Big Idea

BIG IDEA. (1951, sound, 53min, b&w, 35mm) Sponsor: Swift & Co. production Co.: Wilding picture productions. director: Edward M. Grabill. Writer: James prindle. Camera: John niklasch. Editor: John Cook. Music: Benny Kyte. CASt: Veronica pataky, Milburn Stone, James Bannon. resources: Copyright 15Mar51 Lp894; “20,000 Swift Workers to Be party Guests,” CT, Apr. 8, 1951, WA9; “Swift premieres Big Idea,” Bus Scrn 12, no. 2 (1951): 64; “Vast Audience Hears Freedom’s ring,” Bus Scrn 12, no. 3 (1951): 29–31; ray Vicker, “Business Movies, with Low-Keyed promotion, Win Big TV Audience,” WSJ, June 25, 1954, 1. Holdings: LC, Macdonald. Pro–free enterprise parable sponsored by the large meatpacker as part of a widespread “eco- nomic education” campaign. In the dramatization, a woman reporter from an iron curtain country and an American newspaperman, a “fellow traveler,” tour a Swift plant and visit workers’ homes. Together they come to realize that capitalism is the system that provides the greatest degree of worker freedom. note: The cast included an estimated 130 Swift employ- ees. Some 28,000 workers and friends attended four screenings at Chicago’s International Amphitheater. Thirty- and 28-minute versions were released for noncommercial screening and broadcast. In the first two years of release, Big Idea reached 3.5 million moviegoers and 13 million television viewers.