This 1942 newsreel item features Henry Ford, his wife Clara, and his son Edsel celebrating Henry’s 79th birthday. 

The scene of this little newsreel is Greenfield Village, Henry Ford’s historical theme park in Dearborn, Michigan. The date is July 30, 1942, and the occasion is a public-relations event to celebrate Ford’s 79th birthday and to revisit the creation of his first automobile, the 1896 quadricycle. The small brick building is a reconstruction of the workshop on Bagley Avenue in Detroit where Ford assembled his quadricycle, and that shop is still a popular attraction at Greenfield Village today.

While this footage doesn’t clearly show it, by 1942 Ford was slipping, both physically and mentally. After suffering the first in a series of strokes the year before, then finally losing a long and nasty battle to union organizers, Ford had left the day-to-day control of the mammoth Ford Rouge plant to his henchman, Harry Bennett. And while the film mentions Ford’s giant new B-24 bomber plant in Willow Run, Ford was initially opposed to the ambitious project, and he never really gave it his full personal attention. Ford’s iron grip over his empire was loosening, and less than a year after this newsreel was filmed, Ford’s only son Edsel died from stomach cancer at the age of 49. At that point, the company was essentially adrift. . But for now, here we see Henry, wife Clara, and son Edsel in a moment of celebration. Video below.