THE RAINBOW IS YOURS Saturday, January 8 at 2:00 p.m. This all-color program celebrates the sheer theatricality of American design. Unashamedly Populuxe, these films link desire and commodity, flirting with reality and gender roles in the manner of the Hollywood musicals they emulate. American Look, a SuperScope spectacle, repositions us in the wide, new, colorful era of Eisenhower, Sputniks and tailfins. DESIGN FOR DREAMING Produced by MPO Productions (New York City) for General Motors, 1956. 10 min., 16mm, Anscocolor. "Because of the widespread interest in Motorama, General Motors makes an annual film which, although not an exact factual record of the show, does capture its flavor, style and theme....Design for Dreaming, this year's Motorama film, is a dancing and singing fantasy that introduces the beautiful cars through the eyes of cute Thelma Tadlock, a ballerina whose twinkling toes carry the audience from Chevrolet to Cadillacland, and to the far out reaches of the highways of tomorrow." (Business Screen, January 1957) The annual extravaganzas in which new cars were first "rolled out" to the public are now extinct. In the Fifties, these events were eagerly awaited celebrations of modern American technology and design mixed with a generous dose of hype. General Motors took their latest models, the Frigidaire "Kitchen of the Future" and a collection of futuristic "dream cars" to five cities; in 1956, attendance was over two million. They sponsored Design for Dreaming to be shown to those unable to attend in person. According to Business Screen, over eight million were reached in this way. "It's pure schmaltz," a rival public-relations man harumphed, adding enviously, "but it sells cars." (Business Week, 1956) The Motoramas also promoted other General Motors products, including most notably Frigidaire's "Kitchen of the Future," a fanciful, futuristic assembly of prototype appliances and culinary conveniences. Thus, in only ten minutes, Design for Dreaming manages to flirt with futurism, gender roles, sexual politics, work, consumerism and concepts of leisure. Finally, many viewers will ask whether "Thelma Tadlock" who dances throughout the film is really Carolyn Jones (Morticia in The Addams Family TV show). The answer is no. But take a good look at the players in A Touch of Magic, shown later in this program -- they appear to have been tapped for similar roles five years later. TECHNICOLOR FOR INDUSTRIAL FILMS Produced by an unknown producer for Technicolor Corporation (Hollywood, Calif.), about 1949. 10 min., Technicolor, 16mm. Originally released in 35mm and 16mm Technicolor prints. By 1949, the popularity of television had seriously affected the motion-picture industry. Studio executives sweated as theaters closed for lack of business; many palatial cinemas, in fact, were transformed into supermarkets. Since there was less call for their services from Hollywood studios, the Technicolor Corporation marketed its services towards commercial and industrial film producers. This film is an artifact of this change in direction, and a fine tutorial in the fetishistic presentation of consumer products on film. ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON Produced by Jerry Fairbanks Productions for the Bell System, 1956. 14 min., Technicolor, 16mm. Originally released in 35mm SuperScope. Director: Gower Champion. Script: Kenneth H. Bennett, Leo S. Rosencrans. Cinematography: Jerry Fairbanks. Set design: Theodore Holsorple. Editor: Milton Kleinberg. "Castle in the Sky" lyrics by Al Stewart and music by Richard Pribor. Cast: Virginia Gibson, Ward Ellis, Alan Mowbray, Chick Chandler, Veronica Pataky and Russell Hicks. One of the most sparkling industrial films ever made, Once Upon a Honeymoon infuses its genre with the style and production values of the Hollywood musical. Jerry Fairbanks Productions, a frequent contract producer for the Bell System, was located in Hollywood and profited from Fairbanks' extensive experience as a producer of studio short subjects (notably the Speaking of Animals and Unusual Occupations series for Paramount). Fairbanks specialized in beautifully produced sponsored films that looked very much like the studio product of the time. The performers were drawn from the Hollywood talent pool; many will be familiar to avid cable viewers. Perhaps because of their resemblance to mainstream studio films, Fairbanks' films tend to have a rarefied, even stuffy quality. Although they meld product and production scenes with narrative segments, quite in the tradition of classic industrials, everything looks just a bit stagy and overdesigned. (Compare Freedom Highway, included in the WE DIDN'T DREAM BIG ENOUGH: LANDSCAPE AND TRAVELOGUE program.) On the other hand, perhaps this is what makes them fun to watch. Just a bit about the telephone, the real star of this show: in the Fifties, the telephone filled real needs, linking newly decentralized