Henry Ford (2013)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henry Ford: The Most Influential Innovator of the 20th Century is a documentary film which premiered on US television (PBS) in 2013.

 

It is an episode of the long-running program American Experience.

 

Here is some basic information about it:

 

** Written, produced and directed by Sarah Colt

** Narrated by Oliver Platt

** Language: English

** Subtitles: English

** Run time: 115 minutes

 

Nine persons are interviewed in the film.

Here are their names of the participants.

Listed in the order of appearance.

 

** Steven Watts – a historian, University of Missouri

** Douglas Brinkley – a historian, Rice University

** John Staudenmaier – a historian, University of Detroit Mercy

 

** Nancy F. Koehn – a historian, Harvard Business School

** Greg Grandin – a historian, New York University

** Robert “Bob” Casey - curator, the Henry Ford Museum

 

** Hasia R. Diner – a historian, New York University

** Beverly Gage – a historian, Yale University

** Nelson Lichtenstein – a historian, University of California, Santa Barbara

 

Archive footage is used between the talking heads. Old photos are also used. 

Archive footage is used to support and supplement the statements made by the talking heads. 

Archive footage is used while the narrator is speaking.

 

The topic of this film is the life and career of Henry Ford (1863-1947).

 

It covers the early history of the Ford Motor Company, which he founded in 1903 and managed for several decades.

 

It also covers the life and career of his son Edsel Ford (1863-1943), who died before he was fifty, four years before his father died.

 

We hear some positive things about Henry Ford. Most of them are connected with the first half of his career.

 

We also hear some negative things about him. Most of them are connected with the second half of his career.

 

In the first half of his career, he was an innovator, a man who cared about his workers; and a man who was not afraid to get down on the floor and get dirty if it was necessary to fix a problem.

 

In the second half of his career, he was a different person: a man who blamed the Jews for every problem; a man who resisted change; and a man who fought as hard and as long as he could against the auto workers union.

 

As a young man, he was looking forward; as an old man, he was looking backwards. It was a great beginning and a sad ending.

 

This film seems to be what I call an ABC product:

 

** Accurate,

** Balanced, and

** Comprehensive.

 

But one small detail is missing, even though it could and should have been mentioned: the medal from Nazi Germany.

 

In July 1938, Henry Ford was awarded Nazi-Germany’s Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honour the German government could offer a foreigner.

 

Ford did not travel to Germany to receive the medal. In 1938, he was 75. Perhaps he was too old to make the journey? On the other hand, he did not refuse it.

 

Two representatives of the German government brought it to him in the US, and he accepted it.

 

Perhaps he did not really understand the implications of what he did when he accepted this medal?

 

Why is the story of this German medal not mentioned in the film? It is a small but significant detail. The film runs for almost two hours. The director must know all about it. She cannot claim it was impossible to include it. Her decision to exclude this event from the film was unfortunate.

 

While the story of the controversial German medal is not mentioned in the film, it is mentioned on the American Experience website about the film (in an interview with Hasia R. Diner).

 

I mention this flaw, because it deserves to be mentioned, for the record, but I have decided to regard it as a minor flaw in a film which is otherwise an informative and interesting product.

 

What do reviewers say about it?

 

Here are some results:

 

On IMDb it has a rating of 77 per cent

 

On Amazon there are at the moment 349 ratings of this product, including 172 with reviews.

 

The average rating is 4.7 stars, which corresponds to a rating of 94 percent.

 

If you ask me, the rating on IMDb is too low, while the rating on Amazon is more appropriate.

 

I want to go all the way to the top with this product. I think it deserves a rating of five stars (100 percent).

 

REFERENCES

 

# 1. The Ford Motor Company

 

Wheels for the World:

Henry Ford, his Company and a Century of Progress

By Douglas Brinkley

(2003)

 

The People’s Tycoon:

Henry Ford and the American Century

By Steven Watts

(2005)

 

The Model T - A Centennial History

By Robert “Bob” Casey

(2008)

 

Fordlandia:

The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City

By Greg Grandin

(2009)

 

# 2. The Ford Motor Company and Nazi Germany

 

Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors and Forced Labor during the Second World War

By Reinhold Billstein, Karola Fings, Anita Kugler, and Nicholas Levis

(2000 = hardcover)

(2004 = paperback)

 

# 3. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison

 

Edison and Ford in Florida

By Mike Cosden, Brent Newman, and Chris Pendleton

(2015)

 

The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s Ten-Year Road Trip

By Jeff Guinn

(2019 = hardcover)

(2020 = paperback)

 

American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs

By Wes Davis

(2023 = hardcover)

(2024 = paperback)

 

# 4. An autobiography

 

My Life & Work

By Henry Ford

(First published in 1922)

(2020 = hardcover)

(2023 = paperback)

 

# 5. Items available online

 

Michael Dobbs,

“Ford and GM scrutinized for alleged Nazi collaboration,”

Washington Post

30 November 1998

 

Simon Reich

“The Ford Motor Company and the Third Reich,”

Anti-Defamation League

01 January 2000

 

