Man on the Land

There must have been an incredible feeling of irony going through the UPA studios when they won the contract to make Man On The Land.

It was an industrial short released in 1951. UPA wasn’t exactly populated by members of the John Birch Society. Director John Hubley and publicity man Charles Daggett lost their jobs because of pressure from right-wingers (Bill Scott was treated to the same fate thanks to guilt by association). Yet here was the studio crafting a 15-minute film for Corporate America—and Big Oil, at that.

It was clothed a bit in 1950s leftist sensibilities. Through the film, there is a guitar-strumming folk singer (off screen). After footage of a farmer and a truck driver, he sings “That’s what it takes to make a country strong. A man on the land who knows right from wrong.” The only thing here is “wrong” means the supposed ideals of pinkos and Commies, and the “man on the land” is supposed to be “ready to fight” to protect the glorious American free enterprise system.

UPA gets a credit at the end. None of the people who worked on this cartoon are mentioned, but we do know a few of them, thanks to publications of the day. The musical score and folk song were provided by Hoyt Curtin, who made a number of films for UPA before being hired at Hanna-Barbera. The Nov. 1953 issue of Music Journal also reveals the singer is Terry Gilkyson. Art Direction, in its April 1953 edition, identified Bill Hurtz as the director.

There was something called the National Lubricating Grease Institute. Its monthly publication was The Institute Spokesman, which wrote in its Oct. 1951 issue:

New York — The dramatic story of how man has been able to wrest today’s high standard of living from Nature and the Land is the theme of a new motion picture sponsored by Oil Industry Information Committee.
Entitled “Man on the Land,” the action-packed motion picture was made for the Committee by United Productions of America—the firm which won an Academy Award in 1950 for an animated motion picture [Gerald McBoing Boing]. The same style of animation and full technicolor is used in “Man on the Land.”

This unusual film tells the story of agriculture in 16 swiftly-paced minutes— from the time that man first scratched the earth with a forked stick to the present age of oil-powered tractors, petroleum fertilizers, insecticides and other petrochemicals.
It illustrates graphically how every one of the nation’s 150 million people benefits in one way or another from the side by side progress and the inseparable relationship of two of America’s great industries—agriculture and petroleum. A ballad singer carries the story instead of the conventional narration.
The new motion picture is now being made available to oil companies, trade associations, agriculture societies and organizations, and other interested parties. It is available in both 35 millimeter and 16 millimeter prints. The film is expected to receive thousands of showings from coast to coast, particularly during the period of October 14-20, when the industry observes Oil Progress Week.
Production of the motion picture was supervised by Film Counselors, Inc., of New York, and a subcommittee of the Oil Industry Information Committee headed by Philip C. Humphrey, public relations director for The Texas Company, New York.

Humphrey, told the Public Relations Journal of Feb. 1952 the short played at the Royx Theatre in New York for three straight weeks for free. The film was also broadcast on the DuMont network on its Better Living Television Theater (Wednesdays, 10:30 p.m., WABD). It was propaganda, pure and simple, with the broadcast being preceded by a panel discussion involving the chairman of Seaboard Oil, the president of Power Oil and the agricultural counsellor for the aforementioned institute (as per the May 1954 issue).

The film is mentioned in a feature article about UPA in the April 1953 edition of Art Director & Studio News. It was penned by the PR man whose career at the studio was killed in the blacklist.

UPA breathes modern spirit and style into traditionally romantic movie
CHARLES DAGGETT, UNITED PRODUCTIONS OF AMERICA
“The cleverest movies, foot by foot and frame by sophisticated frame, that are coming out of Hollywood are the animated cartoons made by United Productions of America.”
Thus the Los Angeles Times for Sunday, February 8, 1953...
“United Productions of America — familiarly known as UPA — is the new movie-cartoon studio that has recently worked to the fore as a virtually revolutionary producer in the field of the animated film. UPA is imposing what amounts to the spirit and style of modern art upon the traditionally romantic and restricted area of the movie cartoon. The UPA people are unhampered by any urge toward the literal. Their drawing and designs are imagistic, contrived mainly from subtle colors and fluid lines.
“Staffed for the most part by artists with young minds and progressive ideas, whose talents extend beyond the field of the screen cartoon to the fine arts (many of them are exhibited in the galleries of Los Angeles and New York), the UPA studio out in Burbank, Calif., is a West Coast center of artistic industry. The whole place — a cheerful California ranch-type studio building — breathes freedom, imagination and taste.”
Thus Bosley Crowther, motion picture critic of the New York Times, in his Sunday magazine piece on December 21, 1952 . . .