communities, isolated housewives and postwar migrants, inaugurating a new era of convenience, making a great deal of travel unnecessary. But the equipment itself was also a profit center. More homes meant more phones; more phones meant more calling and higher monthly bills; and, in those days of monopoly, higher equipment rentals. By mid-decade, telephone service (at least in middle-class communities) became universal enough to be linked with convenience and decoration, rather than necessity. The phone company took it for granted that customers could call friends, the doctor or the grocery, and suggested they should expect this convenience in every room in the house, using properly colored equipment. Naturally, color phones were rented at higher rates. Once Upon a Honeymoon was released to theaters and television as part of the consumer marketing campaign for color phone sets. FRIGIDAIRE FINALE Jam Handy Organization for Frigidaire Division of General Motors, 1957. 4 min., faded Eastmancolor, 16mm. This film fragment is a surviving segment of the gala industrial show mounted to roll out the 1957 Frigidaire kitchen appliance line to retail dealers at the national sales meeting. Futuramas, Motoramas and Kitchens of Tomorrow, like many "utopian" ideas, often seem to recall the past rather than predict the future. The utopia of the late thirties linked the advent of a better world to the success of cars, refrigerators or ball bearings. These visions were often invoked when few people could actually afford to buy expensive products, and it seemed safer to speak of the future than the present. Wars and the attendant shortages of materials and goods intervened, temporarily shifting futuristic schemes back into the marginal realm of science fiction. But in the second half of the Fifties, advertisers once again felt confident to invoke the future, and filled the mass media with utopias, fantasies and dreams. Conservative corporations proposed new, futuristic and sometimes fanciful needs to a society abandoning dirty, old-fashioned cities for the new suburbia. Images of national mobilization, duty and scarcity disappeared from advertising in favor of images of gracious living, seductive housewives and, always, a choice of several colors. Frigidaire, a division of General Motors, marketed its appliance lines just like automobiles. All that had become associated with automotive marketing -- the annual model change, high-pressure pitches, and especially planned obsolescence -- was applied to selling the home and its contents. New models were introduced with great fanfare every year. Three distinct product lines -- the Imperial, the Deluxe and the Super Deluxe -- were designed for different levels of purchasing power. Buyers were encouraged to trade up to top-of-the-line models, loaded with options. Oddly, these spanking new washers, dryers, ranges and refrigerators seemed almost ornamental in their detail. Unlike ads just a few years earlier, these glamorous late Fifties representations shunned any mention of time-saving, convenience or even housework. Smiling women in formal dresses danced their way through magazine pages and TV spots, untroubled by the actual operation of their "sheer look" appliances. Another Fifties industrial show, Chevrolet Sales Convention Musical, appears as part of the TIRELESS MARKETERS program. A TOUCH OF MAGIC Produced by MPO Productions for General Motors Corporation, 1961. 10 min. Technicolor, 35mm. Director: Victor D. Solow. Script and lyrics: Joseph March, Edward Eliscu. Music: Sol Kaplan. Choreography: Thomas Hansen. Singers: Anita Ellis, Ed Kenney. Cinematography: Stanley Meredith, Kenneth Snelson, Victor D. Solow. Editor: Reva Schlesinger. Art Direction: Paul Petroff, Richard Bianchi. Costumes: Mostoller. Special effects: Huntley Rheinlander, Sol Goodnoff. Makeup: Clay Lambert. Furs by Frederica. Fashions by Hannah Troy. Hats by Mr. John Boutique. Jewelry by Kramer. Mens' fashions by Ohrbach's. Mens' formal wear by Lord West. With Tad Tadlock (Woman); James Mitchell (Man). We return to the world of Design for Dreaming, but five years have passed. The couple who once roamed futuristic cityscapes by night has become domesticized and now worries about the chores involved in putting on a dinner party for friends, and the musical fantasy is much less interesting. Why? Perhaps the future has finally arrived -- Jack Kennedy is in the White House, the U.S. has a presence in outer space, and memories of World War II and Korea are receding. AMERICAN LOOK Produced by Jam Handy Organization for Chevrolet Division, General Motors Corporation. Completed August 29, 1958. 