From the 1920s through the 1950s, so-called itinerant filmmakers roamed the United States making films about small towns. The object was to get as many local residents and businesses in the film as possible so that everyone would buy a ticket to see the film when it was shown in the local theater. To this end, the filmmakers often sold advertising to be inserted into the film, and often partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to include certain businesses in the films. After they screened, the films usually stayed in the movie theater, where many of them have been rediscovered, transferred to new media, and are being seen again by townfolk and scholars.
Such a film exists for Swainsboro, Georgia. According to the Forest Blade newspaper of June 12, 1947, page 12, Sol Landsman and Arthur Loevin, filmmakers from New York, shot the film that summer, and it screened at the Dixie Theatre on July 23rd and 24th, 1947.
The film runs approximately 23 minutes, has sound, and is in black & white. Included are scenes of many town businesses, churches, automobile dealers and garages, a laundry, optician, bakery, dress shop, jeweler, grocers, dry goods store, a 5-cab taxi company, a livestock auction, swimming pool, restaurants, as well as a lengthy section about the Coleman Lake “Pic-Nic” and recreation grounds.
Thanks to Tony Bellamy who saved the film, and to local historian Farris Cadle who searched the newspapers for information.
See, also in our holdings, “Things You Ought to Know About Cordele” (1936), made by itinerant filmmaker H.C. Kunkleman of the Pacific Film Company.
