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Knickerbocker ProductionsSocial Class in America (1957)

Shows the differences in the life experience of three male babies from three different social classes. One young man succeeds his father as president of the family manufacturing company. Another, a middle-class white-collar worker at the same company, leaves the town of his birth and moves to New York City where he becomes a respected advertising art director, thus rising in social status. A third, born into the working class, trains as a mechanic and holds an influential job at a service station. The sociological tone of the film does not mask a sobering narrative of the limitations that social class divisions inflict on all Americans.


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Producer: Knickerbocker Productions
Sponsor: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.
Audio/Visual: Sd, B&W
Keywords: Sociology; Class; 1950s

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: ERD - - April 24, 2006
Subject: Limitations
A 1957 film showing the personal limitations due to family class structure in this country (Stronger in small towns than in the big cities.)
Today, it is less prevalent, but with monopolies becoming powerful again, and prices increasing at a higher rate than wage raises, one wonders what will happen.

Reviewer: Spuzz - - June 9, 2005
Subject: In a rich man's world
Very odd-in-stomach movie about 3 boys and how their social class will lead them for the rest of their lives, The rich baby will always be rich, the poor one will always be poor, the middle-class baby though, in his twenties, moves up in the world, but is treated as middle class at home. Pshaw at that I say! Impress the middle class people at home! And watch out for rich kids, they'll steal your woman away! Very odd and strange actually. While some of it may be true, this film I believe is of the minority and not the majority (but I could be wrong).

Reviewer: MediaWhore - - June 7, 2004
Subject: Class War not Race War!!
Poor Ted Eastwood. He is born into a middle class society and Mary, the hot stuck up rich girl, will have nothing to do with him because he is below her. Ted has dreams of pursuing a career in art. His father talks him out of it saying that "security lies in business and white collar work". So good ol Ted becomes a book keeper alongside his dad at the local corporate slave office. Unhappy with the life he is stuck with he goes out on a limb by moving to NY and eventually he improves his social status by becoming a successfull art director. Now when he goes home he'll be able to get with Mary. WRONG!! Aside from the fact she is now married to some upper class schmuck we still know Ted won't be gettin any on the side because he wasnt born into thier elite club. You can't polish a turd so to say. Meanwhile the lower class fiqure who works at the gas station is churnin out babies like there is no tommorow!!

Reviewer: Marysz - - June 2, 2004
Subject: Aspiring for Vertical Mobility
A look at three boys in small town America in the 1950s. GilbertÃÂs dad owns the local factory; heÃÂs upper class. TedÃÂs dad works for GilbertÃÂs dadÃÂs company and is middle class. DavidÃÂs dad has an unskilled job and heÃÂs lower class. Since this is the fifties, the only people whose social class matters are white men. There is only one woman in the film, Mary. Mary rejects TedÃÂsheÃÂs upper class and heÃÂs not (we know sheÃÂs upper class because she has her own carÃÂunusual for young women in the fifties). Ted moves to New York and becomes an art director at an ad agency and, as the film puts it, makes a ÃÂhorizontal move to achieve vertical mobility.ÃÂ In other words, he raises his social standing by moving away. In New York he can move between the different social classes, but once heÃÂs back in his small town heÃÂs still plain old Ted. David becomes a skilled auto mechanic and probably does pretty well for himself, despite the fact that his job has less prestige than TedÃÂs. Gil, the only one of the boys to go to college, comes home to run the family factory. The America we see in this film is one in which towns have factories that produce goods and employ the local citizens. TedÃÂs dad didnÃÂt go to college, yet heÃÂs still middle class. A high school graduate could still earn a decent living then and be considered a member of the middle class. Ted ends up running the art department at a New York ad agency simply as a result of taking night classes. For some white men at least, there was more social mobility than there is today. The film mentions that social class also has to do with ÃÂnationality, religion and raceÃÂ but we donÃÂt see anyone other than WASP white men in this film. Presumably, the children of immigrant parents, non-whites and women were so socially marginalized in the fifties that their social class was negligible in the eyes of the larger society (and the producers of this film).

Reviewer: NG - - May 26, 2003
Subject: America is a Class Society...
...but it's rarely talked about. Krugman wrote a piece in the New York Times Magazine (Sept. or Oct. 2002) noting that income inequality is growing again in the U.S., in a big way. We are entering a new guilded age like we had in the early decades of the 1900s. This movie was filmed when our nation enjoyed comparative equality, but you just have to look at CEO compensation to know we're moving further and further away from that.

I'm no communist, but I feel that democracy is undermined when a tiny number of people wield vast power. All of the current administration's cabinet are millionaires. Are they representing my interests?

Anyway, note the absence of any non-whites in this documentary.

