Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: How To Avoid An Accident

Mike Wallace lulls us into a false sense of security and then—WHAM!!! He hits us with what he really wants to get across?

A “60 Minutes” episode? Not in this case. We’re talking about a 1949 industrial film called How to Avoid An Accident. At first, it looks like Wallace is narrating an ordinary road safety film. But no! The answer to the title of the film is simple—buy General Tires.

The ten-minute short was made in Chicago, where Wallace was working in radio, by Wilding Productions of Chicago, Detroit and Hollywood, which got into the movie business in 1914 with silent slide films. They were a top industrial film firm for quite a number of years.

This is a great movie for fans of late ‘40s cars and low-budget effects. Stupid children run into the street. Scrrrreeeech!!! Cut to horrified people. Cut to the child lying on the road. Dead? Injured? You decide. All the fault of those non-General Tires. It’s a serious situation but handled with pure cinematic hokum.

Even more hilarious is when a 1949 Dodge Custom Coupe is hit by another car and slides. The car is simply a cut-out drawing that’s pushed into the background of a still photo of a residential intersection. Maybe even cheesier is a shot of a 1947 Pontiac that serves to avoid a car. Cut to another shot. The Pontiac is now a cut-out picture overtop of a photo of a bridge. Decidedly cheesier is a photo of a damaged car swirling after being hit by a train. Each is accompanied by a newspaper with Wallace intoning the shocking headline. These must have been clichés, even in 1949.

We also get a 1949 Ford (which hits a child, see above), what looks like a 1948 Chevrolet and tests using 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan.

I did like the double-exposure effect where a billboard turns into the children who are on it (see left).

Chicago was the headquarters for two educational film companies at the time: Encyclopaedia Britannica and Coronet Instructional Films. Wallace did some narration work for the latter. He would soon be in New York, pushing Elgin American compacts on You Bet Your Life.

Anyway, I won’t spoil the rest of this short. Have a look.