Word: film
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Casual & Decent. The 20-minute film opens in the living room of a respectable, middle-class family. Opening his textbook to the picture of a naked Indian, the boy asks his father why savages didn't wear clothes while civilized people do. That starts a family bull-session about sex, to make the audience realize that sex can be casually and decently discussed...
Then comes a schoolroom shot, of a class about to be shown a movie. The film-within-a-film is an animated cartoon done by two ex-Disney artists-with no Disney gags. It explains the processes of sex and pregnancy with simplified diagrams and a minimum of anatomical detail (at first the tails of spermatozoa were shown wiggling in their movements to reach and fertilize the ovum, but technical advisers feared that schoolkids might associate the wiggling with human swimming, break into nervous laughter...
...final scene, the children raise frank questions about the animated film, which the teacher answers. The movie ends on an intentionally abrupt note, to suggest that there are other questions left unasked and unanswered. Professor Beck has prepared a classroom manual to get the Oregon teachers past the toughest questions...
Human Growth won enthusiastic approval. Of 1,131 persons polled, 91.2% wanted their children to see the film. A frequent student reaction: "Can we see it again?" Most surprising parental reaction: "Why wait until the seventh grade...
...Hollywood, Technicolor is a magic word. On movie marquees, it automatically increases the gross of a film as much as 25%. But during the booming war years the word was not so magical to Technicolor, Inc. Hampered by strikes and shortages, its earnings were just soso...