The factories on film, I — Studebaker's own pictures

1921–1953 · the company's film program, from the Light Six to the centennial

The factory filmed itself first: The earliest documented film production of this city's industry is a picture of a car being born. In June 1921 the Capitol Journal of Salem, Oregon — a newspaper of record on the far end of the film's distribution — announced the exhibition there of what it declared to be one of the most remarkable industrial films ever taken: the complete manufacture of the Studebaker Light Six, shown at the Commercial Club auditorium under the arrangements of the Marion Automobile Company, the local distributors, admission free. Every operation in the picture, the paper's account is careful to say, was performed in the Studebaker plant at South Bend, where the new Light Six was manufactured complete, and the film abounded, the account says, in human interest and real excitement, with special lighting and colouring effects making its scenes realistic to a striking degree. The form matters as much as the fact: in 1921, before the sponsored film was a settled industry, Studebaker was already shooting its South Bend works whole and sending the picture out on the dealer circuit as a selling instrument.

Wild Flowers and the giant car: A decade later the company's film program produced its most durable image. For the proving ground Studebaker had built west of the city in 1926 — the first controlled automobile testing ground in the industry, whose course stands in this record's Famous Locations history — its pattern makers fabricated, in the spring of 1930 by the fullest account, under Paul Auman, head of the prototype department, a replica of the 1931 President Four Seasons Roadster two and a half times life size: forty-one feet long, nearly fourteen feet tall, five and a half tons of white pine on a twenty-seven-foot wheelbase, assembled on its own plinth at the proving-ground gate. The car was built to be photographed, and it was filmed: Wild Flowers, a short Studebaker promotional picture of about nine or ten minutes — the surviving accounts divide on the running time, and both figures print — produced for the company by Wilding Picture Productions, Inc., of Detroit, one of the era's industrial-film houses. The production stills survive in the Detroit Historical Society's collection: the Studebaker Champions Orchestra standing in the giant car's passenger compartment in white jumpsuits, aviator hats and goggles, and Wilding's own trucks parked before the car on the proving ground. The giant stood at the gate until its 1931 styling dated and the winters rotted it; on 17 May 1936 the company soaked it in oil and burned it where it stood, and only its wheel covers — original Studebaker parts — survived, to reach the Studebaker National Museum.

The program on the road, and the centennial film: The company's pictures travelled with its exhibits: at Chicago's Century of Progress exposition in 1933, the trade press recorded, Studebaker built an eighty-foot model of its Land Cruiser with, beneath its running board, the entrance to an eighty-seat movie theatre where guests watched films promoting the company's products. The program's summit is its last decade's centennial picture: The Studebaker Story, Volume 1: The First Hundred Years (1953), presented by the Studebaker Corporation and produced for it by Screen Gems — produced by Jules Bricken, directed by Seymour Friedman, written by Richard Blake and Brown Holmes, with animation by U.P.A. — a half-hour colour docudrama in which Hollywood actors play the founders on the record's own ground: Donald Woods as John Mohler Studebaker, Harry Carey, Jr. as Clem, William Bishop as Henry, Myron Healey as Peter, Harlan Warde as Jacob, John R. Hamilton as the father. The film re-enacts the brothers' 1852 start in South Bend, follows the wagon works to the automobile, and closes on the newest car, the 1953 Starlight coupe. It survives whole, in the Periscope Film archive's copy on the Internet Archive, and it is the company's official self-portrait on film — a sponsored picture, made in Hollywood, about this city, eleven years before the works closed. A second company thread runs forward from it: a 1950s Studebaker film that presented the corporation as an extended family featured the Bokon family of South Bend, and thirty years on, that family's reappearance in a documentary made about the closing — the next-but-one entry in this section — is the hinge on which the city's whole screen memory of Studebaker turns.

Sources

1. Capitol Journal, Salem, Oregon, 4 June 1921 (Historic Oregon Newspapers) — the Studebaker Light Six industrial film: the complete manufacture filmed at the South Bend plant, the Commercial Club exhibition under the Marion Automobile Company's arrangements, the paper's billing of the picture.
2. Detroit Historical Society, collection records 2012.032.013 and 2012.032.014 — production stills of the filming of the Studebaker promotional film Wild Flowers, the giant 1931 Model 80 Four Seasons Roadster, the Studebaker Champions Orchestra, and Wilding Picture Productions, Inc., of Detroit, as the picture's producer.
3. The proving-ground histories of the giant car — Mac's Motor City Garage (the spring 1930 fabrication under Paul Auman; the dimensions; the burning of 17 May 1936) and the accounts carried with the film (the nine-minute and ten-minute running times, printed as given); the Famous Locations history in this record (Famous Landmarks, sb-fl-proving-ground) — the ground itself, pointed to, not retold.
4. Exhibitor trade account of Studebaker at the Century of Progress, 1933 — the eighty-foot Land Cruiser and the eighty-seat theatre beneath its running board showing films promoting the company's products.
5. The Studebaker Story, Volume 1: The First Hundred Years (1953), the film itself as preserved in the Periscope Film copy at the Internet Archive, with its published credits — presented by the Studebaker Corporation; Screen Gems; producer Jules Bricken; director Seymour Friedman; writers Richard Blake and Brown Holmes; animation by U.P.A.; the cast as the Studebaker brothers; the 1852 re-enactment and the 1953 Starlight coupe close.
6. Indie Auto, on Studebaker: Less Than They Promised — the Bokon family's appearance in a 1950s Studebaker film of the company-as-family; carried whole in that film's entry below.