Mormon Literature Database

The Lord's Way
Directed by "Judge" Wetzel Whitaker
Production Company: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Premiere Date: November 1948
Length: 22 min.


Genre:		Film
Production Type:		LDS Church Production
Content Types:		Instructional Film
Distribution Types:		Private Church Distribution

Subjects: welfare; welfare film; poverty; priesthood;

Summary:
Two-thirds of this film gives two fictional cases of the LDS Church welfare program assisting families in need; another third contains an animated sequence describing the program abstractly. This portion contains footage from the Disney Silly Symphony The Grasshopper and the Ants, taken from the Aesop fable about industry.

Annotations:
See Mormon Film: Key Films of the Second Wave

This film was created at the suggestion of "Judge" Wetzel Whitaker when three apostles--Elders Lee, Cowley, and Petersen--visited him at the Walt Disney Studio in 1947. Judge recalled that it was a "somewhat rash" offer, but it changed the course of his life and LDS films forever.

The offer to make one film on Church welfare soon divided into two, and while Eric Larson directed a documentary called Church Welfare in Action, Whitaker headed up this project. Discouraged halfway through, he received a special blessing from his stake patriarch promising him that his work would become known throughout the Church.

The Lord's Way, possibly a more intricate project, was completed a month after Church Welfare in Action, and when it was done Church President George Albert Smith personally paid for the filmmakers and their wives to come to Salt Lake City to screen the films. The General Authorities were impressed--David O. McKay told Whitaker they were "the best films ever to come out of Hollywood"--and the films circulated throughout the wards for years. More importantly, they induced Church leaders such as McKay to consider the use a permanent film studio would be. Thus, the BYU Motion Picture Department was established as the Church's filmmaking arm in January 1953, shortly after McKay became Church President; Judge Whitaker left Disney to become its first director general, a decision he did not make until he remembered his special blessing and realized how the BYU Studio would fullfill it. Indeed, since directing The Lord's Way Whitaker has arguably become the most influential filmmaker in the history of LDS cinema.

Medium: 16mm with cel animated 35mm printed down
Cast Members: Nathan Hale; Ruth Hale; Pinto Colvig - Grasshopper
Distributor: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Excerpts published as:
Excerpt from the Lord's way	Film