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The History of Soup // "Ballad of Soup Du Jour" (1962)

1962 · Short film · 13 min

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Synopsis

This 1962 color educational film — Andy Warhol would have loved it — is all about soup. It is a Jam Handy Picture, directed by Donald Livingston. It opens with Broadway performer Gordon Dilworth playing a guitar and singing a “Soup is the Secret of Good Living” song. The film moves into animation (2:06). In the beginning of the cartoon segment various vegetables are chopped, sliced, and diced. Since meat juices are lost over an open flame, they are best preserved by cooking meats in a kettle with water; thus soup was discovered (2:57-3:48). Even Hippocrates, the father of medicine, recommended it. Seasonings started to be added. The Romans favored bean and pea soups that were sometimes thick enough to cut (5:11). In the Middle Ages, a bride was required to prepare a kettle of soup for the wedding feast (5:34). In Elizabethan England, meals were served on one plate, including the soup, so bread was used to sop it up. Some believe this is where the word ‘soup’ originated (6:04-6:31). International travel resulting in the exchange of foods between various countries, enabling new flavors (6:49-7:42). In colonial New England, a community kettle was used when the ships arrived, resulting in an assortment of items in the soup. Pepper pot soup is from Philadelphia and gumbo from New Orleans (8:47-9:09). The film returns to live action with an assortment of cookbooks (9:24). A quintessential late 1950s-early 1960s kitchen (9:29) has a Princess telephone (introduced in 1959), a 1950s…

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Details

Running time
13 minutes
Collection
Ephemeral Films

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