Oops! We're a little late with this week's Hagley Vault post! But we're leaning into it and rolling with that pobody's nerfect spirit with a commercial for the grocery store chain Pick-n-Pay on "flubs".
This ca. 1970 advertisement was made General Pictures Corporation, an industrial film studio founded by George Oliva, Jr. in Cleveland, Ohio in 1957. In 1971, the company merged with Cinecraft Productions, a local competitor, which is how it became part of Hagley Library's collection of Cinecraft Productions films (Accession 2019.227).
Cinecraft Productions was founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty (Buehner) Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ray Culley served as president of the company and producer on many Cinecraft films until his retirement in 1970. During his tenure, Cinecraft specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations.
Cinecraft was one among hundreds of production houses in the U.S. during the middle decades of the 20th century that specialized in motion pictures commonly referred to as non-theatrical, industrial, business and/or sponsored films. While ownership has changed twice since its founding, Cinecraft is still in business and rightfully claims itself the “country's longest-standing corporate film & video production house.”
This collection has not been digitized in its entirety; to view a selection of materials curated from the collection online now, click here to view its page in our Digital Archive. To view other digitized resources at Hagley Library related to Cinecraft, go check out the page for our combined Cinecraft Productions collections, which features oral histories, films, and archival images and documents.