Dating Do's and Don'ts (1949)
Dating Do's and Don'ts is a 1949 instructional film designed for American high schools, to teach adolescents basic dating skills, produced by Coronet Instructional Films and directed by Gilbert Altschul with the assistance of Reuben Hill, Research Professor of Family Life at the University of North Carolina. In this film, the boy is the sole initiator of any contact with the girl, and all arrangements are made under the warm supervision of the family, particularly a mother who is a matriarchal housewife. This film, as many of the other educational shorts of the post World War II era, denotes the traditional socially conservative values that were common in the early to mid 20th century. His mother, as the film was released in the late 1940s, was raised during the end of the Victorian Era, in the 1910s or 1920s decade, supposing she is middle aged, where the custom of "courtship" was commonplace and is new to the "dating" concept, but she accepted it.