Small Town, USA
Small Town, USA (U.S. Information Service/Pathescope Company of America/Eurovision, 1957). 30 min. This documentary, intended for foreign audiences during the Cold War and housed at the Iowa State University archives, presents a pastoral view of a small town in the heartland of America--Anamosa, Iowa--dependent on agriculture for its existence. The film is pure Our Town, Iowa-style. We meet boys fishing, a storekeeper, the dedicated doctor, the newspaper editor, the county agricultural agent, farm families passing on a way of life from one generation to the next, a congregation with voices lifted in song, and residents celebrating July 4th with a parade and fireworks. Though rooted in reality, the film idealizes a rural Iowa way of life shown in numerous fictional films, even those made in much later decades when agriculture dominated the Iowa experience to a lesser degree.]
Marty Knepper Morningside College knepper@morningside.edu & John Shelton Lawrence Morningside College j.shelton.1@gmail.com
