Women at U-M in the 1930s

“Women Students in the 1930s at the University of Michigan” is a film made in 1939 by the Alumnae Council — a group of female Michigan graduates. The film appears to have been intended as a sort of recruitment tool, perhaps to be shown to young women in high school, extolling the excellence — and availability — of a Michigan education.

The project was conceived, written, directed and filmed by women. Though there is no sound, the images are startlingly clear — and in brilliant color. Katherine Chamberlain (B.A. 1914; M.A. 1919; Sc.D 1924), a physicist, mathematician and early expert in the science of color film, was the cinematographer. Chamberlain went on to become a professor of physics at Wayne State University.

In addition to a loose storyline that focuses on the lives of four young “coeds,” the approximately 40-minute film offers many candid scenes of campus life in 1939: dorms, registration, classes, a football game, parties and canoeing down the Huron River.