Duty to Cargo (1940?)

Director	N/A
Producer	Wilding Picture Productions
Contributors	Lewis A. Lapham
Length	21 min.
B&W/Color	Color
UO Library Catalog description:	N/A
Call #	FILM Mb29
Genre	Corporate Sponsored
Rare	YES
Online	NO
Copyright status	PUBLIC DOMAIN
Physical condition	FAIR
Oregon-related	NO

Notes:

The University of Oregon does not have a documented publishing year for this film, but records show that this film was screened in late Feb. 1940:

“On Tuesday, February 20, a new industrial motion picture entitled “Duty to Cargo” recently completed by the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company, was shown to members of the Marine Exchange. This film, which is in color and sound, was prepared under the supervision of Lewis Lapham. Its running time requires only twenty minutes. It denotes an entirely new step in institutional advertising by a shipping company. The first of the picture is concerned with the history of the company through its nine decades of intercoastal service, the balance with American-Hawaiian’s conceiition of a shipowner’s duty to his cargo.” Source

Wilding Picture Productions was a film company that tailored to industry clients, producing many films like Duty to Cargo (Source).  The film is both instructional and promotional, in that it provides a historical overview of the shipping industry, and how it changed over the early 20th century. For obvious reasons, it culminates as a promotional film for the American Steamship Company by the end, a company that would end up losing 20 ships in WWII, and face liquidation in the early 1950s. Source, Source