Jeffrey Holland was born in 1940. The world he grew up in -- the white America of the post Second World War era of the late 1940s and 1950s -- is long gone...but the mono-cultural, mono-racial world he knew is preserved in the instructional school films of that era. When I hear his voice, I hear him pleading for others to remain in his world.


"Are You Popular?" (1947)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEWjWAXXcRM

"Dating Dos And Don'ts" (1949)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_7eVWPjm6A

"Choosing For Happiness" (1950)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9kUnUmr6nA

"Beginning To Date" (1953)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FScdg9knbhY

"Habit Patterns" (1954)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km4CR1uGYxA

"Social Class In America" (1957)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUgDbCZLPpY

"Boys Beware" (1961)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECilAeLLATc

"Girls Beware" (1961)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV7IdCPs_FY



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2016 04:45PM by anybody.

And here are some responses to that world:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVytXppIFw0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCcJJfhdf_o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxhC-ZLlCyc

I only looked at one of these, but it says that it was filmed with the cooperation of the Inglewood Police Department and Inglewood Unified School District. It also harkens back to a time when Inglewood, one of the old "inner suburbs" of Los Angeles, was monolithically white and middle-class just like the rest of Elder Holland's childhood world. The future Beach Boys were growing up nearby.

"In 1960, the census counted only 29 'Negroes' among Inglewood's 63,390 residents. Not a single black child attended the city's schools. Real estate agents refused to show homes to blacks." (Wikipedia)

Things are a little different now, just like in the rest of urban and even suburban America. In the latest census the population of Inglewood was 44% black, about 3% "non-Hispanic white", and 53% everything else you can think of.

I meant I only looked at one of the OP's selection of films ("Girls Beware").

The world portrayed in these films never, ever, existed. Only one segment, that of white middle-class society, was ever portrayed. Give me the real, diverse, culture that is 21st Century America any time over this idealized shit from the 1950s! The Baby-Boomer Boner.

I remember watching those movies in high school in the mid 1950s.

A great movie that encapsulates that make believe period is Pleasantville. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EHRObUQqY ) I highly recommend it.

The underlying message is applicable to today's 'back to the fifties" Mormon church. The screwed up Pleasantville mayor who fights the youth changing is spot on Jeffrey Holland.

The world portrayed in these films and other films and TV of the 50s did not even apply to many white poor or working class people, let along admit that any non-white groups even existed. Film maker Ann Fessler did some interesting things with these sorts of instructional films on the subject of unwed pregnancy in her presentation "A Girl Like Her". She is also the author of "The Girls Who Went Away", a comprehensive book on the treatment of unwed mothers in the 50s and 60s.