Mr. B Natural (1956)

“Knew your father, I did.”

An androgynous 'hep pixie' helps a lonely junior high student release his inner musician and join his school band.

Date of release
1956-10-14
TMDB
2.5 / 10 (10)
Runtime
27m
Genres
Music, Fantasy
Director
Phil Patton

Casting

Interesting facts

Mr. B Natural is a short sponsored film produced in 1956 by Kling Film Productions for the C.G. Conn Company, directed by Phil Patton. It is also the name of the film's main character, played by Betty Luster.

Production

Mr. B Natural was produced by Chicago's Kling Film Productions, which prepared industrial films and commercials. The film's sponsor, C.G. Conn, was introducing its new line of "Connstellation" brass instruments in the mid-1950s, which may explain the emphasis on these instruments in the storyline.

Shooting took place in 1956, on 16mm in Technicolor, most of it presumably at Kling's huge Chicago facility, with "the largest sound stages outside of the [West] Coast.". Other scenes are at the school grounds of Waukegan Elementary School in Illinois and Miami Sr. High School in Florida were used for location shots. Footage of workers at a C.G. Conn plant also appears.

Betty Luster was in Chicago in the last months of 1956 as a featured dancer-singer in the revue "Hey Day" at the Palmer House's Empire Room, which would suggest that her segments in Mr. B Natural were filmed during this period.

Patton's only other known credit was for directing the American dubs and footage of the Soviet children's classic The Snow Queen in 1959. Patton joined Chicago's Kling Productions in February 1956, after seven years as producer of the children's television program "Super Circus" (broadcast nationally on ABC), noted for such live-animal acts as elephants, lions, and tigers.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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