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The House I Live In (1945)

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Film Description

The House I Live In (1945)
Sponsor: Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Production Co.: Frank Ross Productions Ltd. Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Producer: Frank Ross. Writer: Albert Maltz. Camera: Robert De Grasse. Music: Axel Stordahl. Editor: Philip Martin Jr. Cast: Frank Sinatra. Transfer Note: Scanned from a 35mm print held by the Library of Congress. Running Time: 10 minutes.

Advocacy film commissioned by the civil rights organization to discourage ethnic and racial prejudice. Caught in a dispute that assumes ethnic dimensions, a group of boys find common interests through the intervention of Frank Sinatra, who tells a story and sings two songs.

Note: The title number was written by Earl Robinson and Lewis Allan [Abel Meeropol]. This widely distributed film, produced at the end of World War II, discourages prejudice but disparages people of Japanese ancestry.

Resources
Lawrence F. LaMar, “Sinatra’s Anti-Bias Movie Short Scores Hit at Preview,” Chicago Defender, Oct. 13, 1945, 14; Film Forum Review staff, “The House I Live In,” in Ideas on Film, 202–3; Ken Smith, Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films, 1945–1970 (New York: Blast Books, 1999), 159.