Encyclopædia Britannica Films

Encyclopædia Britannica Films (also named EB Films for short) was the top producer and distributor of educational 16 mm films and later VHS videocassettes for schools and libraries from the 1940s through the 1990s (by which time the internet replaced video as a primary source for educational media). Prior to 1943, the company operated under the name of Electrical Research Products Inc. (ERPI) Classroom Films.

History

Early years as ERPI Classroom Films

In November 1928, John Otterson of Electrical Research Products Inc. decided to make use of the latest sound technology in 35mm motion pictures and apply it to the 16mm format that was gradually being adopted by colleges and schools with easier-to-use projectors. The company had already been involved with many Hollywood studios including Warner Bros. and boasted an operating business of $20 million leasing equipment to theaters. The headquarter offices were shared with its parent company AT&T in New York City, with the Bell Labs as the research staff and Western Electric as its manufacturer.

At first, there was much skepticism of the value of motion pictures as an educational tool in public schools, despite mogul William Fox's willingness to spend $9 million in putting projectors into the nation's classrooms. As lampooned in '' The New Yorker'' (November 9, 1929): "We doubt if any director could photograph Bunker Hill for the kiddies without stopping the fighting at least once for Major Pitcairn to sing ' Sonny Boy'. We doubt if any director could photograph a major operation without interrupting it for a mandolin solo by one of the surgeons. Also, we are troubled by the haunting dread of living in a completely canned civilization where everyone will look like Clara Bow and talk like Eddie Leonard. Without doubting Mr. Fox's honorable intention, we are nonetheless anxious to know whether the talkies are going to approach science and education the way they have approached life. We want to know whether they intend to give truth a happy ending!"

During its first year of operation, Otterson appointed "Colonel" Frederick L. Devereux as company head, along with Varney Clyde Arnspiger, a former superintendent of schools. Under Arnspiger, a special team of experts was assembled, among them researchers Howard Gay, Max Brunstetter and Miss Laura Kreiger, along with Dr. Melvin Brodshaug from Columbia University who would stay with the company for over two decades. Among others involved, Howard Stokes and Arthur Edwin Krows (famous for an earlier ''Yale Chronicles of America'' educational series) became leading production supervisors.

In its early years, ERPI had competition with both the Pathé Exchange, which entered the educational market in conjunction with Harvard University, and Eastman Teaching Films, an offspring of Eastman Kodak that had invented the 16mm format along with E.I. Dupont de Nemours back in 1923. The latter company had made an estimated 300 silent (with title cards) films by the thirties (with eventually 270 silent and later sound films officially registered for copyright between 1927 and 1943). An often repeated story involved Arnsiger getting invited to an alley fist fight with an Eastman representative who feared losing a fortune with their silent films already in circulation. (Later, in the 1940s, Eastman's film library would be sold to them.)

Newark, New Jersey was among the first public school systems to incorporate sound movie projectors in their classrooms in 1930. During the early years, projectors were often sold with films initially, until the national total reached a thousand by 1936. Until many technical problems were fixed (the best 16mm projectors were manufactured after 1933), ERPI sold both 16mm and 35mm formats.

James Brill, an artist, unofficially became narrator on the majority of ERPI films (and later many early EB films through the mid-fifties). His stentorian style made science and geography topics easy to understand for children. In 1930, he also helped supervise the company's first major series, profiling the musical instruments of an orchestra (i.e. ''The Brass Choir'', ''The String Choir'', ''The Woodwind Choir'', ''The Percussion Group''). These were all successfully reissued in later years before being redone in color in 1956.

