Sixteen in Webster Groves (1966)

Director
Producer	Arthur Barron, Carousel Films
Contributors	Charles Kuralt
Length	47 Minutes
B&W/Color	B&W
UO Library Catalog description:	In addition to presenting the opinions, attitudes and goals of teenagers in an affluent suburban community, the results of which shocked the nation, this CBS News survey relates the source of these values.
Call #	Film Md21
Genre	Documentary
Rare	Yes
Online	Yes, http://vimeo.com/12658300
Copyright status	Protected
Physical condition	Fair (faded, some acid)
Oregon-related	No

Notes:

“16 In Webster Groves was a 1966 award-winning documentary one-hour TV special produced by CBS News focusing on the experiences of adolescents growing up and living in Webster Groves, Missouri, United States.

Produced by Arthur Barron and narrated by Charles Kuralt, the program was inspired by a survey conducted by the University of Chicago. It showed the middle-American, middle-class town to be a superficially friendly, prosperous, progressive, religious, charitable, arts-and-education oriented bedroom community whose adolescent culture, with the complicity (and, by inference, example and encouragement) of the adult population, was in fact clique-ridden, status-oriented, hypercompetitive, hypocritical, prejudiced, and materialistic. In stark contrast to the popular view in the mid-1960s that young people were rebelling against the values of their parents, the program depicted the Webster Groves teenagers as unimaginative and conformist. One sixteen year old girl, for example, declares that her dream is to live in a house down the street from the one she lives in now. That interview, and others with a cross section of sixteen-year-olds in the community, including minorities and exchange students, and consensual filming of their normal activities, both in school and at recreation, provided the content of the program.”

Above text and online streaming available at: http://vimeo.com/12658300

Interview regarding Arthur Barron and the circumstances surrounding this documentary: http://stfdocs.com/blog/comments/16_in_webster_groves_a_verite_treatment_of_middle_america/

We have a black and white print.