Jam Handy Organization

The Jam Handy Organization founded by Henry Jamison "Jam" Handy was a 20th-Century film production and distribution company that made educational, advertising, and training films for a variety of companies and institutions.

Jam Handy himself was quite a colorful character. A champion swimmer credited with introducing the now common "Australian crawl" stroke to America, he won a bronze medal in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Mo. Known for rising at 3 AM to practice his new strokes in secrecy, by the age of 19 he had set as many as 7 American and 13 World records, though the records frequently stood only as long as it took for bigger and stronger atheletes to learn to immitate his innovative strokes.

At the time he was under suspension from the University of Michigan for having described a lecture as a "course in lovemaking" while serving as a college correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. He later went on to win another Olympic bronze in water polo in the 1924 Olympics along with future Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller in Paris, France, breaking the record for longest interval between medals.

Unable to gain admission to another college when his antics at UM became known, he worked for a while afterward in advertising. Seeing the power film had to inspire salesmen to sell their products he left to pursue making corporate communications products.

The companyhe created became enormously prolific, making thousands of films. The location in Detroit, Michigan as opposed to Hollywood made the company especially accessible to Motor City and Midwest industrial clients, and the company made many promotional and training films for GM and Chevrolet among others. During both World Wars the company made instructional films for war products. The company is reported to have made some 7,000 films for the war effort, with Jam Handy electing to only take 1% profit though the authorized rate was 7%. Though not as well-loved as later adaptations, the Jam Handy Organization was the first to bring Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to the screen under famed animation director Max Fleischel. Since copyright has fallen to the public domain as with most Jam Handy works, it still appears frequently.

Shown to a generation of schoolchildren either as advertising under the pretense of educational films or becuase the corporate and government clients often did not protect the copyright, Jam Handy films were so pervasive that they became intertwined with popular culture. Though the Handy name might not be well recognized, many the films might well be after a moment's recollection . The 1940 Handy film "A Case of Spring Fever" shows the main character shown the consequences of a world without springs, guided by the obnoxious animated Coily the Talking Spring Sprite. Rife with inadvertent hilarity, it was later given the honor of parody in the 1992 episode "Bart the Lover" (8F16) of "The Simpsons", in which students are forced to endure an educational film showing a life wihtout zinc, even mimicing the rotary telephone missing a part:

 

Jimmy: Hey, what gives?
Jimmy's Dad: You said you wanted to live in a world without zinc, Jimmy. Well, now your car has no battery.
Jimmy: But I promised Betty I'd pick her up by 6:00. I better give her a call.
Jimmy's Dad: Sorry Jimmy. Without zinc for the rotary mechanism, there are no telephones.
Jimmy: Dear God! What have I done?

(Jimmy pulls out a gun, points it to his head and pulls the trigger)

Jimmy's Dad: Think again Jimmy. You see, the firing pin in your gun was made out of — yep — zinc.
Jimmy: Come back zinc, come back!
(Source: TV.com)

The bit was critiziced in the media for its seeming callousness toward teen suicide, but Simpsons creator and cartoonist Matt Groening defended. Quoted in a 1992 interview for the San Francisco Chronicle: "It was a send-up of those cornball education films we were forced to watch when we were growing up." It seems Groening may not have even know excatly which work he was spoofing, but we can see the impression the Jam Handy works made in the public mind and their lasting effect (52 years!). This and many others Jam Handy films were also parodied by Comedy Central's Myster Science Theater 3000.

The 1946 "Operation Crossroads" was made under a grant from the US government to assuage public anxieties about the dangers of nuclear warfare, and to reassure them of the necessity and safety of atomic testing conducted near the Bikini Atoll. Along with similar government efforts of the period it was very likely a target of parody in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

My favorite of the Jam Handy works, and the major reason I was inspired to research and write this description after investigating the company's history for my piece on the Hamilton Watch films, is the WWII "How to Fly the P-47" series.

They are absolutely superb.

 

 

 

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