Jenny Is a Good Thing

Last updated

Jenny Is a Good Thing
Directed byJoan Horvath
Narrated by Burt Lancaster
Production
company
A.C.I. Productions
Distributed byProject Head Start, Office of Child Development, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare [1]
Release date
  • 1969 (1969)
Running time
18 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Jenny Is a Good Thing is a 1969 American short documentary film about children and poverty, directed by Joan Horvath. Produced by Project Head Start, it shows the importance of good nutrition for underprivileged nursery school children. [2] The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. [3] [4] [5]

Related Research Articles

Spike Lee American filmmaker and actor (born 1957)

Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and a tenured professor at NYU. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut with She's Gotta Have It (1986). He has since written and directed such films as School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006), Chi-Raq (2015), BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods (2020). Lee also acted in eleven of his feature films. A host of A-list actors, Black and non-Black, had breakthrough performances or received critical acclaim from appearances in his films including actors Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, Annabella Sciorri, Samuel L. Jackson, Rosie Perez, and John David Washington.

The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Special Awards to Kukan and Target for Tonight. They have since been bestowed competitively each year, with the exception of 1946. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive.

Mike Nichols American television director, writer, producer and comedian (1931–2014)

Mike Nichols was an American film and theater director, producer, actor, and comedian. He was noted for his ability to work across a range of genres and for his aptitude for getting the best out of actors regardless of their experience. Nichols began his career in the 1950s with the comedy improvisational troupe The Compass Players, predecessor of The Second City, in Chicago. He then teamed up with his improv partner, Elaine May, to form the comedy duo Nichols and May. Their live improv act was a hit on Broadway, and each of their three albums was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album; their second album, An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May, won the award in 1960.

John Schlesinger English director and actor

John Richard Schlesinger was an English film and stage director, and actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Midnight Cowboy, and was nominated for the same award for two other films.

Dennis Quaid American actor

Dennis William Quaid is an American actor known for a wide variety of dramatic and comedic roles. First gaining widespread attention in the 1980s, some of his notable credits include Breaking Away (1979), The Right Stuff (1983), The Big Easy (1986), Innerspace (1987), Great Balls of Fire! (1989), Dragonheart (1996), The Parent Trap (1998), Frequency (2000), The Rookie (2002), In Good Company (2004), Yours, Mine & Ours (2005), and Vantage Point (2008).

<i>Hoop Dreams</i> 1994 American film

Hoop Dreams is a 1994 American documentary film directed by Steve James, and produced by Frederick Marx, James, and Peter Gilbert, with Kartemquin Films. It follows the story of two African-American high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, in Chicago and their dream of becoming professional basketball players.

<i>Boogie Nights</i> 1997 film by Paul Thomas Anderson

Boogie Nights is a 1997 American period comedy-drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It is set in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley and focuses on a young nightclub dishwasher who becomes a popular star of pornographic films, chronicling his rise in the Golden Age of Porn of the 1970s through to his fall during the excesses of the 1980s. The film is an expansion of Anderson's mockumentary short film The Dirk Diggler Story (1988), and stars Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heather Graham.

Denys Arcand Canadian film director

Georges-Henri Denys Arcand is a French Canadian film director, screenwriter and producer. His film The Barbarian Invasions won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2004. His films have also been nominated three further times, including two nominations in the same category for The Decline of the American Empire in 1986 and Jesus of Montreal in 1989, becoming the only French-Canadian director in history whose films have received this number of nominations and, subsequently, to have a film win the award. Also for The Barbarian Invasions, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, losing to Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation.

Jim Sheridan Irish film director

Jim Sheridan is an Irish playwright, screenwriter, film director, and film producer. Between 1989 and 1993, Sheridan directed two critically acclaimed films set in Ireland, My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, and later directed the films The Boxer and In America. Sheridan has received six Academy Award nominations. He is the son of Anne and Pete Sheridan. He has 4 children : his youngest daughter Amira Clodagh Sheridan with the Film Director Zahara Moufid and 3 other daughters Kirsten Sheridan, Naomi Sheridan, Tess Sheridan with Fran Sheridan. Jim Sheridan has 6 siblings in His family: Ita Rafferty, Peter Sheridan, John Sheridan, Frankie Sheridan, Gerard Sheridan and Paul Sheridan.

