Retrotechtacular: Blue Collar, Red Nightmare

This week’s presentation is a well-cast piece of anti-Communist propaganda perpetrated by a division of the DoD that you’ve probably never heard of: the Directorate for Armed Forces Information and Education.

It’s narrated by Jack Webb of Dragnet and Adam-12 fame. He tells us of a fake American town located somewhere behind the Iron Curtain. It’s full of young comrades who sock hop and bebop while studying and playacting the bourgeoisie activities of the American economy and way of life. After introducing this, Webb pulls back the cushy, velvet curtain to profile a typical American household led by one [Jerry Donavan].

[Jerry] has it all: a wise-cracking wife played by Jeanne Cooper (most notably of The Young and the Restless), a son with a healthy interest in war games, a young daughter with pretty blond hair, and a beautiful older daughter who would go on to fame up the road at Petticoat Junction. After some unsettling news from this daughter at the dinner table, Jerry heads up to bed early to catch a few Zs.

Jack Webb denies [Jerry] any visions of sugar plums and instead drops him in the middle of Fakesville, USSR for a vivid nightmare of an America reconstructed by Communism. Watch as he figures out what’s going on and what the new regime means for him and his good-looking family.

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