Hollywood of the golden age produced some of the greatest works of art in the history of human culture. But movie studios were businesses. They produced great works of art when it seemed likely to be profitable to produce great works of art; they hired great artists when the great artists brought in money.

And even then, there was no guarantee that the artists who had made a profitable hit last year would do the same next year. The public demanded new movies, but new movies were risky by definition. Your contract players would act their hearts out, your cinematographers would pick out every detail in glorious Technicolor, your director would time each scene to the second—and yet the public might not like the movie after all.

But then there was the other side of Hollywood—the side you could rely on, the side where profits were guaranteed. This was the side of Hollywood where all the same talent and all the same technical wizardry that went into making this year’s Oscar-bait could be hired for a feature-length Technicolor musical fantasy about Westinghouse appliances. And here it is, thanks to the Library of Congress and the Internet Archive:

Ellis in Freedomland.

Just watch the credits—you don’t have to watch the whole hour and a half. The credits alone will drop your jaw six inches.

You can see the attraction for the studios. There was no worry about whether box-office receipts would pay for the production, because there was no box office. The corporate client was the audience, and the price was agreed on beforehand. This movie would make a profit, guaranteed.

And think how much more exciting it was to be an appliance salesman in those days. These days, the most exciting thing that ever happens in a salesman’s life is when some YouTube microcelebrity with a channel about different ways to cook broccoli shows up for a book-signing at the Best Buy. But in 1952, Westinghouse salesmen all over the country got to sit down in screening rooms and see the top talent in Hollywood giving voices to the appliances they peddled every day. It must have made a difference in the salesman’s morale when he could imagine every dishwasher as Maureen O’Sullivan.

The Internet Archive has a collection of more than 24,000 “Ephemeral Films.” Most of them were ephemeral for good reason, but every once in a while we run across a treasure. Perhaps Ellis in Freedomland is not exactly a treasure. But it would be hard to think of a general-release film more beautifully photographed than American Look, a 1958 widescreen Technicolor spectacular about the marvelous world of industrial design. “Improved styling constantly adds to the ease and grace and gaiety of American living,” says the narrator, and it is a tribute to the work of the photographers that we believe every word he says.