Sponsored Films

With These Hands (1950)
Sponsor: International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Production Co.: Promotional Films Co. Director: Jack Arnold. Producers: Jack Arnold, Lee Goodman. Writer: Morton Wishengrad. Camera: Gerald Hirschfeld. Music: Morris Mamorsky. Editor: Charles R. Senf. Cast: Sam Levene, Arlene Francis, Joseph Wiseman, Alexander Scourby. Transfer Note: Scanned from a 16mm print held by the Library of Congress. Running Time: 51 minutes.

Documentary about the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Told in flashbacks, the story recounts the life of a worker about to retire with a union pension. The veteran unionist looks back to the abuses common before unionization, the great organizing drives of the 1930s, and the benefits and stability brought by the union.

Note: Originally planned for showing to ILGWU locals, With These Hands opened instead on Broadway and played four weeks as a theatrical feature. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 1950 and received a Freedoms Foundation award the same year.

Resources
Albert Margolies, “Picture of a Union Man,” New York Times, June 11, 1950, 99; Bosley Crowther, “The Screen in Review,” New York Times, June 16, 1950, 28; Department of Audio-Visual Instruction, National Education Association, Guide to Films in Economic Education (Washington, DC: National Education Association, ca. 1951), 44; Albert Hemsing, “Labor and the Film,” in Ideas on Film, ed. Cecile Starr (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1951), 35–38.