28 min., 35mm, Technicolor, SuperScope. Directors: C.F. Banes and John Thiele. Cinematographers: Roger Fenimore, Pierre Mols and Robert Tavernier. Sound: Daniel Mandelbaum. Art Direction: Robert Mounsey, Charles Nasca and Arto Simunich. Music: Samuel Bergman, James Higgins and Milton Weinberg. Editing: V.L. Hermann, Harold Rogers. Premiered at 14th Annual Design Conference of American Society of Industrial Designers, October 1958, Bedford Springs, Pa. Perhaps the definitive "Populuxe" film, American Look takes its viewers on a whirlwind tour of late-Fifties modernity. It's all there in widescreen Technicolor -- new toys, international design, modern kitchens, audacious architecture and prototype "dream cars." Look was actually produced to defend the annual model change in the automobile industry. It shows the design process involved in the creation of the 1959 Chevrolet, the model whose tailfins reached an historic peak. That year, General Motors had a secret to keep: they had used a standard chassis in all of their models, and many of their cars were mechanically identical beneath the fins; that year their ads emphasized design, not performance. So as to prove that the American people valued new design above anything else, scriptwriters looked around for supportive examples, and found them in the home. By presenting new models of furniture, decoration, utensils and appliances as evidence of America's new engagement with the "look of things," this film unwittingly confirmed that these goods had gone the way of the automobile, and were being marketed in precisely the same way. The market for "good" design, once highly stratified, became a mass market for the first time. Millions of buyers of mass-produced houses rushed to personalize, rework and add design touches to them, often immediately upon purchase. The film honors the American "stylist," "the men and women who design," but ignores the traditions that influenced their designs. It suggested that nothing happened in the world of design before the Fifties. Encompassing at once interior, graphic, product and industrial design, the concept of "styling" expressed the process by which design ideas are translated into marketable features. Useful objects were transformed into decorative ones, sometimes gratuitously. Not every knob or dial on late-Fifties appliances had to have a function. "Stylists" even made engineering decisions, decisions that had no basis in performance. They applied aerodynamic styling to the table knife. With new materials (especially plastic), color and design flourishes, the most ordinary useful objects were glamorized. Look remarks on the American people's "ever-increasing good taste," promoting an upper-middle-class lifestyle that expressed exclusivity. The actors, portraying a liberal group of educated consumers, are members of country clubs, amuse their neighbors with slides, and give elegant dinner parties. Perhaps because there was no scarcity of actual goods to buy, Look makes only passing reference to futuristic models, and they're shown simply as evidence that designers are thinking ahead. A quick tracking shot surveys Frigidaire's "Kitchen of Tomorrow," which was exhibited virtually without alterations from 1954 until the early seventies; also shown is the Pontiac Firebird II, the turbine-powered sensation of the 1956 G.M. Motorama, and finally G.M.'s bubble-shaped Tech Center. Business Screen, the trade journal for producers and buyers of sponsored films, said: "The result is an eye- filling, exciting spectacle of advanced design and styling. Contributing to its panoramic sweep of design creativity is the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Eero Saarinen, Paul McCobb, Florence Knoll, Noguchi, Hans Bellman and Harley Earle, and other design luminaries....Chevrolet's tie-in is a thoroughly logical development of new model design which preview audiences found most palatable. Integrated in the film are a stream of new ideas and new materials that presage a bright future for Mr. and Mrs. America." (Business Screen, November 15, 1958). Offering rare contemporary insight into how a sponsored film was received by the industry it profiled, the noted design critic Ralph Caplan said: "Apparently one of the hardest subjects to design into a film is design itself....About a year and a half ago General Motors made American Look, a popular film that was unpopular with the designers who saw it, partly because the term "stylist" was used exclusively, and partly because it presented so misleading a picture of how design gets done. American Look throws on the screen almost every widely-shown-in-all-the- right-places design from the Barcelona chair to the quadreflex speaker. This is followed by a sequence advertised as one in which "the audience looks over the shoulders of the giants of American design to see sketch board dreams become reality." Well, the audience did see some sketch boards -- but always over the shoulders in the GM style shop, the implication being that what's good for General Motors is standard operating procedure for Eames, Mies van der Rohe, and Wright." (Ralph Caplan, "Industry on the Screen," Industrial Design, April 1960). .