Twenty-five years ago, Schindler’s List premiered on NBC with no advertisements. Sixty-five million people saw the film during its Feb. 23, 1997, broadcast — dwarfing the 25 million who watched the initial American release in theaters four years earlier. According to Nielsen, the three-plus-hour event achieved a 34 share, meaning more than a third of homes viewing television that Sunday evening tuned into Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust story, which won seven Oscars, including best picture, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
“It was a staggering audience response for that subject matter and a black-and-white film,” says Warren Littlefield, then head of NBC Entertainment, which ran Schindler’s List unedited — to the objection of Congressional Family Caucus co-chair Tom Coburn, then Republican of Oklahoma, who said: “I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program. They were exposed to the violence of multiple gunshot head wounds, vile language, full-frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual activity.” (Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, a New York Republican, countered, “to equate the nudity of the Holocaust victims in the concentration camp with any sexual connotations is outrageous and offensive.”)
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Universal first contacted Littlefield, who soon spoke with Spielberg about the idea of forgoing advertisements for the duration of the screening (“we knew that a traditional commercial load would be a strange assault on the content”) by offering a single sponsorship as an “exclusive presentation, a unique proposition. It was an interesting experiment. We didn’t know how many eyeballs we could attract.” He adds, “I do remember that New York management thought, when they saw the numbers [afterward], ‘Maybe we undersold it!’”
Ford Motor Company bought in. Littlefield recalls the price tag as upwards of $10 million. In return, Ford ran a pair of low-key, 60-second commercials immediately before and after the film. The prestige-conferring spots forsook its standard jingle and callouts to key products, instead featuring voiceover narration by Lauren Bacall. (“It’s a different approach, to see if you can seed, establish the brand, without hawking your wares,” a Ford executive told The New York Times beforehand.)
Ford was a notable sponsor, given that founder Henry Ford, a believer in the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was perhaps his era’s most high-profile and efficacious antisemite, who among other efforts used his newspaper The Dearborn Independent to attack Jewish control of the film industry. In the lead-up to the telecast, the automaker and its advertising firm both denied that the history factored into the sponsorship decision. “Many of our people were involved in this project and no one ever mentioned Henry Ford,” one Ford executive told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I think quite a few are not even aware of this background … We have great respect and a long association with Mr. Spielberg. For instance, we provided the vehicles for the film Jurassic Park. We just felt it was the right thing to do to present this great story of one man’s courage.”
Spielberg declined to comment about Ford’s participation. Littlefield observes: “We were aware of the history and yet [Ford] came forward and embraced the opportunity,” he says. “Universal, Amblin and NBC didn’t overthink and go back generations to question the origins. We took it as Ford was now very much aligned with our goals.”
