A new film from DreamWorks seeks to return moviegoers to a time when milk was delivered to the doorstep, toys came inside cereal boxes and advertisers gave away cars, appliances, trips and cash to consumers who won contests writing jingles, slogans and advertisements.

The film, called ""The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio,"" is scheduled to open Friday in cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, then expand into additional markets in mid-October. The movie, like the namesake book on which it is based (Simon & Schuster, 2001), tells the life story of a homemaker, Evelyn Ryan, portrayed by Julianne Moore.

In the 1950's and 1960's, Mrs. Ryan kept her family of 10 afloat by winning scores of contests sponsored by brands like Dr Pepper, Alcoa aluminum foil, Jell-O and Armstrong floor wax. Prizes in the contests she entered included a supermarket shopping spree, a Triumph TR3 sports car and a trip ""anywhere in the free world,"" as an announcer exclaims in an ad for a Dial soap contest.

""Prize Winner"" offers an affectionate - and revisionist - look back at contests, a Madison Avenue mainstay from the 1930's through the 1960's. Contests tapped into the human impulse to want something for nothing, but added a requirement that entrants demonstrate creative prowess in writing prose or poetry - often, as they used to say, ""in 25 words or less.""

For instance, a contest for Beech-Nut gum asked entrants for lyrics for a song about a hero sandwich. Mrs. Ryan's winning entry celebrated what she called ""my frisk-the-Frigidaire, clean-the-cupboards-bare sandwich."" She won the shopping spree with a poem for a contest co-sponsored by Seabrook Farms frozen foods and a Defiance supermarket named Big Chief:

Wide selections, priced to please her,

Scads of Seabrook in their freezer,

Warmth that scorns the impersonal trend

Stamps Big Chief as the housewife's friend

By contrast, sweepstakes - consumer promotions that today are far more prevalent than contests - determine their winners by random drawings. In other words, ""No skill required,"" as one glum contest fan tells another in ""Prize Winner.""

The movie re-examines the popular notion that the era was a very kitschy, superficial and shallow time marked by ""the enslavement of the housewife"" by a consumerist society, said the director, Jane Anderson, who also wrote the screenplay.

We all make Madison Avenue to be the big, bad wolf, but Evelyn and those women who had inner lives were not manipulated by the advertisers, Ms. Anderson said.

Rather, housewives wanted new appliances not for status, but so they didn't have to boil diapers on the top of the stove.

The convenience foods of the period like instant rice and TV dinners were appreciated not for their nutritional qualities, but because serving them meant they didn't have to spend hours at the stove, she added, and could grab some time for their own.

Similarly, the enthusiasm for the contests among Mrs. Ryan and her friends, who formed contest clubs, may appear naﶥ in the 21st century, but ""they and thousands of other housewives knew how to play it,"" Ms. Anderson said, ""deconstructing each contest"" to determine the best strategy to win the prizes.

The movie is filled with delightful period details, including glimpses of vintage products like Quaker Puffed Rice cereal, Friskies canned dog food and Argus cameras. The music for the film is a combination of songs from the era, like ""Bye Bye Blues"" by Les Paul and Mary Ford, contemporary versions of old songs and original music written by John Frizzell.

We did listen to quite a bit of commercials from the period, Mr. Frizzell said. 'See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet' was the one that really stuck out. His reference was to the buoyant jingle sung by Dinah Shore on her weekly TV series, sponsored by Chevrolet.

Although contests have largely been supplanted by sweepstakes, they are making a comeback with an updated twist, as sponsors take contests online.

For instance, Chevrolet, sold by General Motors, promoted the 2006 HHR sedan with a contest that took place on a Web site. Chevrolet bought all the commercial time on ""The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"" last Thursday to reveal the contest's winner.

And Geico is sponsoring a contest asking consumers to create 15-second films featuring the Geico gecko character, which will run on a special Web site, goldengecko.com.

""The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"" joins a lengthy list of movies in which the ad business provides plot lines, among them ""The Hucksters"" (1947), ""Lover Come Back"" (1961) and ""The Thrill of It All"" (1963). It joins a shorter list of films in which ad contests figure in the story, among them the 1940 Preston Sturges comedy ""Christmas in July"" and Woody Allen's 1987 ""Radio Days.""

Those with long memories might recall an episode of the 1950's sitcom ""Topper"" that satirized ad contests, in which the ghosts that haunted Topper helped his wife win a contest despite the awfulness of the poem she entered: Everyone loves Individual Oats. It's the cereal everyone votes ... for.

Source: NYTimes."