Of Pups and Puzzles

This episode of John Nesbitt's long-running THE PASSING PARADE series of short subjects talks about advances in hiring practices under the current national emergency, and the techniques and personnel to administer them.

After telling us how wonderful this is, there is a bypath as first some dogs are tormented for illustrative purposes, and then three men are asked to add up columns and numbers -- only to have the tester fire off a handgun while they are working.

Fun, fun fun! We are told that all three men got jobs that suited them. I expect that's how the guy who fired a gun while other people worked got his.

We take employee testing and psychological profiles for granted these days, but for the audiences of 60 years ago who hired people by pointing, this was informative. Information is boiled down a bit beyond any reasonable application, but what the heck--it's a short film. And it's particularly interesting to see the psychologist doing the testing get the applicants to fill out a form and then stands behind them and fires six shots in the air from a revolver to see how they react. Now that's two-fisted personnel management! :)

The film has that "industrial giant of the American century" feel to it like many similar films, but it's interesting to see for the way in which information is presented.

I've seen a few shorts from this era on TCM and find them fascinating windows on the past.

At least one other uses the same music. Does anyone know who did the music for this (and other) shorts and if it was the main theme of a movie from the same general era?

It is *so* familiar and gave me that "I've heard this before" vibe -- but definitely not from other shorts, but from a movie.

Interesting short documentary about the emergence of personnel tests for screening job applicants when there was the need for massive hiring and selection for a wide variety of jobs in factories to support WWII. The film states that tests for humans were derived from psychological research with animals. An experiment showed dogs who were trained to recognize abstract symbols as precursors for food rewards, and then had varying 'emotional' reactions when they could not decipher the meaning of a novel stimulus. (thus film title, Pups and Puzzles) The film showed that if a novel stimulus is presented while humans take a personnel test, then the psychologist can determine the individual's temperament. The psychologist fired a pistol over the heads of job applicants to see if they could recover quickly from being startled and successfully conclude their math test. Certainly this method of determining 'adaptability', would not be acceptable in today's time either for research or employment testing! Personnel testing has come a long way since then! The film is crafted to be amusing for all audiences, but it is really most amusing in its historical perspective. It will be of particular interest to research psychologists and industrial/ organizational personnel specialists.

Of Pups and Puzzles (1941)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-winning Passing Parade short with John Nesbitt talking about various ways employers hire people in today's world. The short talks about how foremen use to hire just by looking at the physical nature of a person but today psychological profiles are used to determine what type of jobs would best suit a person. Here is where we see various tests, which are also tried on dogs and a chimp. This is a fairly entertaining short not because of how smart it is but instead just because it's rather cute and charming. The trick in teaching the three puppies was a rather cute one and the monkey trying to reach his bananas was very funny. Seeing some of the men trying to do their tricks also provided a couple laughs in this winning short.