Q I remember a 1940s movie called F.O.B. Detroit, starring Albert Dekker and Joel McCrea, that was filmed in one of our auto plants. I can't find anything about it, however, and my friends think I'm "slipping a clutch."
—Guy Bachelard, Rochester Hills, Mich.
Your memory "clutch" is in great shape! The 1941 film you recall was Reaching for the Sun, but the novel on which the movie was based was indeed titled F.O.B. Detroit, by Michigan native Wessel Smitter. The movie, a boisterous comedy about a country bumpkin who moves to the Motor City to work in a manufacturing plant, steered clear of the book's grittier realities of factory life.