Reviewer: seaholme - - February 3, 2003
Subject: Class structure today is all in the mind.
Like changing your suit you can restructure your life to present a different outlook or image to flow from one class to another. It truly is within us all to achieve this. In the 50's you were brainwashed into believing that you were unable to cross over these boundaries. Now that most of the old establishment have passed on along with their archaic class theories. We now believe in an individuals achievements and their presentation within the social group does not require 'Old Family' baggage. They can now walk alone on their journey from one social class to another with only their individual talents and social presentation as a prerequisit. The old days are great to visit....but you can never go back.....It's called,growing up.

Shotlist

Shows the difference social class makes in the lives of three high school boys. Explains how one boy is able to raise his social status.
Ken Smith sez: If this film was designed to stimulate thought, it succeeds. We follow the lives of three small town high school buddies; "Gil Ames" who is rich and happy; "Dave Benton" who is poor and doomed; and "Ted Eastwood," who is middle class and doomed. Gil is sent to an Ivy League school (where he meets "men of his own kind"), returns home wearing a bow tie, and takes over his father's very profitable business. Dave gets married, has lots of kids, and winds up working in a gas station. Ted wants to be an artist, but he falls in love with "Mary" and becomes a white collar bookkeeper.
Mary, however, wants a man with a bigger bank account, so she dumps Ted, who then decides to move to Manhattan and "make something" of himself. After many years of hard work as an advertising artist and art director, Ted lands a painfully dull white collar job in an advertising agency and gets to play golf with rich men. This is "vertical mobility," the narrator explains, "particularly characteristic of the United States." Ted returns home wearing a snappy hat, but Mary has married Gil, and both really don't want anything to do with him.
This film was produced to explain basic concepts of sociology, but ends up presenting a rather dark view of social class and mobility in America. Some of it (especially the railroad station scene) appears to have been shot in and around Convent Station, N.J.

Sociological discussion of ascribed status, achieved status, vertical mobility and horizontal mobility in America. We follow the lives of three men from high school on through their professional lives. Rather pessimistic conclusion on the possibilities of movement across class boundaries.
"These three babies are equal under the law, but they are not equal in terms of class..." This sociology lesson breaks educational film taboo by speaking directly about social class, shocking the ears with its frankness.
But what a bleak film! Beginning with shots of newborn babies in a maternity ward, it follows three boys (Dave Benton, a working-class kid; Ted Eastwood, a middle-class boy; and Gil Ames, the son of a factory owner) all the way to adulthood, showing how their destinies are largely determined by the class into which they are born.
Dave Benton finds a job right after high-school graduation, gets married and fathers a large family. Gil Ames goes to an Ivy League university (where he can meet "men of his own kind") and returns home to take over his father's factory. But the film devotes most of its attention to middle-class Ted Eastwood, who wants to be an artist but can't afford to take the risk of passing up a steady job. Ted grows increasingly frustrated with his boring white-collar job and his limited options. The final straw is when he loses his upper-class girlfriend to Gil. Feeling trapped for life, Ted moves to New York and becomes a commercial artist.
The film then shifts into a kind of implicit celebration of upward mobility, American-style. Ted becomes a great success in New York, the great melting pot. In a passage remarkable at once for its delicacy and candor, the narrator remarks: "Class lines are drawn differently in a large city like New York, although they are still there. Here professional standing, power and wealth are of great importance. It is possible for members of socially prominent families, theater people who may have come from the lower class, and successful businessmen of the middle class to mix socially, and Ted is an accepted member of the group." But when Ted returns home to visit his parents, he reverts to his previous status, "still the nice kid from the wrong side of the railroad tracks, no matter how successful he is."
Though there is nothing really radical about Social Class in America (its matrix of social class is derived from sociological, rather than Marxist categories) it was highly unusual for educational films in this period to openly discuss the limits of mobility in our society. In a time filled with noises of boom and prosperity, the mass media was generally silent on the subject of ceilings and barriers. As a technical film for the education of sociologists, this movie was freer to define the categorical limits of our freedom.


Stock shots:
Newborn babies (excellent), white collar work; commercial kitchen; baking; yearbooks; domestic servants; family dinner;
street scenes; pedestrians; advertising agency; commercial art; cars; waving; gas station; men golfing in funny golf clothing;
Voiceovers:
"Class lines are drawn differently in a large city like New York. Although they are still there. Here professional standing, power and wealth are of great importance. It is possible for members of socially prominent families, theater people who may have come from the lower class, and successful businessmen of the middle class to mix socially and Ted is an accepted member of the group."
"He knows now that to her and Gil, he's still the nice kid from the wrong side of the railroad tracks, no matter how successful he is. His achieved status is higher than that of his father's because he has a profession. But that status depends on a place. In this case, New York."
SOCIOLOGY CLASS STRUCTURE IN AMERICAN SOCIETY HORIZONTAL & VERTICAL SOCIAL MOBILITY SOCIAL STATUS TEENAGERS ADOLESCENTS OCCUPATIONS FAMILIES JOBS SMALL TOWNS CITIES HIGH SCHOOLS GRADUATIONS GAS STATIONS BABIES BOW TIES GOLF MAIDS