Cecil Stokes - When the Organ Played ‘Oh Promise Me’ (1943)

"In this extremely rare surviving example of “Auroratone” films, abstract visuals are created by
filming crystalline growth using polarized light and time-lapse photography. Melancholic sentimental
music plays, crooned by Bing Crosby. All but forgotten today, the Auroratone films were produced in the early 1940s by an obscure British inventor and mystic named Cecil Stokes (1910-1956). He intended for them to be used as a therapeutic aid in the treatment of post traumatic stress, manic depression, anxiety disorders, and similar conditions. They were much like this one – slow, mildly sad and melancholic music combined with imagery, usually abstract, but some used semi-animated drawings instead, according to contemporary descriptions.

"Stokes was awarded a patent for his film process in 1942, and he formed the Auroratone
Foundation of America to make and distribute his films. One of his partners in the effort was Bing
Crosby, who also contributed new song recordings to a number of them. Auroratone films were donated to a number of hospitals in the US and England, where records indicate they were indeed used as part of therapy with vets. One of them was a VA hospital in Ohio, where the trial program led to a series of articles in major medical journals, written by Capt. Herbert E. Rubin
and 2nd Lt. Elias Katz of the Crile General Hospital in Parma, Ohio. They consistently reported positive benefits. “Most patients became more accessible” after watching the films. They “spoke more freely,” making it “possible for the psychiatrist to establish rapport.” Curiously, an article about Stokes and his Auroratone films also appeared in a 1944 issue of Rosicrucian Digest.

"According to reports published in Billboard magazine, Stokes later hoped to make the films
available to the general public in “film jukeboxes,” commonly known as Scopitone machines, which were popular in bars and lounges during the 1940s and ‘50s. In the summer of 1945, he made a presentation to a number of such distributers in Chicago, but the businessmen demurred, reportedly saying “the haziness of the color pattern – or lack of pattern – made the process unsuitable for adaption to jukes.” In a word, it was just too weird. The record fades after that, except to note that Stokes died less than 10 years later."

text borrowed from program to Visions: Animation and Abstraction Experimental Masterpieces, 1908 – 1994, shown at Northwest Film Forum, Seattle, WA, on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - a co-presentation of The Sprocket Society and Third Eye Cinema

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