Master archivist Rick Prelinger sez,
The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair is a 55-min. featurette that I consider the quintessential US industrial film. It ties together all the recurring themes of corporate speech: blind faith in technology, optimism about the future, suspicion about art and culture and (of course) anti-Communism. Westinghouse Electric sponsored it in 1939, and it features their wisecracking robot Electro, the newfangled medium of television, and their 5,000-year time capsule.Visiting from Indiana, the all-American Middletons find their daughter Babs seduced by her Russian-looking anti-capitalist art-teacher boyfriend Nick. At the World's Fair they marvel at the technology exhibits and see the "Battle of the Century," where Mrs. Modern and Mrs. Drudge pit sweaty sink labor against modern automatic dishwashing. Boy-next-door-from-home Jim Treadway vows to win Babs back from her cynical leftie teacher, and the intrigue is on.
There are cheap VHS dupes of this movie circulating, but it's never been available in its full Technicolor glory. This file was digitized from a 35mm nitrate print.
Happy holidays from Prelinger Archives!
(Thanks, Rick!)
