“Helping World’s Children”
The Milwaukee Journal – Mar. 30, 1955
Now playing at a Milwaukee downtown theater is a short film of universal appeal and significance. “Assignment Children” is the title. It features Danny Kaye, but the real stars are UNICEF and some of the millions of children this UN children’s fund is helping to a healthy life.
The film is a sometimes solemn and often rollicking account of the work of the children’s fun as comedian Kaye observed it in six far eastern lands from Burma to Japan.
The camera records in color the bashful smiles of little Koreans after sipping reconstituted powered milk from old army mess kits. It catches the grimaces of Burmese tots inoculated with a serum that will protect 80% of them from tuberculosis (at a nickel per child). It shows the miraculous cures of children afflicted with the horrible tropical disease called yaws. One injection of penicillin does the trick.
The children who are the stars will also, appropriately, be the film’s beneficiaries. Paramount Pictures, which financed the production, is turning all proceeds over to UNICEF. And theater operators are paying two, three, and even five times as much for “Assignment Children” as they do for an average 20 minute feature.
For UNICEF’s lean treasury the income will be a windfall. Even though benefited nations contribute money and manpower that more than match the supplies and technical help UNICEF offers, the needs of the children—the world’s future—always exceed the means available.