Meet Mrs. Swenson (1956)

LIve Better Electrically - click to enlarge

A well-plotted, well-acted little drama that is a cut above the usual promotional film.  In March 1956, American appliance makers and electric power companies united in a marketing campaign to promote "all-electric" homes chock full of comforts and conveniences - and why not?  The phrase the American dream was not yet in common parlance - but the American standard of living was the envy of all the world.

The long, grim years of depression and war were a fading memory, the postwar economy was booming, and new electric generating plants were being built all over the country.  The idea of an energy shortage was unheard-of, much less the bizarre notion of global warming.  The future was not only bright, it was here now!  And increasingly affordable for everyone.

The producer, John Sutherland, was a man of many talents who started out as an animator and voiced the adult Bambi in Disney's 1942 film of the same name.  All of the cast were seasoned actors; you can find biographies of most of them on Wikipedia.  Of special interest to us baby boomers with long memories are Michael Winkelman, who went on to play Little Luke McCoy, Walter Brennan's TV grandson, on The Real McCoys from 1957 to 1963.

And big sister should look familiar too:  she's Sheila James, who played the brash, brainy Zelda on Dobie Gillis from 1959 to 1963.   Later, using her real last name of Kuehl, Sheila went on to earn a law degree from Harvard and became the first out lesbian to be elected to the California state legislature, where she served for fourteen years, and is currently a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Related: I noted with a little sigh last week that the mighty Sears and Roebucks has gone bust, after more than a century of renown. Another icon of a vanishing America gone. Without researching the question, I suppose its decline began with the rise of discount department stores in the early 1960s - first K-Mart and the like, then Walmart, then all the big-box stores that dot today's landscape.  And then the Internet, which is the modern-day equivalent of the Sears Catalogue and its cornucopia of merchandise for sale.

Probably no one under 50 can remember when the Sears store was the heart of every downtown, and everybody went to Sears for all kinds of goods - just about anything you needed.  And of course that's where you went every Christmas to tell Santa what you wanted, and had your picture taken sitting on his lap.  If your town didn't have a Sears and Roebucks, you were really living in Podunk.

But Sears has been mismanaged for the last fifty years at least - when their market share declined in the 1970s and 1980s, they reacted by trying to be all things to all people, stupidly opening insurance counters and stockbroking counters and other goofy stuff that had no business in a department store. Finally, I think it was taken over by people who just wanted to squeeze out all the profit out that they could and the public be damned. Well, that's business in America, isn't it?  All too often, I mean.

I am no businessman, but it seems to me they should have concentrated on what they did best - Sears sold ugly clothing and mediocre electronics, but it was always the go-to place for Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances, which were all top quality. Well managed, those two things should have made a perpetual profit, even if they had let everything else go.

Anyway, that's all water under the bridge now. But for those who, like your Head Trucker, enjoy some juicy kitchen porn, here is a link to the Sears 1958 Kitchen Book, with color pictures and all you need to know to modernize and beautify your plain, dull kitchen. Have fun.