Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

38 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE Volume XII, No. 1 NEW 1946 Film Catalog All subjects 16mm sound. A post cord will bring you this big catalog of SELECTED school entertainment films including DANCING PIRATE (in full color) AS YOU LIKE IT THE MELODY MASTER THE DUKE OF WEST POINT COURAGEOUS MR. PENN JACARE and many others You’ll like Dennis Friendly Service! DENNIS FILM BUREAU W abash f Indiana war. If their influence continues to be felt in the products of the film industry, it will be all to the good. Although both sections of the film industry have much to learn from each other, the documentary movement will never submerge itself in the conventional studio atmosphere. The war has proved that there is a great public ready to receive documentary films outside the cinemas. In addition there are large sections of the public for whom specialized films must be made available — school children, teachers, doctors, farmers, students, scientists, and so on. The constant development of knowledge, new practices and methods in the realms of medicine, agriculture, industry, and science — all come within the scope of the documentary film, which will explain and interpret them in terms of sociology. Whether the subject concerns the elementary principles of health, the teaching of history, the working of a piece of machinery, the functions of municipal government, the planning of a new housing estate, the du ties of citizenship, or the economic organization of industry, the documentary film has its own special contribution to make in stimulating the thought and imagination of people everywhere. The Lighf-er Side of Film Comment Lieut. James W. Brown, discussing the use of visual aids at a Waukegan conference, reported: “We were doing such a marvelous job with training films in the Navy, speeding up the program so much, that Washington was afraid the war wouldn’t last for the duration.” Harry E. Erickson, of the Radio Corporation of America, reports; “At a demonstration of ‘The Adventures of Bunny Rabbit,’ a teacher asked: ‘Don’t you think that when the children see the squirrels cracking nuts with their teeth, they will have a tendency to crack nuts with their teeth?’ The demonstrator replied: ‘We have shown pictures of frogs eating worms, and we have never had any trouble with children eating worms.” Max Lief, reporting in the New York Times on Hollywood trends: “Republic’s westerns shine like a good deed in an Autry world.” Radio Problems in the High School James F. Mac Andrew, Coordinator of Radio Programs, Station WNYE, Brooklyn Technical High School, Brooklyn, N. Y., in an illuminating article on “R a d i 0 In The High-School Classroom,” which appeared in the March, 1945, issue of High Points, points out: “You and I live and work in the most ladio-minded city of the most radio-minded country in the world. Of the 108,000,000 civilian radios in the world, some 56,000,000 are in the United States. Four American homes out of every five are radio equipped, and in New York City 97 homes out of every 100 have a radio of some sort. Our students spend two hours a day listening. Confronted with the hypothetical problem of abolishing either radio or the movies, children have consistently voted to keep radio.” Retarding the use of radio in the schools, says Mr. MacAndrew, are these difficulties : (1) The high schools are not equipped with adequate reception facilities. (2) The bell schedules are so varied as to preclude the possibility of a single radio program hitting the 54 high schools during a period. (3) Classes in a given subject meet at many different periods of the day, so that some meet during a broadcast period while others do not. (4) The time of the term when a radio broadcast is presented does not always coincide with the time when it would fit in with appropriate curriculum units. (5) Teachers are sometimes not fully aware of radio schedules because they fail to get necessary publicity bulletins. (6) Teachers are often unfamiliar with discussion techniques for utilizing radio. (7) Teachers are in many cases too well satisfied with their own procedures to be willing to let radio presentations by other teachers aid them.