Man Alive!

Read The Essay | Go to NLM Digital Collections | Watch on YouTube | Read Transcript

DATE: 1950

LENGTH: 12 min

CATEGORY: Educational & Instructional, Animation, Sound, Color

DIRECTOR: William T. Hurtz

PRODUCER/PUBLISHER: American Cancer Society and United Productions of America

Summary

Since their emergence in the early twentieth century, cancer education campaigns had focused chiefly on recruiting women into programs of early detection and treatment. By the 1940s, the campaigns were developing a focus on men as well. Man Alive! built upon this new appeal to men and added some fresh elements, most notably the film–screening locales. It was shown both in movie theaters as part of the regular schedule and in “non-theatrical” venues, such as factories, clubs, and other locations. Its core themes were similar to earlier films. Man Alive! warned against delay in seeking competent help, against going to “quacks,” and against turning to home remedies. But it added another element: antic cartoon humor that was designed to capture the attention of a larger audience….Read The Essay

Supplementary Materials

Film Stills from Man Alive!

Title screen for Man Alive! Color by Technicolor Copyright MCMLII the American Cancer Society.

Inside Glassner’s Garage, the auto mechanic looks at his clipboard. Ed Parmalee looks worried, still sitting in his car even while it is on the lift. A sign reads: 'Glassner’s: 28 Years of Service Speaks for Itself.'

A doctor sits on a chair in front of a fluoroscope that shows the interior of Ed Parmalee’s torso. Parmalee holds a glass of barium and looks on quizzically.

Credit frame reads Produced by UPA United Productions of America.

Ed Parmalee after he has come out the shower is dressed only in a towel. On his right is a red silhouette which represents the state of his body.

A very simplified diagram of the internal organs of a human being from shoulders to waist.

Ed and his wife drive along with other cars full of happy people.

Ed Parmalee after he has come out the shower is dressed only in a towel. On his right is an automobile engine which represents the state of his body.

Two cells float in a very simplified diagram of the blood stream.

Closeup of Ed Parmalee behind the wheel of his car, listening and looking troubled.

Wearing nothing but a towel, Ed Parmalee sits on the floor of his bathroom, surrounded by a cloud of worrying words ('contagious', 'hopeless', 'inherited') and images (a grave, a surgeon’s saw and tongs, a will, a patient on a hospital gurney).

Text over a silhouette of a cowboy on a background of many smiling faces.

Above his head is a cloud with worries indicated by words and symbols (beat thru crankcase, just had it fixed, bearings, Darn! $59.73, what next?, $, ?) and images (automobile parts).

With the hood up, Ed Parmalee’s wife looks unhappy, while a bottle of 'Go Car' fluid pours into the engine.

A medicine cabinet full of stomach remedies and supplements.

Over a background of smiling faces a smiling man lays under an X-ray machine.

Ed Parmalee and his wife take their car to a ramshackle auto repair shop.

Ed Parmalee looks up at a sign that has a picture of a smiling man with medals pinned to his chest. The sign reads: ‘J. Kirkham Headstone / Q.E.D. / The Edison of Medicine’. On the left a sign reads ‘Walk Up One Flight and Save’; on the right a sign reads ‘Loans’.

Over a background of smiling faces a radium machine is shown.

Sitting in a convertible next to his wife ed wears a polar white fur hood and coat and turns away, arms crossed.

Ed Parmalee turns into a man wearing a polar fur hood and coat, talking to his wife, who is in her nightgown sitting at a dressing table in their bedroom.

Over a background of smiling faces a smiling man lays on an operating table as a doctor works.

Ed Parmalee turns into a jester, talking to his wife, who is in her nightgown sitting at a dressing table in their bedroom.

A complex drawing of scientific and chemical apparatus.

Ed Parmalee, behind the wheel of his car and sitting next to his wife, is turned into a devil with a pitchfork. The entire scene is tinted red, indicating anger.

Ed Parmalee turns into an angry cave man, as he comes out of the shower in his bathroom.

Ed Parmalee and his wife exit from the doctor through the door and head, smiling, toward their car. The sign outside reads John Wehner, M.D.

Ed Parmalee, behind the wheel of his car and sitting next to his wife, is turned into a little boy wearing a dunce cap.

A public health message billboard from the American Cancer Society is visible as Ed and his wife stop for a railway signal.

At the drive-in movies, Ed Parmalee and his wife lean on each other while sitting in their convertible, watching a movie.

Digitized Films on Cancer at the National Library of Medicine

Explore films on cancer in the NLM Digital Collections

Beyond NLM

Medfilm

MedFilm is a European-based collaborative project analyzing medical film.

See the MedFilm record for Man Alive!.

Discover more films from the NLM historical collections featured in MedFilm.

More Medicine on Screen

COMING NEXT

The next essay for Medicine on Screen focuses on six films on “population issues” and family planning projects in Latin America, specifically Colombia. Produced by Airlie Productions during the 1970s, many of these films were supported by Profamilia—arguably the most successful associate to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in the world and the most important Colombian family planning organization. Together, the films illustrate some of the difficulties the population movement faced in the 1970s in promoting birth control in the Global South, some of the strategies implemented to tackle those difficulties, and the unexpected alliances that were formed along the way.

NEW IN NLM DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

Journey into Self (1968)

This is a filming of the first session of an intensive basic encounter group led by Dr. Carl Rogers, widely known for developing a client-centered approach to psychotherapy and as a founder of humanistic psychology, and Dr. Richard Farson, a founder of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. The session features eight previously-unacquainted persons from different regions of the United States, participating in a loosely structured, conversational “encounter,” a form of group therapy.