Eastman pink
This 1958 color film depicts a tour of the Hershey Chocolate Factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania, featuring a sanitized and some might say shameless history of the chocolate trade, including harvesting of bean pods with child labor. The film also includes an overview of modern industrial confectionery production methods, Milton S. Hershey homestead, the Hershey Museum, and Hersheypark amusement park attractions and stadium (TRT 25:54).
Children board a Greyhound bus bound for Hershey, PA. One boy wears a charro outfit and sombrero (0:07). Opening titles. Also on the bus: A black boy wearing a kufi and kente cloth; a girl in a huipil dress; a boy in a ranchero hat, carrying a whip; a boy in a straw hat, carrying a banana (0:27). Topiary letters on the front lawn of the Hershey factory spell, “Hershey Cocoa.” Aerial photography shows personalized smokestacks. The bus, a “Scenicruiser,” parks and the stereotyped children, each representing a cocoa or sugar producing nation, disembark (1:17). A tour guide greets the visitors. A map of “the chocolate town” (2:09). Children ride a ferris wheel at Hershey’s amusement park, aka Hersheypark. Gardens, landscaping. Hershey Museum. A drill team at Hersheypark Stadium. Sign: “The Homestead” and the birthplace of Milton S. Hershey (3:01). The guide steps before timeline panels illustrating the history of chocolate: Christopher Columbus in 1492, Kiplingcotes Derby and Cortez in 1519, Spanish Monks in 1600, English “Chocolate Houses” in 1700, and Milton Hershey in 1903, his arm around a young boy (3:44). Factory exteriors. A California Hershey factory (6:01). An animated map shows supply lines from Mexico, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Ivory Coast. Outlines of each country are overlaid on closeups of the children representing each region (6:54). Growers on an equatorial cacao plantation. Cacao trees. Pods are cut down with machetes and loaded onto a burro (7:45). Child laborers hand pods to adult overseers with machetes, who split the cacao pods open. Narration calls this a “family affair” and explains that a “good breaker” child will open 500 pods per hour (9:14). Closeup on cacao seeds and pulp, a girl’s hands, a swinging machete (9:58). Seeds or “beans” are shoveled off a wood floor during fermentation. A farmer pushes a full wheelbarrow to a drying trough. Beans are raked (10:17). Packing burlap shipping sacks (10:57). The tour guide looks up at an elevated painting of Milton Hershey smoking a cigar. Crossfade to rural PA. The Hershey Community Center Building. A bronze statue: “His Life is Our Inspiration” (11:32). An illuminated flow chart depicts the manufacture of chocolate (12:53). Sacks of beans are emptied into bins. Beans rush along conveyor belts (13:33). Towering silos (14:02). The beans are cleaned by machine. A scale measures beans from Lagos, Trinidad, Ghana, Samoa, Arriba, Bahia (14:21). A rotating, cylindrical roaster. A bean is cracked open, separating the nib from the husk under a magnifying glass (15:19). Nibs are ground in a milling machine, exiting as chocolate liquor (15:39). Ingredients and final products at a glance (16:20). A hydraulic press produces cocoa butter and cakes of cocoa powder (17:02). Cans of Hershey’s powder and syrup roll off a production line (17:43). A sugar plantation. Sugar cane stalks are cut down with machetes. Growers haul crops by oxcart (18:02). A Heil truck trailer carrying milk. Dairy cows at pasture (18:46). Streams of pouring milk, chocolate liquor, and sugar. Mixing machines and refiners (19:15). Chemists in a food lab test samples in glass beakers (20:20). “Home economists” bake a cake in a test kitchen (21:05). Factory workers mold, cool, and wrap chocolate bars (21:29). Hershey’s Kisses are extruded in bulk. Miniature Mr. Goodbars are packaged (22:26). Hershey-ets (22:58). At the tour’s end, the children are rewarded with milk chocolate bars and guided through a gift shop. They say goodbye in Spanish, Portuguese, French. Reboarding the bus (23:25). A “kiss” in place of a street sign. Children read brochures and fall asleep (25:01).
Directed by Marvin H. Fisher; Executive Producer: Edward Edelstein; Written by Donald Hillman; Narrated by Jerry Damon; Photography by John Burke. The “guidette” was Wynne Miller.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
