Summary: The story of Ford's emergency food van scheme.
Description: (Reel 1) The film opens with village schoolchildren taking their midday meal (after grace); the commentary asks how such a hot meal is possible in a school with no cooking facilities. The film then looks back to the beginning of war food and fuel shortages, the creation of British Restaurants as an efficient way of feeding people, and the need to feed those in bomb damaged areas. A scheme devised by Lord Perry, chairman of the Ford Motor Company, with the blessing of Henry Ford and the late Edsel Ford, and with the collaboration of the Ministry of Food, is inaugurated: specially built emergency food vans crewed by the WVS are distributed around the country to take food to those whose catering arrangements have been disrupted by enemy action.
(Reel 2) The vans are shown - hatch, menu board, water supply, insulated food boxes and trays etc. The Mayor of London and the King and Queen attend the inauguration in London, followed by similar ceremonies around the country. The vans, which are based at the local Ford dealers, collect the food from specially set up out-of-town cooking stations, and take it to where it is needed for bomb damage victims and rescue teams. In this way a city such as Birmingham can have 6,400 meals distributed in one trip by the city's ten vans. Soon the scheme is extended to give hot food to workers in small firms and in the countryside (including farm "holiday" workers), to dockers and to schoolchildren.
Alternative Title:
Colour:B&W
Digitised:
Object_Number:FWR 51
Sound:Sound
Access Conditions:NON-IWM
Featured Period:1939-1945
Production Date:1941
Production Country: GB
Production Details: Ford Motor Company (Production sponsor)
Verity (Production company)
Ellis, Fred (Production individual)
Munden, Max (Production individual)
Brown, J Neill (Production individual)
Stack, Tristram (Production individual)
Lewis, Bernard (Production individual)
Lidell, Alvar1908-09-111981-01-07 (Production cast)
Personalities, Units and Organisations:
Keywords:
Physical Characteristics: Colour format: B&W
Sound format: Sound
Soundtrack language: English
Title language: English
Subtitle language: None
Technical Details: Number of items/reels/tapes: 2
Footage: 1225 ft; Running time: 14 mins
