Having feelings about the end of a long holiday weekend? We're here to help. This clip is from the 1950 film "Get a Grip on Yourself". A project of the National Safety Council and the United States Department of Labor, it was one installment of a four part "Personal Side of Safety" series.
This episode offered workers a four-point plan to help manage their negative emotions and avoid workplace accidents using illustrations and live action instruction.
This film is part of Hagley Library's Sponsored and industrial motion picture film collection (Accession 2018.222), an artificial collection compiled by curators that includes single motion picture films or small sets of films acquired via purchase or donation.
‘Sponsored film’ defines variety of motion picture productions funded by businesses, organizations, or governments that dictated the point of view, audience, and intent of the film. Productions that fall under the scope of sponsored films include those defined as industrial or business films, advertising films, educational films, religious films, medical and scientific films, government films, and advocacy films by social service organizations and/or trade organizations.
Industrial or business films are a subgenre of sponsored films with content that marketed products and ideas, touted a particular company or industry, trained employees, and explained manufacturing or transactional processes around the creation and sales of products and ideas.
While there are examples of ‘sponsored films’ as early as 1900 the highpoint of sponsored films was the 1950s. In 1958, an estimated 600 production houses in the US specialized in producing sponsored films with an estimated output of 5,000 titles per year. In The Field Guide to Sponsored Films author and film archivist Rick Prelinger estimates that 300,000 industrial and institutional films were made in the United States prior to the 1980s. While it is impossible to know an exact number, Prelinger states that the number of sponsored films “far more than any other type of motion picture.”
This resource has not been digitized in its entirety, but our Digital Archive does offer a curated selection of films from this collection. To view the full version of "Get a Grip on Yourself" online now, just click here.