These are only two of the scores of superlative comment UPA has earned in the past few years with its brilliant new animated film techniques. Mr. Crowther’s on-the-scene report particularly emphasizes the key to UPA’s success. This success lies in the hearts and minds of an outstanding group of artists who are permitted the fullest freedom in expressing themselves. At the head of this group is Stephen Bosustow, 42 year old President of UPA, who provides the enlightened production leadership that permits artists to work as they please in the animated film medium.
The chief differences between UPA’s entertainment and commercial films and the films of other companies are those of story, design, color, animation, and contemporary art. UPA’s greatest impact in the motion picture field has been made through its entertainment films such as “Gerald McBoing-Boing,” “Rooty Toot Toot,” the Near-sighted Mister Magoo films, and scores of others produced for Columbia Pictures’ release. However,
UPA recently blazed new trails in the commercial film area with “More Than Meets the Eye,” which it produced for CBS Radio. This was the striking story of CBS Radio’s tremendous influence over the buying habits of millions of Americans and was the first business documentary film ever to be told in terms of abstract modern art.
The ingredients used by Bosustow to build UPA into prominence in the brief span of years were business initiative, an artistic and creative background, good taste in story and art selection, a marked organizing and executive talent and a large amount of intestinal fortitude.
Ten years ago, Bosustow was working for the Hughes Aircraft Co., as head of production scheduling and control on the giant experimental flying boat Howard Hughes was building. His business sense and his ability to express an idea in simple drawings attracted the attention of the Consolidated Shipyards in Long Beach (Cal.). The shipyard needed a film to teach some safety rules to welders. Bosustow made the picture, a slide film called “Sparks and Chips Get the Blitz” and began his career as head of an industrial animated motion picture company.
Within two years his Industrial Films and Poster Service had turned out score of animated training films for the Navy, the Army, the Office of War Information, the State Department and several business firms.
There were a half dozen employees when UPA was incorporated eight years ago. Today there are 75 employees, the company does a $750,000 yearly business, has its own studio in Hollywood and consistently produces the most modern and mature animated cartoons in its field. In New York, UPA also has a studio that is devoted to making television commercials and industrial documentary films. UPA won the New York Art Directors Club award for the best television commercial of 1950 and won both the New York Art Directors Club and the Los Angeles Art Directors Club awards for the best television commercials of 1951.
UPA, although it won film awards from the beginning of its existence, was really “discovered” when it produced “Gerald McBoing-Boing,” the Academy award winning cartoon for 1950. This year, for instance, UPA won three Academy nominations for its productions. In the cartoon field, nominations were for “Madeline,” a charming children’s story by Ludwig Bemelmans, directed by Robert Cannon, and “Pink and Blue Blues,” a rousing chapter in Mister Magoo’s career as a baby sitter, directed by Pete Burness. In the documentary short subjects field, UPA’s production of “Man Alive!”, for the American Cancer Society, also was nominated. This film was directed by William T. Hurtz.



Cannon, who directed “Gerald McBoing-Boing,” and “Madeline,” has a particularly fluent ability to make whimsical and amusing films. Burness, who does the Mister Magoo series for UPA, is also one of the most skilled directors in the animated film field. Hurtz, who did the Cancer Society picture, two years ago, directed “Man on the Land” for the American Petroleum Institute, and it won a Freedom Foundation award in 1952. At the present time, Hurtz has switched over to the entertainment field and is now finishing the “Unicorn in the Garden,” a grim and amusing story of domesticity by the great American wit, James Thurber. Ted Parmelee, another of UPA’s directors, is now making one of the most experimental films UPA has attempted. This is Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart.” The Poe story is a horror tale and does not follow the conventional cartoon story line. Artists working with Parmelee on this film have been allowed to do highly abstract backgrounds, which should make the short picture a melodramatic shocker.
In New York, the directors are Abe Liss and Gene Deitch. Deitch specializes in TV commercial direction. Liss also works on commercial films but presently is directing one of UPA’s entertainment cartoons for Columbia release.
Among the artists who contribute so much to the outstanding quality of UPA films are Paul Julian, Jules Engel, Robert McIntosh, Robert Dranko, Michi Kataoka, Sterling Sturtevant, C. L. Hartman, and Abe Liss.
UPA’s films have met with wide acclaim throughout Europe as well as the United States. The company now has plans for making a full-length feature. In this production, UPA will adhere to the use of fine modern art, modern music and adult story telling. Among the stories being considered for production are James Thurber’s “Battle of the Sexes,” and “Don Quixote.”

You can watch a muddy dub of the short below. The voices aren’t named, but Vic Perrin is the narrator and Jerry Hausner as the scoffer who appears through history.