Forever 50s
(VCI)
Picture: C Sound: C Extras: C+ Main
Shorts: B+
So many of the DVDs on the 1950s
have been about Rock music, so it’s a nice change of pace to see Forever
50s. This 3-disc set is devoted to
newsreels, shorts, movie theater advertising, and feature film trailers. It runs eight hours long in total, but it
could have gone on even longer.
The first two DVDs cover newsreel
highlights year-by-year. This
occasionally includes other promo films and ads. All individually chapterized, there are several hundred in
all. With TV’s arrival, the set tries
to demonstrate how the newsreel went into decline, not being able to compete
with TVs immediacy for the real news.
It also echoed today’s TV and how network news and 24-hour cable news
have ruined each other, turning real life into a sick freak show for
ratings. History did repeat
itself. The segments on sports are not
as bad, while those on fashion are funny for other reasons.
Ads include some surprisingly
simple Coca Cola animated clips, a decent one for Orange Crush, a fine one for
the likely-defunct Buttercup Popcorn brand, and the generic type ads that
simply pushed the concession stands and its variety of products. Only major misstep is the shortcutting of a
Joan Crawford charity short from 1955 before it gets started, while some ads
are shown in a sort of split-screen, which has a mock video marquee on the
opposite side. This was a distracting
mistake.
The third disc offers several short films and eighteen
theatrical trailers from the decade.
Those previews offer a good cross-section of what Hollywood was putting
out in those years, as the studio system went into decline, and theaters had
their attendance torn-down by TV. The
five short films are another mater.
You Can Beat The A Bomb (1950) offers much
misinformation on the dangers of nuclear radiation, but despite “duck and
cover” being in quotes on the box, this one does NOT include the legendary
animated government propaganda short. Red Nightmare (1957) is hosted by no less than Jack Webb, who
was already known for radio’s Dragnet, which was translating strongly
into one of TV’s earliest megahits.
This half-hour piece combines the title event in the life of a male head
of household with the idea the East Bloc Communists had built a fake U.S. town
to train agents on how to “act American” and penetrate the “Capitalist pigs”
territory for “inevitable” take over.
Such a town even served as a setting for an early episode of the original
“Mission: Impossible” series. Even
future “Wild, Wild West/Baa Baa Blacksheep/Black Sheep Squadron/Man Called
Sloane” start Robert Conrad shows up.
It has it moments, and the fact that the music was done by Bill Lava,
who created music for Warner Bros. (the short’s producer) final years of Looney
Tunes cartoons should give you a hint of what to expect. America
For Me (1952) is a
half-hour promo by Greyhound Bus Lines to get people to travel. Were the busses ever this friendly, clean,
safe, and fun? Either way, the film
suggests beautiful places to ride to in the USA. Towards the end, though, it gets desperate, trying to pile-on as
many locations as possible. By the end,
you realize you would ride to your death trying to! Also amusing are “beautiful” vacation rest stops owned and operated
by Greyhound. How long ago did they
dump these, or do they actually own some of them? What condition might they be in now?
Little Smokie (1953) is a tired piece about
preventing forest fires when Smokie was an actual bear. No animation here, or
not much else, with William Boyd’s Hopalong Cassidy dragging out everything
further, while Fabulous Fashions (1955) do not quite live up to
the title. It is a hoot enough, though.
At least 99% of the materials are full-screen and vary in
picture quality, as is typical for such a documentary compilation. A good job was done in fixing and
transferring this material. Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono is also offered throughout, also varying accordingly. This makes for a nice set of both memorable
and bizarre programming that belongs in any strong special interest DVD
collection.
- Nicholas Sheffo
