You can be sure if it's WESTINGHOUSE .... Dinner at 6

[kimball455]

Found this little gem from 1946 Westinghouse advertising. This must have taken a large chunk of the advertising budget. In COLOR and even has the Wicked Witch of the West.

 

Dinner at 6 .... Will Uncle Efflo be happy and fork over the money?

 

 

 

[ea56]

I’ve seen this advertising film before Harry and I enjoyed it.  It still has value in that I think there are a lot of people today that still don’t realize how to properly and effectively utilize their electric stoves to get the maximum benefits from them.  But in 1946  it was clear that these new electric ranges made the task of cooking so much more convenient.

 

  I personally wouldn’t have a gas stove if you gave it to me and I wouldn’t even consider moving into a home that didn’t have an electric stove or the ability to have one.

 

BTW, I lived in a rental in Petaluma, Calif. in the early 80’s that had a 1939 Westinghouse Electric range similar to the one in the video and it was the best stove I ever used.  I still have the Owners manual and the showroom tag that came with the stove when it was new.  The previous tenant had purchased it brand new and left it when she moved out.

 

Eddie

[this post was last edited: 2/6/2021-12:59]

 

[appnut]

And notice the electric sink.

 

[rp2813]

This is timely.  I just watched a series of vintage promotional films on Amazon Prime last night, two of which had familiar faces of Darren McGavin and a very young Dick York. 

 

I know Miss Hamilton was a school teacher who had been nothing like Miss Gulch or Miss Spindle, but her characters would have made a perfect Sister Mary Margaret at any Catholic elementary school back in the day.

 

[sudsmaster]

I've never seen those color changing range top controls - with a specific illuminating color for each setting. Very nice, but probably phased out after a few years, since it's so rare.

Personally I much prefer gas for range top cooking. True, it doesn't have exact settings like the Westinghouse burners, but it's not hard to figure what flame size corresponds to what heat the food is getting.

For ovens, I'm split between gas and electric. Either will do the job, although all the ovens in this house are electric. Most of my roasting is done on a propane rotisserie grill with a back broiling burner, on the outer covered patio. And I mostly use the Oster counter-top convection oven in the main kitchen. It does a fairly good job at air frying, too, although it's not advertised as such. The GE P*7 wall oven gets used for stuff like lasagna casseroles and breads.

 

[ea56]

Westinghouse was making the color changing range top controls at least  up to 1956.  My aunt had them on her Westinghouse cooktop in her home that was built in 1955 and we had them in the home we lived in in 1962 which was built in ‘56.  It was a feature that I really liked.  Red was high, red-orange was med high, orange was med, yellow was med low, green was low and blue was simmer.  You could tell at a glance what the heat setting was.

 

Eddie

 

[sudsmaster]

Eddie,

Must have been cool to see.

I think all the electric ranges I ever lived with were GE or Frigidaire brand. My least favorite controls were on the GE's, the pushbuttons. On older ranges you could never be sure if the pushbutton was working or not.

 

[circlew]

Periscope Film has the date incorrect on this one. It's from sometime between 1950 -1952 based on the range in Mrs. Smith's kitchen.

For whatever reason, Westinghouse didn't use the Color-Glance controls on the 1953 30" models like mine.

 

[bradfordwhite]

I'm wondering WHEN and WHERE they played these 30 minute Info-mercials.
Movie theatres?
After 11 PM
During the afternoons?

 

[circlew]

I don't know about this one in particular, but many of these industrial films were available for free loan to clubs, organizations, schools, etc. Some companies, such as Bell Telephone, GM, and Ford, had film libraries. Many other companies had their productions distributed by private film libraries, such as Modern Talking Picture Service. My mom's club would get various films about many different topics. I worked in the AV Dept. the last two years of high school, and we got in several each week from MTPS, on everything imaginable. These films also showed up on TV when filler material was needed - such as when a station lost their network feed.

 

[arbilab]

Somewhat lengthy at 1hr 52min, below link is a biographical docu of Westinghouse the man

and the organization.  If you watched "Current War", watch this for a much less dramatically-enhanced

version of what George was about.

 

'Industrialist' is rather a dirty word today.  Frankly, it was back then too.  I'd hesitate to use the word with its connotations,

to label George.  In an age where throwing ethics around the boardroom can get you demoted to paperclip straightener,

it's enlightening, refreshing to see what dedication driven by ethics accomplishes.

 

[bradfordwhite]

Thank you for the info Tom.

In some ways, the frank discussions they had back then would be really good with some of todays improvements. I think it would really help to get rid of anxiety about things like AI, electric cars, solar electric, and social media.

 

[tomturbomatic]

These films were probably played, among other places, at regional training meetings, like after a meal.  They were probably also shown to power company home economists. They might even have been available for classroom showing. Westinghouse used color glance controls up until 1964 or '65, but by then they were just a red gradient going from a pattern that filled a little window down to a narrow strip at the bottom; I guess they decided at some point that the colors were not modern enough. I remembered the 1964 range from our home economics classroom and looked for one for decades before finding it on eBay. The lights to indicate the heat setting were only available on the top two models then, the Custom Imperial and the Aristocrat.