Ellis in Freedomland

Usually industrial films are short affairs, perhaps 20 minutes in length, intended to keep the sales personnel up to date on the latest pitch. Here's an ambitious exception: 82 minutes, directed by real movie director Abby Berlin, and featuring voice work by major actors. If you're a fan of old movies, you'll recognize the voices of well-known stars playing the various appliances: Edward Arnold, James Mason, Percy Kilbride, Jerry Colonna, Lucille Ball, Andy Devine, Marie Wilson, and Maureen O'Sullivan run sleeping Robert Rockwell through the selling points of their major kitchen appliances.

It's all intended to give the store salesmen and saleswomen things to push the customer, and how to push it, ending with a musical number. In an era of growing prosperity, there was enormous competition between the major appliance manufacturer, and this was how Westinghouse met it: not only with sponsorship of STUDIO ONE, one of the major TV anthology shows, but with newspaper and magazine ads and promotional events that could go on for weeks. Just like all the competition.

Right here is a trippy exercise in "What the hell was that?!"

Feature length Westinghouse commercial that somehow managed to corral real stars as the voice of its various appliances! James Mason is a fridge!....Lucille Ball a washing machine!...Maureen O'Sullivan a dishwasher!....and on and on. If that weren't odd enough the salesman Ellis of the title is surrounded by mannequins come to life including Alan Hale, Jr. who even a dozen years before Gilligan's Island is unmistakably The Skipper. Then it all ends with a lavish musical number extolling the wonders of Westinghouse!!!

A very strange viewing experience all in 50's moderne furnishings and Technicolor!