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DATE: 1944

LENGTH: 22 min

CATEGORY: Educational & Instructional, Sound, Black & White

DIRECTOR: Arthur Lubin

PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: Walter Wanger with United States Public Health Service

Warning: The film contains explicit images of disease and intrusive medical treatment. Viewer discretion advised.

Summary

In the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, Walter Wanger (1894–1968) produced films for Paramount, MGM, United Artists and other studios. When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, Wanger recognized there would be an increasing need for well-produced educational and propaganda films. To the People…, unlike most other VD films, was intended for a general audience, and omits any depiction of diseased genitals or deliberately eschews visual sensationalism.

Supplementary Materials

Stills from To the People of the United States


Other Films Featured in the Essay

Explore thirteen films considered in the “Public Health Films Go to War” essay.


In the Collections of the National Library of Medicine

Prints & Photographs Collection

These posters, produced by or for the U.S. military in conjunction with campaigns that also employed films, come from the Prints and Photographs collection of the National Library. Explore these and more from the NLM’s Images in the History of Medicine.