DBusiness Magazine Celluloid Service Starting more than a century ago, Detroit’s automakers commissioned thousands of films that rivaled Hollywood’s output through the 1950s. Modern Times: Edsel Ford, Charlie Chaplin, and Henry Ford pose in front of machinery in 1923 at Ford’s headquarters in Highland Park. // Courtesy of the Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University As an aspiring actor, Bill Bixby worked as a lifeguard at a Los Angeles hotel in 1959 when, as the story goes, a Detroit advertising executive spotted him and offered him a chance to appear in an industrial film. It led to enough work that Bixby called the films “motion picture summer stock,” drawing a comparison to the theatrical standby that kept actors going year-round in repertory productions throughout the country.