Simon English,

“Ford ‘used slave labour’ in Nazi German plants,”

The Telegraph

03 November 2003

 

Rich Tenorio

“Henry Ford’s ‘ghost’ opens up about his infamous antisemitism in new art documentary,”

The Times of Israel

29 July 2022

 

*****

My Life & Work

An Autobiography 

by Henry Ford

(first published in 1922)

(Hardcover 2020)

Paperback 2023)

 

*****

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison

Two old friends

On a road trip

 

*****

The medal from Nazi Germany:

Two German diplomats present

an award to Henry Ford

(1938)

 

*****

 On this blog:

My review of 

Edison: The Father of Invention

American Experience

(2015)

posted in March 2023

 

*****

 

 

Grand Coulee Dam (2012)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grand Coulee Dam is a documentary film which premiered on US television (PBS) in 2012.

 

It is an episode in the long-running program American Experience.

 

Here is some basic information about it:

 

** Produced by Amanda Pollak

** Directed by Stephen Ives

** Story by Rob Raplev

** Telescript by Stephen Ives

** Narrated by Michael Murphy

** Run time: 54 minutes

 

This film is the story of the great dam that was built across the Columbia River in the state of Washington, in the northwest corner of the US, during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR).

 

Several persons are interviewed in the film.

Here are the names of the participants.

Listed in the order of appearance:

 

** William Lang, historian

** Blaine Harden, writer

** Margaret O’Mara, historian

** Steven Hawley, writer

 

** D. C. Jackson, historian

** Richard White, historian

** Paul C. Pitzer, historian

** Wilfred Woods, son of Rufus Woods (1878-1950)

 

** Colleen F. Cawston, Colville tribal member

** Ed Kern, dam worker

** Mary Henning, Grand Coulee resident

** Stewart Whipple, dam worker

** Lawney Reyes, a writer and a Grand Coulee resident

 

The project: From idea to reality

The history of the Great Coulee Dam begins in 1918 when Rufus Woods, editor and publisher of The Wenatchee Daily World, suggested that a dam should be built across the Columbia River.

 

He said the dam could produce electricity for the state of Washington and support an irrigation system that would turn the desert into farmland.

 

Woods and two of his friends in the little town Ephrata formed a group known as the Dam University and began to lobby for the project at the local, state, and federal level.

 

But the time was not right. The project was not getting any support from anyone with money, political power or both.

 

For more than ten years, the Grand Coulee Dam was merely an idea, a project on a piece of paper. But then things began to change.

 

In 1929 the stock market crashed and the depression began. Four years later - in 1933 - there was a new president in the White House: FDR, who wanted to use large-scale projects to get the US economy out of the depression.

 

Now the time was right: FDR and the Democrats in Congress liked the project, and they moved surprisingly fast.

 

Construction of the dam began in 1933, only a few months after FDR had taken office. It was a huge project. Nobody had ever built anything on this scale before. It was also an expensive project.

 

At first, FDR merely got the funds to build a low dam, but once the project was on the way, there was no turning back, and later he got the funds to build a high dam.

 

The project was completed in two stages:

 

(1) A cofferdam was built on the west side of the river. Behind the cofferdam, the left side of the dam was built.

 

(2) When the left side was completed, they used the same method for the east side of the river.

 

The work took almost ten years. The dam was officially opened in 1942. 

 

During the war, the dam delivered electricity to several factories in the area that built airplanes and ships that were an important part of the US arsenal.

 

Electricity was also delivered to Hanford, a top-secret installation which produced plutonium for the nuclear bombs that were developed by the top-secret Manhattan project.

 

Hanford and its connection with the Manhattan project are not a secret anymore. But the Hanford installation is not mentioned in the film.

 

For details about Hanford, see the following items:

 

** On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Site by Michele S. Gerber (2007)

** Atomic Frontier Days by John Findley & Bruce Hevly (2011)

 

A few years after the war (1951-1953) the government added an irrigation system which turned the desert into farmland.

 

In 1941, as the dam was nearing completion, the government decided to produce a documentary film about the dam.

 

The producers realised that it would be good to have some music to go with the pictures. They hired an artist to compose some songs and sing them for the soundtrack of the film.

 

They chose Woodie Guthrie (1912-1967), who was perhaps an unlikely choice, because he was known for his sympathy with the working man and the poor.

 

They warned him: no politics in the songs!

 

In the end, the documentary film was never made, but 17 of the 26 songs Woodie Guthrie wrote were compiled and released as The Columbia River Ballads. Today they are known as The Columbia River Collection.

 

Rufus Woods lived long enough to see the dam completed. But he died in 1950, so he did not live long enough to see the irrigation system that was added in the 1950s.

 

Right or wrong?

In the 1920s, when Woods and his friends had lobbied for the project, it had been rejected, even ridiculed.

 

Many politicians, in particular Republicans, said it was too expensive and they called it a white elephant in the desert.

 

By 1933, circumstances changed. With the deep recession, a project such as this seemed a good idea.

 

As the project got underway, some (but not all) of the critics changed their tune.

