My school showed similar films through the years---not this one, but on the same vein. It's hard to remember those days, but this jolted me back to my youth!

and these films were often the only interesting part of the day if the teacher wasn't very good. I remember one on propaganda when I was 10 or 11. It made a huge impression on me and I remember some of it to this day. Basically said the only difference between ads and propaganda is the product being sold but the same techniques are used. Scarey!!!

I also remember writing small essays ("500 words or less&quot after each film. "How I Spend My Leisure Time" ... 490 words of sheer invention, forgotten as soon as it was written.

You have to admit there is a striking resemblance to Willem Dafoe. Could possibly be his father? Love these old PSA's by the way... someone should make 50's style PSA's addressing todays issues. What do you guys think?

I remember those films. Even as young as we were back then, we thought they were a load of baloney.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Despite the antiquated presentation, the point is still a very good one.

There are so many things to be interested in. Two words that I just can't understand are, "I'm bored."

Good paying factory jobs with enough leisure Time to enjoy life. Then came the 60's, that large middle class population became problematic, too much time on their hands to protest for civil rights, against wars. The Power elite didn't like that and so moving ahead a few decades we have a shrinking middle class that work longer hours for less pay and a 15% poverty rate. Barely enough time for leisure let alone protest, demonstrating as the failed occupy movement has shown us.

when compared to the T-bagger movement. You don't see any politicians bowing down to occupiers like they do T-baggers. Occupiers have the law and big money against them. The opposite goes for the T-baggers. In the USA money is power, money talks, everything else walks.
It sucks but will need a revolution or civil war to change.

The corporate media and many ordinary people now discuss the 1% and the 99%. Romney, ALEC, and the Koch brothers are being illuminated and discussed in ways that they were not before this movement. The excesses committed by the banksters are being discussed and changed.

For years, counter-movements and protests were not covered by the media, or were given scant coverage. They did not get away with it this time. I believe that the events in Madison birthed the occupy movement, and it is still there. Walker wasn't recalled either, but things are changing in Wisconsin. The oppressive law regarding collective bargaining has been overturned in Wisconsin. I believe some of the worst of them will be voted out of office, and Walker will go to jail.

This teabaggers are the ones who are dying. People are seeing what they did to Congress, and they despise them. They hear the hatred spewed by the likes of Akin and Walsh, and they hate it. The occupy movement will evolve and grow, and may go by other names, but it did not fail, no matter how many Debbie Downers say it did.

Todays Teabaggers are shills backed by corporate money and ties. The original ones have faded back into the woodwork they crawled out of. I'm sure many of them joined the Occupiers instead.

many other important movements in our history took time and effort to see important changes, they were not created over night. I have faith in OWS and trust me, they will continue to build strength and grow.

Be honest.

or reading the web.
and reading books
and watching movies
listening to radio dramas ( thanks, internet!!!!)

In my retirement, I am shoveling information into my brain way more than 40 hours a week.

That'll get you away from the computer.

Trust me...

This year I am alphabetizing my Cracker Jacks, just in time for Christmas.

Thanks for posting - It is always good to sit back & reflect how life just keeps on changing

They're 8:30-to-5 or 8-to-5 -- but they're still supposed to be "40 hours".

In my experience in the late 60's, lunch was a half hour and paid, health insurance mostly paid, pension paid, very little to struggle over yearly on benefits, unlike today. (I had supervisors who did nothing but look at us workers all day and did crosswords, several places.) Mid 70's, wages were high, cost of living low. The phone bill for example went from so small I hated to write a check for < $4, rent $250/m for a very nice apartment, income $900+/m, etc.
I went off to Canada for a few years and came back late 70's and it was all changed and progressively worse since.

twelve hours a day, six days a week.

It was 9 to 5 Monday through Friday with an unpaid hour lunch break. Since I was only going to be working 35 hours a week, They wanted me to come in 9 to 4 every Saturday with an unpaid hour lunch break. It was an executive assistant position. They needed somebody with at least five years experience and a bachelors degree. It paid $21,000 a year and no benefits. It was in New York City. I wouldn't have gone for the interview if I had known about the hours and low pay.

but I vividly recall being super intimidated by the "computer age." I was a secretary for a few years, and dealt with carbon copies and liquid paper, although did appreciate electric typewriters. When I worked at TWA in NYC, one of my chores was to type out flight schedules on legal size orange ozalid paper. It was all coded - flight number, departure and arrival cities, brk, lch, dnr, snx offerings, layovers, times, etc. and had to be letter perfect. But after you're at that kind of precision work for awhile, you get good at it, and that experience got typing speed up to 100 wpm and some damn decent jobs.

I'm kind of surprised gardening wasn't mentioned in the video, especially for stay at home moms. The moms in my town were pretty much all into yardwork and gardening. Then dads or kids mowed the lawn on the weekend and/or raked leaves. A simpler time, no doubt.

One mistake and you were cooked. However, since I never got to take off time to raise a family, I worked all the way through the first computer systems, where we sent punch cards to a main frame. Then on to electric typewriters and white out, so you could do your copies on the new fangled Xerox machines, to the first actual office computers up until today. I stopped working three months ago, not by choice but circumstance.

Carbon copies and liquid paper - I remember them well. And those odd little typewriter erasers shaped like a skinny wheel with a brush on the back. A couple of years ago I went to an office supply store to get a packet of carbon paper and had to explain to the teen-aged worker what it was, but to my surprise they actually had some.

I'm a little too young to remember 1950 (my mom was 12 that year) but the PSAs and filmstrips continued well through my elementary school years. Yeah, they were lousy and forgettable, but we loved them because we could pretty much turn off our brains while they were on.

Well, I retired two years ago, and that time has been used fixing my house, and doing my mosaic art. But now that I think of it, I could do more, so I will volunteer on Sunday at a food bank and maybe teach a class at a senior center.
Well this film got me thinking anyway.

Unfortunately, the 50s were still working on that Protestant work ethic of stuffing every waking hour to the bursting point with profitable activity. Loafing and daydreaming got short shrift and that was tragic for a lot of people who were driven so much of the time they couldn't figure out what to do with occasional idleness, how to enjoy it.

However, the people I do feel sorry for aren't the feckless teenagers who need some down time here and there, it's the people who were workaholics and never developed any interests at all outside their paid work. Once they retire, they're totally at loose ends and often bitter because the world of paid work doesn't need them any more and there is nothing to fill all those newly empty hours.

Unfortunately, work is starting to pay so poorly that most workers are having to emulate the corporate workaholics, working as many hours as they can get to make up for their substandard wages and often increased debt loads.

Something has got to give and I hope it gives sooner rather than later. Driven cultures are not healthy ones.

doing light exercises involving the hand and another bodily organ.

That means he's over 80 now.