Whispers

Whispers (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent entry in MGM's Passing Parade series takes a look at organizations who make money by starting gossip. We're shown that these groups can kill a restaurant by telling people they serve horse meat. One cigarette company goes out of business when (false) word leaks out that they had poison slip into the smokes. The main story takes a look at an honest man who plans on building up a community so that poor people will have a good, safe place to live. The gossip group, called "Whisperers," get wind and decide to spread a rumor that will ruin his chance. The Passing Parade series is certainly one of the best of its day but this one here really doesn't work as well as I'm sure those involved wanted it to. There's one section where those who gossip are compared to Hitler and I think that's a bit of a stretch. There's really not too much drama because the film makes you think that everyone listens to gossip and it pretty much overlooks those who don't pay attention to it. This certainly isn't a bad movie as it's entertaining enough for its 9-minutes but at the same time you expect more from this series.

Tail Gunner Joe might have had less success in his attacks on the creative if more people had paid better attention to this title and its message. That era had the bad luck to contain one of the worst whispering campaigns ever visited on our people.

It is sad that humanity still needs the warnings this little gem provides. What made this short worth watching was the message. It warns us about how easy in this day gossip and innuendo can be used to destroy a person or movement. This is even more true today with the arrival of the internet where forwarded email often contains stories that have a gem of truth in them but which overall contain a big lie.

In my opinion this is a good example of what was good about shorts. They were often used to educate as well as entertain and this one managed to do a bit of both.

WHISPERS focuses mainly on how the spread of false information can ruin someone's life. We see this today mirrored in today's use of the Internet to create havoc enough to cause suicides. We also see it in today's political campaigns where candidates spread outright lies so as to convince voters to form negative opinions of their opposition.

The spread of gossip is graphically illustrated and shows both sexes guilty of intentionally spreading false rumors.

Lillian Hellman once wrote a play called THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (filmed twice as a movie), which illustrated the power that a lie can have on an unstable personality.

Well worth watching as a teaching tool, especially for young people.

John Nesbitt uses his regular MGM short feature, THE PASSING ARADE to tell a story. It is about a man who wants to clear the slums and build good houses for the poor. But landowners own those slums, and they are very profitable. So they hire a whispering service to find scandal about the reformer. When they can't, they make up rumors which can never be verified: he's keeping a woman, he's a communist, if you're uncertain about the ballot proposal vote "no".... and so it is defeated, and the land owners continue to make money on the poor peoples' misery, and a good man sees his life's work and reputation in ruins.

Nesbitt was born in Canada, which had been at war against Germany since 1939. Clearly this is an effort to sustain the forthrightness that democracy depends on, to ignore the whispering campaigns that would soon afflict the United States to keep us out of the War; that had been going on for some time.

This is an interesting film. The makers couldn't have realized how appropriate it would still be 70 years after it was first released. The only difference is that these days they aren't so subtle about it. But I was struck by the scenes showing people pouring high school year books and other records to help with their smear campaign. In those days it was far more difficult to chase down those kinds of facts; it was impossible not think about how easy it is to gather information on large groups of people all at once. Not just the one at time that any one person could do back then; now they do thousands in the same amount of time. Actually those fact checkers would be thrilled with their job these days. In our time; people post their own embarrassing pictures and stories themselves for anyone to see. So the "Whispers" are still around and doing better than ever. I enjoyed this short; I'm guessing most will.