Film Identifier: F.2006-10-0077

Run Time
0h 11m 38s

Format
35mm

Color
B&W

Sound
Silent

Date Produced
1935

Abstract
Sponsored film made for the "Hands Across the City" fundraising campaign by the Peoria Community Fund Association in 1935.

Description
The film shows Community Fund subscribers how various Peoria agencies care for vulnerable populations. Intertitles implore viewers to "give generously" in the Peoria Community Fund's fall campaign, with proceeds benefiting 23 agencies including Peoria's Neighborhood House, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cradle Beach (a summer camp for poor mothers and children), Negro Community Center, YWCA, Salvation Army, Women's Recreation Camp, Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers, and Children's Home. The film declares, "the work they are doing is not relief but the building of character and good citizenship."

Includes shots of boys playing marbles and fighting, girls playing tennis and swimming, and children in the classroom. Shots of downtown Peoria were taken on a boat moving from Main Street south past an industrial area on the south side river front.

According to an article by Roland Neff in the Peoria Star from October 6, 1935, the film was shot in six days and completed in one month with the help of some 400 Peorians. According to Neff, this 35mm print of the film was shown in Peoria theatres during the week of October 13 to 20, 1935, and two 16mm prints of the film were shown before luncheon clubs, lodgers, and school classes that fall. When the film was originally presented, leaders of the Peoria Women's Crusade, heads of various agencies, and the theatre operators "make explanations as the pictures move along in sequence."

Main Credit

Additional Credit