Henry Ford and Movies

Guest: Phillip Stewart, recipient of the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award given by the Society of American Archivists for his work promoting motion picture film preservation and research at the National Archives. He’s author of the book “Henry Ford's Moving Picture Show.” Henry Ford pioneered the automobile, the assembly line and the minimum wage. Did you know he was also a pioneer of film? Just a decade after founding the Ford Motor Company, he became obsessed with moving pictures and opened up a film department that became the largest motion picture production and distribution operation on the planet in the early 1900s. The movies are silent, the black and white images grainy by modern film standards, but they reflect a rare slice of American life prior to the Great Depression. The collection is now housed at the National Archives and several hundred of the films have been digitized for online viewing.