Sponsored Films

It’s Everybody’s Business (1954)
Sponsors: Chamber of Commerce of the United States; E.I. duPont deNemours & Co. Production Co.: John Sutherland Productions. Producer: John Sutherland. Writers: John Sutherland, William Scott, George Gordon. Art Director: Maurice Noble. Music: Eugene Poddany, Les Baxter. Animation: Carl Urbano, Bill Melendez, Emery Hawkins, Abe Levitow, Bill Higgins. Narrator: Macdonald Carey. Transfer Note: Scanned from a 35mm print held by the Library of Congress. Running Time: 20 minutes.

Animated history of the American economic system told from a pro–free enterprise perspective. Free enterprise, the narrator argues, can be traced to the Bill of Rights, and the Founding Fathers regarded “political and economic freedom” as “interlocking inseparably.” However, in contrast to what the film characterizes as the favorable economic climate of colonial America (where individuals had the “freedom to go into business”), today’s government imposes taxes and regulation. The film features John Sutherland’s usual humor and memorable visual devices, including images of the “tax monster,” the tidal wave of war, and paper money riding a railroad train.

Note: Released in Technicolor. Also distributed in 16mm. Awarded a Freedoms Foundation Gold Medal.

Resources
“The Chamber of Commerce of the United States Believes It’s Everybody’s Business,” Business Screen 15, no. 4 (1954): 31–33; William L. Bird, Jr., “Better Living”: Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 1935–1955 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999), 269.