 

Around 1940, as the project was nearing completion, critical voices were heard again. The project had been very expensive.

 

Who was ever going to need the electricity that this huge dam could produce? The white elephant in the desert was mentioned again.

 

In December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the US entered World War II, circumstances changed again.

 

All of a sudden, the US needed a lot of electricity to build airplanes and ships and the electricity was available, because the dam was already there.

 

FDR was praised for his foresight in building a large dam which could produce the electricity that was needed for the war effort.

 

Circumstances may change. What is wrong in one situation, may be right in another.

 

The history of the Grand Coulee Dam demonstrates this point very well.

 

You may be in favour of a project or you may be against it. But your opinion will often depend on the situation. If circumstances change, you may change your mind.

 

Positive and negative consequences

A coin has two sides, as we all know. If you look at one side, you will see an image and a message. Perhaps something you like. If you turn it over, you will see another image and another message. Perhaps something you dislike. 

 

But it is the same coin. And both sides are equally true. Which side are you going to choose? The choice can be hard.

 

A dam is like a coin. There are two sides. Some people see something they like, while others see something dislike. But they are talking about the same project. 

 

This film about the Grand Coulee Dam presents the dilemma very well:

 

There are positive consequences (benefits):

** It produces power for the nation

** It supports an irrigation system that transforms the desert into farmland

** It tames the Columbia River

** For a few years it created thousands of jobs in the area

 

There are negative consequences (costs):

** There is no access to one of the greatest salmon rivers in the world

** Huge populations of fish are threatened with extinction

** Local people (mostly Native Americans) were deprived of their most important economic and spiritual resource

** It caused a profound cultural decline, as the water behind the dam inundated towns, sacred spaces, and burial grounds

** 72 workers lost their lives while working on the dam

 

Some documentary films are one-sided, because they are based on evidence and interviews with experts who have the same view, either positive or negative with regard to the topic at hand.

 

This film is not like that. It is not one-sided. This film gives a very balanced view of the project, because positive as well as negative comments are presented.

 

The dilemma is spelled out for us. Some persons focus on positive elements, while others focus on negative elements. Both sides have strong arguments to support their case. 

 

It can be difficult to choose one side over the other. This is evident when both points of view are expressed by one person!

 

Here are four quotes from the film which illustrate the pride and the desperation connected with this project:

 

(1) THE NARRATOR

“Its power would help win a war and unite a nation, but its construction would leave a region bitterly divided.”

 

(2) D. C. JACKSON

“It's supposed to be for everyone. It's easy to say that it's a public resource. But everyone has a different vision of what they think that public interest should be.”

 

(3) THE NARRATOR

“For some, the Grand Coulee Dam would be an engine of growth and prosperity, for others it would come to symbolize heartbreak and betrayal. In the end, it was an out-sized statement of American power and prestige, a monument to noble ideals and unintended consequences.”

 

(4) RICHARD WHITE

“There is a way in which people hate the dams and are proud of the dams, ways in which people imagine a Columbia running free, but they could not live without the Columbia's electricity. That river is our most profound dreams for what we can become and our deepest regrets about what we've done. We've woven them together and we're never going to be able to take them apart.”

 

Pride and desperation

FDR and the powerful people behind the dam had good intentions. They did not want to harm anyone. On the contrary, they wanted to help as many people as possible. They had, as the narrator says, “noble ideals.”

 

But they did hurt someone. They did cause damage. The Native Americans who lived where the reservoir is today were displaced. The salmon in the river were also harmed.

 

In the 1990s, the government paid some compensation to the families of the people that had been displaced; this happened about fifty years after the dam was completed. It was a case of too little and too late.

 

Some engineers tried to build some fish ladders for the salmon, but the experiments were not successful, and in the end, they were abandoned.

 

These negative effects were not part of the original plan. They were, as the narrator says, “unintended consequences.”

 

What I like about this film is that it presents both sides of the coin.

 

One person is impressed by the scale of the project. The keyword is pride.

 

Another person is appalled by the lack of respect for human and animal life. The keyword is desperation.

 

Practical and technical issues are covered here. This is hardly surprising, since the topic is the construction of a dam, but this is not the only angle. The human aspect of the project is covered as well, and both elements are taken seriously.

 

Conclusion

Grand Coulee Dam is an excellent film. 

It is highly recommended. 

I think it deserves a rating of five stars (100 percent).

 

REFERENCES

 

Hail Columbia

By George Sundborg

(1954)

 

Grand Coulee: Harnessing a Dream

By Paul Pitzer

(1994)

 

Rufus Woods, the Columbia River, and the Building of Modern Washington

By Robert E. Ficken

(1995)

 

A River lost: 

The Life and Death of the Columbia

By Blaine Harden

(1997 = hardcover)

(1998 = paperback)

(A revised edition was published in 2013)

 

Images of America: 

Grand Coulee Dam

By Ray Bottenberg

(2008)

 

*****

The Grand Coulee Dam

Built across the Columbia River

in Washington State

(1933-1942)

 

*****