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Points for good behavior

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Times Staff Writer

Driving around with strangers = bad. Being popular = good.

Planning party games = good. Having a beer with friends = bad.

Saying “no” to “petting” = good. Living outside the United States = bad.

Welcome to the black-and-white world of “mental hygiene” films, a staple of high school classrooms from 1945 to 1970. Way before teenagers had MTV, CDs, SUVs and PDAs, educators hoped to mold them into model citizens with these short films touching on everything from dance cards at the prom to delinquency in pool halls.

Examples of the genre will be shown tonight and Saturday at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater, hosted by Ken Smith, author of the book “Mental Hygiene Films 1945-1970.” The films, stiff and chipper dramas showing nice results for good behavior and dire consequences for rule breaking, bear titles such as “Mind Your Manners!,” “What Makes Sammy Speed?” and “What It Means to Be an American.”

The educational films evolved from World War II military propaganda films at a time of dawning youth rebellion and parental reverence for expert opinion and quick fixes, says Smith, who culled his program from the collection of San Francisco archivist Rick Prelinger. “So your kid doesn’t know how to ask for a date? You don’t have to worry about that! Show him a 10-minute classroom film!” Smith says.

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Although the movies improved on the scare flicks of the 1930s, such as the theatrical cult classic “Reefer Madness” (1936) in which marijuana smokers went insane, the filmmakers’ earnest attempts to enforce conformity, morality and patriotism seem wistfully hilarious by today’s standards.

In fact, the filmmakers were considered educational radicals in their day, Prelinger says. “They were like the people who believe the Web is going to change things. They believed film would change everything.”

Prelinger became interested in the films in 1982 as research director for “Heavy Petting,” a Norman Lear-financed documentary intended to illuminate the nation’s sexual and romantic history through archival footage in the same way “The Atomic Cafe” had told the history of the atomic bomb through civil defense films. Fascinated, Prelinger, an amateur historian, eventually collected more than 1,100 films, pulling some from school dumpsters.

Prelinger met Smith, a nonfiction writer and raconteur, in 1990 when they were both working for the Comedy Channel, making comedy clips out of archival footage. What started as a humorous database of synopses became the basis for Smith’s book. But Smith took the project further, locating filmmakers and actors and extrapolating the films’ social significance, Prelinger says. Last fall the Library of Congress acquired his collection, which is available free to the public at www.archive.org.

“They are a wonderful way to understand how we’ve become who we are. The films are filled with insight. Not just casual, camp insight; they’re full of real, thick descriptions of issues of gender, social class, what it was like to be a worker, how we became a consumer society, how major institutions worked hard to maintain social consensus, why we think the way we do,” says Prelinger.

Some films have a crackly amateurish visual quality combined with the sort of melodramatic musical scores heard on television playhouse dramas. But they will be an undeniable boon to social and cultural historians -- the bathing suits alone will surely inspire comparisons to military hardware.

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In “What Makes a Good Party?” filmmakers urge hosts to be alert for guests who fail to take part in group activities, like a hatmaking contest. “If anyone should forget this,” the narrator intones, “well, anyone, even another guest, can help get the entire group together again.”

Some films even mock victims of violence, as well as their too-lenient parents, for having made stupid choices. (“And now, Mrs. Hanson, it is time to worry, but I’m afraid it’s too late to do any good after letting your daughter drive away with a stranger.”)

In “Name Unknown,” a jowly man with thick glasses and a comb-over, identified as Los Angeles Juvenile Court Judge William B. McKesson, talks to parents and a weeping girl who is being sent to a “detention home” after running off with a man who broke his promise to marry her. Edie, he says, will have plenty of time to think about whether a few minutes of “showing off or feeling sharp is worth a lifetime of regret.” Staring into the camera, McKesson tells viewers, “If you’re willing to risk that, you’re not the American men and women I think you are. Don’t be a sucker.”

Randy Delling, 50, principal of North Hollywood High School, remembers “laughing hysterically” at atomic bomb films that wanted kids to “duck and cover” in the event of an attack. Still, he says, even if kids laugh at safe-driving, anti-drug or pregnancy-prevention videos these days, it doesn’t diminish their value. “Many of our best lessons stick with us because of the humor,” he says.

Today’s “life skills” teachers, like North Hollywood High’s Jennifer Schlesinger, are inundated with problem-specific videos on STDs, tobacco, drugs, pregnancy and fatherhood, produced by government agencies, nonprofit organizations and private companies. “So many of them are bad,” says Schlesinger.

If self-improvement videos are still hokey, their audience has become more sophisticated.

Teenagers today, raised on irony and movies like “Pleasantville” that parody the idealized universe of 1950s media images, can barely believe the makers of the vintage “mental hygiene” films, says Smith, who is embarking on his second national tour with the movies. “A lot of people have a hard time believing we were ever that sincere,” he says. Smith showed the films in Belgium last year and says audiences found it hard to believe the films were produced by individual entrepreneurs and not some U.S. government agency.

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One filmmaker, Emily Frith, made “What It Means to Be an American,” a heartfelt tribute to individualism and tolerance whose message is still embraced by many: America is great because it has freedom of speech, teamwork, washing machines and cars. (“In America, there’s a car for every four people....In Europe and the Orient, cars are great luxuries.”)

Another filmmaker, Sid Davis, was a high school dropout who wanted young people to stay in school. With start-up financing from actor John Wayne, he found a niche as the “bad cop” of mental hygiene, focusing on the negative consequences of bad behavior, Smith says. One of his films, “The Dropout,” shows the fall of a high school dropout from management trainee hopeful to busboy to budding juvenile delinquent.

Ironically, Smith says, Davis’ “mental hygiene” films eventually made him a multimillionaire. He retired in Palm Desert.

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‘Mental Hygiene Films’

What: The American Cinematheque hosts “Mental Hygiene Films: Classroom Films From the 1950s and 1960s.”

When: Two-night program tonight and Saturday

Where: Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Blvd.

Cost: $9; $8, seniors and students; $6, Cinematheque members.

Information: www.egyptiantheater.com

Tonight’s program

The program will start at 7:30 p.m. and includes the films “Shy Guy” (1947), “Beginning to Date” (1953), “The Dropout” (1962), “Name Unknown” (1951) and “The Prom” (1951).

Saturday’s program

Saturday’s shows start at 6 and 9 p.m.

6 p.m.: Includes “The Show-Off” (1964), “Mind Your Manners!” (1953), “What It Means to Be an American” (1952), “The Snob” (1958), “What Makes Sammy Speed?” (1958) and “What Makes a Good Party?” (1950)

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9 p.m.: Includes “Measure of a Man” (1962), “What to Do on a Date” (1951), “The Outsider” (1951) and “How to Lose What We Have” (1950)

Discussion: Author Ken Smith and actress Brady Rubin (“The Outsider” and “The Snob”) will discuss the films after each program Saturday.

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