"Weenie roasts are swell!"

For generations of American school kids, 16mm classroom films served as a break in classroom tedium and a chance for the teacher to sneak a smoke in the hall. But for the quarter century that followed World War II -- the years 1945 to 1970 -- a special kind of classroom film received wide circulation. These were "mental hygiene" films, specifically designed to shape the behavior of their young viewers.

With over 400 photos, interviews with surviving filmmakers, and nearly 300 capsule reviews MENTAL HYGIENE: CLASSROOM FILMS 1945-1970 is the first book to take an in-depth look at these forgotten classics, such as "The Last Prom," "Dating Do's and Don'ts," "Lunchroom Manners," "Duck and Cover," "Highways of Agony," and "Girls Beware."

Mental hygiene films thrived in a confused and nervous America. Moral codes and social norms were routinely challenged and disobeyed in the years from World War II to Watergate, spearheaded nearly always by the young. This rebellious behavior struck fear in the hearts of parents and educators, who foresaw dark futures for teens who broke the rules and refused to fit in with society.

To battle this, adults sought help from Ph.D.s and social scientists and embraced a new technology to deliver their guidance: the classroom mental hygiene film. These films covered a broad swath of everyday social behavior, including table manners, date etiquette, personal hygiene, substance abuse, venereal disease, juvenile delinquency, and the awful things that happen to kids who drive too fast on prom night.

Mental hygiene films do not meet traditional benchmarks of film as entertainment or art, but they did not spring from the entertainment traditions of Hollywood or the artistic muse of the auteur. They grew out of the training and propaganda films of World War II and sought to portray everyday life as realistically -- that is, as inconspicuously -- as possible. A classroom audience was not supposed to watch a mental hygiene film and be enthralled by its direction, cinematography, acting, or editing. They were supposed to believe that what they saw was real and embrace the film's point of view as their own.

Those who created these films were, for the most part, anonymous -- valued more for their ability to grind out product than their talents as filmmakers. Crews were spartan, sets were improvised, equipment was minimal, actors were often just kids from the neighborhood. Despite these obstacles distinct filmmaking styles emerged among the major producers: the merciless optimism of Coronet, the sledgehammer morality of Sid Davis, the snuff movie blood and guts of Dick Wayman, the smoldering doom of Centron. Viewing mental hygiene films as a genre reveals something unexpected: a range of competence and technique in a class of filmmaking that has generally been perceived to have had none.

Thousands of mental hygiene films were produced during their twenty-five-year reign, but only a handful survive today. Schools got their money's worth by screening prints until they were spliced and shredded into uselessness. Prints that escaped destruction on the job were thrown in the garbage when they became out-of-date or when school AV departments shifted to video. When mental hygiene production companies went out of business -- as they all eventually did -- their master prints were thrown away, along with almost all information about the films' creators, casts, and costs. Preservationists, historians, and film scholars showed little interest in saving what remained. At least half of all mental hygiene titles have vanished forever, and many survive today as only a single, battered print.

WHERE CAN I SEE MENTAL HYGIENE FILMS?
Although most of the nearly 250 films discussed in MENTAL HYGIENE have been difficult to find in the last twenty-five years, at last many of them are now available for download from the Internet Moving Images Archive a collaborative project between the Internet Archive and Prelinger Archives.

About the Author
Ken Smith is a co-author of ROADSIDE AMERICA and THE NEW ROADSIDE AMERICA (which now also has an extremely popular website that receives two million hits a month).His last book, RAW DEAL: HORRIBLE AND IRONIC STORIES OF FORGOTTEN AMERICANS. Ken's previous book, KEN'S GUIDE TO THE BIBLE, earned him a permanent mooring in the Lake of Fire.

Feedback
Questions? Comments? Want to tell Ken about a film he overlooked, or share a favorite mental hygiene experience? Please write ken@blastbooks.com Damnations? Invectives? Leftover hate mail for KEN'S GUIDE TO THE BIBLE? Send them to kensucks@blastbooks.com

Ken is not a film collector and cannot appraise your films. Anyone with old mental hygiene films that need a good home should contact Rick Prelinger at Prelinger Archives, 415-750-0445; e-mail: footage@panix.com.

"Among the most pervasive and pernicious forms of 1950s cultural indoctrination was the mental hygiene film, extolling proper behavior to captive audiences of schoolchildren.... Most mental hygiene films have vanished, discarded when their message grew dated, but they live again through Smith's diligent research and witty write-ups, more fun to read than watching them ever was. --Gordon Flagg, ALA Booklist

"...Smith's informative and often hilarious short essays on classroom film genres like "Girls Only," "Dating," "Sex Education" and "Fitting In" illuminate the social indoctrination of American teenagers." --Publishers Weekly

Nonfiction, popular culture
ISBN: 0-922233-21-7
7  x 10" • 240 pages
$24.95 original trade paperback

Click here to order from Amazon.com.