The Heart of Cleveland (1924)

The print of The Heart of Cleveland was preserved by the Hagley Library with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation in 2021. https://www.filmpreservation.org/blog...

Film sponsored by the Cleveland Illuminating Company promoting expanded electric services beyond urban areas often referred to as rural electrification. The film opens on a farm family outside of Cleveland without electricity and other 'modern conveniences.' While eating dinner, the family is interrupted by a man in an airplane who makes an emergency landing in their farm field. The pilot joins the family for dinner and then shows them his radio. The pilot then offers to take the farmer's children to Cleveland to teach them about electricity. The next day, the pilot and children fly to Cleveland. This part of the film includes aerial shots of Cleveland. The group then goes to the pilot's sister's home where they are given a tour of a home with electricity. After seeing the many electrical appliances, the pilot then takes the children to the Cleveland Illuminating Company Building at 75 Public Square where they are given a tour of offices. They then proceed to the Company's Lake Shore Station - the "world's largest steam-electric" plant -- where they are given a tour of the facility with detailed descriptions of the many facets of the power-producing operation. The film closes with the children touring various industrial facilities using electricity to do such things as bottling milk, loading iron ore, making clothes, melting steel, conveying steel billets, rolling steel bars, making automobile parts, arc-welding, manufacturing brick, making light bulbs, and printing newspapers. The film ends with the farm family in their newly electrified home courtesy of the expanded rural electric service of the Cleveland Illuminating Company.

SOURCE: https://digital.hagley.org/FILM_20192...

This 16mm film is from the Cinecraft Productions Film archive at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information about the collection, please check out https://findingaids.hagley.org/xtf/vi...

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