As we mentioned before, fairly early in the 20th century, popular culture seem to have settled on the period roughly around 1890 as the end of the simple, leisurely-paced good old days, just before technological revolution sent the country hurtling into the future.
Just Imagine is a good example if not a good film (to be perfectly honest, I've never made it all the way through without skipping sizable chunks). The period of comparison is pushed back to 1880 – – probably in order to have a nice round hundred years before the main action set in 1980 – – but the rest of the formula is there.
El (short for Elmer) Brendel was a popular Swedish dialect comedian who was popular at the time (though not popular enough for either of his starring vehicles to turn a profit). These days he is remembered almost solely for this film which itself is remembered mainly for providing stock footage for Saturday morning serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
It's worth checking out the first few minutes just for the art direction and then fast forwarding to around the 22 minute mark where Henry Ford's anti-Semitism provides the subject for a then topical joke.
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