), 112-65
(3) Jerry Fairbanks, “On the Making of Films,” Business Screen 8:1 (1947): 60
6
(4) Nelson Lichtenstein, “Deadline for Action; Our Union; The Great Swindle”
Labor (Spring 2005), 140-43.
* * * *
Oct 23 Guest lecture: Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

The Atomic Café (1982) Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty and Pierce Rafferty
(1) Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (Oxford
U Press, 1993), “Promoter,” 213-21.
(2) TBA
* * * *
Oct 30 Postwar Economic Education
RESEARCH PAPER PROPOSAL DUE
 Industry on Parade (1950-60, National Association of Manufacturers)
 Americans at Work (1958-60, AFL-CIO)
 Cavalcade of America (1953, DuPont)
 Desert Venture (1958, Aramco)
 And Women Must Weep… (1962, National Right to Work Committee)
 American Look (1958, Chevrolet, General Motors) Jam Handy Organization
 Le Chant du Styrène (1958, Société Pechiney) Alain Resnais
(1) Edward Dimendberg, “‘These Are Not Exercises in Style’: Le Chant du
Styrène,” October 112 (Spring 2005): 63-88.
(2) William L. Bird, Jr. “Better Living”: Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary
of Business Leadership, 1935–1955 (Northwestern U Press, 1999), 120-205
(3) Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor
and Liberalism, 1945-1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 15134, 257-284.
(4) Paul Rotha, “Television and the Future of Documentary,” Quarterly of Film
Radio and Television 9.4 (Summer 1955): 366-73.
(5) Roland Marchand, Selling the Corporate Soul (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1998), 312-63.
(6) Joseph A. Pichler and H. Gordon Fitch. “And Women Must Weep: the
NLRB as Film Critic,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 28:. 3 (April,
1975), 395-410
(7) National Right to Work Committee, Print dossier for And Women Must Weep
* * * *
Nov 6 Race, Liberalism and Civil Rights in the 1950s
 Boundary Lines (1947) International Film Foundation (Julien Bryan), Philip
Stapp
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





The High Wall (1952, Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith; Illinois Dept. of
Public Information; Columbia Foundation)
All My Babies: A Midwife’s Own Story (1952, Georgia Dept. of Public Health)
George C. Stoney, for the Medical Audio-Visual Institute, Association of
Medical Colleges
A City Decides (1956, Fund for the Republic) Charles Guggenheim
Crisis in Levittown (1957, NYU Center for Human Relations) Dan W. Dodson
What About Prejudice? (1959, A Young America Production / McGraw-Hill
Book Co.) Discussion Problems in Group Living Series; Herk Harvey,
Centron Corp.
Picture in Your Mind (1948) International Film Foundation; Philip Stapp (in
France on the Marshall Plan)
(1) Albert L. Goldberg, “The Effects of Two Types of Sound Film on Adult
Attitudes towards Minorities,” Journal of Educational Sociology 29.9 (May
1956): 386-91.
(2) William J. Sloan, “The Documentary Film and the Negro: The Evolution of
the Integration Film,” Journal of the Society of Cinematologists 4 (1964–65):
66–69.
(3) [Geoff Alexander], “Philip Stapp,” < www.afana.org > (2004).
(4) Lynne Jackson, “A Commitment to Social Values and Racial Justices,” Wide
Angle 21.2 (March 1999): 31-40.
(5) Anna McCarthy, “The Television Activities of the Fund for the Republic,”
MS version, forthcoming in Patronizing the Public, ed. William Buxton,
(New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008).
(6) Gary Gerstle, “Race and the Myth of the Liberal Consensus,” Journal of
American History, 82.2 (September 1995): 579-86.
* * * *
Nov 13 Youth, Science and Cold War Citizenship
 Angry Boy (1950, Michigan Dept. of Mental Health) Alexander Hammid
 Let’s Make a Sandwich (1950, American Gas Association) Miriam Bucher
 You Can Change the World (1951, The Christophers)
 A Tupperware Home Party (1952, Tupperware Home Parties, Inc.)
 A Is for Atom (General Electric, 1953)
 The Future of America (Advertising Council, 1955)
 About Time (Bell Science, 1956)
 The House in the Middle (1954, National Paint, Varnish, and Lacquer
Association; National Clean Up-Paint Up-Fix Up Bureau; Federal Civil Defense
Administration)
(1) Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (
New York, Basic Books: 1988), 143-62
(2) Robert Griffith, “The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and
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American Politics,” The Business History Review, 57.3. (Autumn 1983): 388412.
(3) Alison Clarke, Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 2001), 8-35, 78-127
(4) Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 175-214
(5) JoAnne Brown "’A Is for Atom, B Is for Bomb’: Civil Defense in American
Public Education, 1948-1963” Journal of American History, 75.1 (June 1988):
68-90.
* * * *
Nov 20 Mobilizing: Power and Protest in the 1960s
 The Inheritance (1964, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America)
 Why Vietnam? (1965, U.S. Dept. of Defense)
 Time for Burning (1966, Lutheran Film Associates) William C. Jersey and
Barbara Connell
 A Year Towards Tomorrow (1966, Office of Economic Opportunity)
 Heritage in Black (1969, Encyclopedia Britannica Films) the Shana Corporation
 You Don’t Have to Buy War, Mrs. Smith (1970, Another Mother for Peace)
 Trick Bag (1975, Rising Up Angry) Kartemquin Films
 Perversion for Profit (1962, Citizens for Decent Literature)
No Reading: student research presentations in class
* * * *
Nov 27 Corporate Public Service
 Public service announcements, misc.;
 Why Man Creates (1968, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp.) Saul Bass
 RFD Greenwich Village (ca. 1969, Cotton Producers Association)
 Ro-Revus Talks about Worms (1971, Office of Economic Opportunity) the
Malnutrition and Parasite Project, University of South Carolina
 Shake Hands with Danger (1975, Caterpillar Tractor Co.) Centron, Herk
Harvey
 A Game of Chance (1979, American Heart Association) Philip Stapp
(1) David Paletz, Roberta E. Pearson, and Donald L. Willis, Politics in Public
Service Advertising (New York: Praeger, 1977), 1-31
(2) Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats
and the Future of American Politics (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 78-113
(3) Audrey Allen, “Corporate Advertising: Its New Look,” Public Relations
Journal 27 (November 1971): 6-13, 68-73
* * * *
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Dec 4 1970s + “Repurposing” Industrial Ephemera
 A Movie (1958) Bruce Conner
 The House Is Black (1964, Society for Aid to Lepers) Forough Farrokhzad
 We Edit Life (2002) People Like Us [Vicki Bennett]
 Spectres of the Spectrum (1999) Craig Baldwin
TBA, essays on recycled films
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