Albert in Blunderland (1950)

Sponsor: National Education Program, Harding College, with funding by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Production Co.: John Sutherland Productions.
Resources : Copyrights 03/01/1950 MP5112 and 15Aug1950 LP347; Irving Spiegel, “Sloan Unit Denies Aid to Extremists,” NYT, Sept. 21, 1964, 31; L. Edward Hicks, “Sometimes in the Wrong, but Never in Doubt”: George S. Benson and the Education of the New Religious Right (Knoxville, TN : University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 63–74; “Better Living,” 176.
Holdings : LC.

Animated critique of New Deal–type liberalism. In a dream “Albert,” a worker in a statist economy, is forced to watch a state-sponsored “free movie” on national planning. On awakening, he is convinced of the failings of excessive government control.

Note: Produced in Technicolor and distributed theatrically by MGM, this was among the cartoons in the Fun and Facts about America series. Received a Freedoms Foundation award in 1950. Also distributed in 16mm and revised in 1961. The Sloan Foundation provided funding to Harding College for other films extolling free enterprise, including Brink of Disaster (entry 64) and Make Mine Freedom (entry 246). For more about Harding College, see Gene Blake, “Aims of Conservative Freedom Groups Told,” LAT, July 2, 1961, B2.

© John Sutherland Productions