<i>Crumb</i> (film) 1995 American film

Crumb is a 1995 American documentary film about the noted underground cartoonist R. Crumb and his family and his outlook on life. Directed by Terry Zwigoff and produced by Lynn O'Donnell, it won widespread acclaim. It was released in the USA on April 28, 1995, having been screened at film festivals that year. Jeffery M. Anderson placed the film on his list of the ten greatest films of all time, labeling it "the greatest documentary ever made." The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD and Blu-ray on August 10, 2010.

Frank Langella American actor (born 1938)

Frank A. Langella Jr. is an American stage and film actor. He has won four Tony Awards: two for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance as Richard Nixon in Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon and as André in Florian Zeller's The Father, and two for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performances in Edward Albee's Seascape and Ivan Turgenev's Fortune's Fool. His reprisal of the Nixon role in the film production of Frost/Nixon earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

John Hubley was an American animation director, art director, producer and writer of traditional animation films known for both his formal experimentation and for his emotional realism which stemmed from his tendency to cast his own children as voice actors in his films.

Bob Balaban American actor, director and producer

Robert Elmer Balaban is an American actor, author, comedian, director and producer. He was one of the producers nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for Gosford Park (2001), in which he also appeared.

<i>Born into Brothels</i> 2004 film by Zana Briski

Born into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids is a 2004 Indian-American documentary film about the children of prostitutes in Sonagachi, Kolkata's red light district. The widely acclaimed film, written and directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, won a string of accolades including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2005.

Bill Mason

Bill Mason was a Canadian naturalist, author, artist, filmmaker, and conservationist, noted primarily for his popular canoeing books, films, and art as well as his documentaries on wolves. Mason was also known for including passages from Christian sermons in his films. He was born in 1929 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and graduated from the University of Manitoba School of Art in 1951. He developed and refined canoeing strokes and river-running techniques, especially for complex whitewater situations. Mason canoed all of his adult life, ranging widely over the wilderness areas of Canada and the United States. Termed a "wilderness artist," Mason left a legacy that includes books, films, and artwork on canoeing and nature. His daughter Becky and son Paul are also both canoeists and artists. Mason died of cancer in 1988.

Albert Lamorisse French filmmaker and writer

Albert Lamorisse was a French filmmaker, film producer, and writer of award-winning short films which he began making in the late 1940s. He also invented the strategic board game Risk in 1957.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is a 501(c)(6) trade association in the United States. With over 112,000 members, the association claims to be the largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. It has registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs), nutrition and dietetics technicians registered (NDTRs), and other dietetics professionals as members. Founded in 1917 as the American Dietetic Association, the organization officially changed its name to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in 2012. According to the group's website, about 65% of its members are RDNs, and another 2% are NDTRs. The group's primary activities include providing testimony at hearings, lobbying the United States Congress and other governmental bodies, commenting on proposed regulations, and publishing statements on various topics pertaining to food and nutrition.

<i>Deliver Us from Evil</i> (2006 film) 2006 American film

Deliver Us from Evil is a 2006 American documentary film that explores the life of Irish Catholic priest Oliver O'Grady, who admitted to having molested and raped approximately 25 children in Northern California from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Written and directed by Amy J. Berg, it won the Best Documentary Award at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, though it lost to An Inconvenient Truth. The title of the film refers to a line in the Lord's Prayer.

<i>So Much for So Little</i> 1949 film

So Much for So Little is a 1949 American animated short documentary film directed by Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. In 1950, it won an Oscar at the 22nd Academy Awards for Documentary Short Subject, tying with A Chance to Live. It was created by Warner Bros. Cartoons for the United States Public Health Service. As a work of the United States Government, the film is in the public domain. The Academy Film Archive preserved So Much for So Little in 2005. Produced during the Harry S. Truman administration, it attained renewed relevance during the modern Medicare for All movement in the United States nearly seven decades later.

Jenny Downham is a British novelist and an ex-actress who has published four books.

References

  1. "Jenny is a Good Thing". Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour. Vol. 1, no. 3. 1970. doi:10.1016/S0022-3182(70)80131-5.
  2. "Short documentaries". Films in Review. National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. 21: 251. 1970.
  3. "NY Times: Jenny Is a Good Thing". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . Baseline & All Movie Guide. 2012. Archived from the original on October 16, 2012. Retrieved November 30, 2008.
  4. "Faculty biography". Tisch School of the Arts . Retrieved April 9, 2012.
  5. "The 42nd Academy Awards (1970) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved January 11, 2011.