Among the first films to be sold with text brochures to aid teachers were nature documentaries focusing on the time-lapse photography of plants and close-up footage of animals. These were credited to (George) Clyde Fisher of the American Museum of Natural History, borrowing much footage from earlier British Instructional Films. Other early films of importance included a Yale University backed Arnold Gesell covering early child development and a slow motion study of football techniques with popular coaches like Biff Jones of West Point and H.E. Von Kersburg of Harvard. Dr. Carey Croneis supervised some geology subjects and also worked on the science pavilion at the Century of Progress fair of 1933–34, which (in turn) inspired another newcomer, Edward Shumaker, to join the company and fine-tune the title logos. A renewed slogan read "ERPI Films bring the world to the classroom".

In the spring of 1937, ERPI scored a surprise "blockbuster" with ''Adventures of Bunny Rabbit''. Its widespread appeal was partly due to narrator James Brill ending with a question directed towards the kindergarten and first grade students watching, one that was repeated by their teachers: "And now Bunny is once more with his mother. What do YOU think he is telling Mother Gray Rabbit – and what do YOU think Mother Rabbit is telling Bunny?" Animal pictures were among ERPI's (and later Britannica's) best sellers with popular late 30s and '40s titles as ''Three Little Kittens'', ''Snapping Turtle'' and a post-war dramatization of Aesop's ''The Hare and the Tortoise'' (later redone in animation).

Geography was covered with a very relatable series called "Children of Many Lands", which compared the similarities and differences of daily life outside of the United States. A typical title like ''Children of Japan'' made sure children were seen in a classroom not unlike one at home. More exotic was Attilio Gatti's filming of the "Dark Continent" in ''Pygmies of Africa'' and Amos Burg's portrait of ''People of Western China'' shortly before the Japanese invasion. Unfortunately World War II curtailed international travel and the films of this type for a while.

John Walker got his start with 1938's ''Navajo Indians'' and remained a prolific producer through the early 1970s, with a particular emphasis in his later decades with animal subjects and a late 1960 "Problems of Conservation" series.

Back in 1932, heads Devereaux and Arnspiger had established a very close relationship with Beardsley Ruml and Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago, providing the films the extra prestige of scholarly credits. A promotional book ''The Educational Talking Picture'' was published by Devereaux through the University in 1933, followed four years later by Max Brunstetter's ''How to Use the Educational Sound Film''. The close relationship between ERPI and the university tightened considerably more after John Otterson had left the company to work for Paramount Pictures in 1935.

When Hutchins appointed William B. Benton as the university's vice president, his involvement with the films was much like that of a production head. By this time, the Federal Communications Commission had started pressuring the parent company AT&T to divest its highly profitable subsidiary. After an attempt to get the Rockefeller Foundation to purchase ERPI, Benton made another unsuccessful effort with Henry Luce of '' Life'' (although the magazine giant initially saw little future in educational films, Time-Life would belatedly enter the market in the 1960s).

Merging with Encyclopædia Britannica

William Benton and Robert Hutchins had established a successful relationship with chairman Colonel Robert E. Wood of the Sears, Roebuck and Company. Over a lunch meeting held December 9, 1941, Benton managed to persuade Wood to donate Sears' profitable, but aging, subsidiary Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. to the University of Chicago outright as a tax write-off. The process of this transaction took more than a year to complete, culminating on February 1, 1943. Benton also acquired the services of EB editor Walter Yust. (His son Larry would later become a top filmmaker for the company.)

In a second move, Walter Page of AT&T and Kennedy Stevenson of Western Electric sold their interests in ERPI Classroom Films to Benton for $1 million, to be paid over the next decade. The University itself didn't own the company outright, but had the option to acquire half of Benton's stock (and soon decided not to).

Benton changed the name over to Encyclopædia Britannica Films because he had once heard a school child call the films "burpy" on account of the rhyming. The first titles to sport the new name were released in November 1943. Later on, titles sported a simplified "EB Films" logo. After expanding the facilities with $1.5 million invested, William Benton temporarily left to become Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs under President Harry Truman, then as a senator and arch adversary of Joseph McCarthy before returning in 1952. With Beardsley Ruml mostly in charge, a prestigious board of directors was set up. Operating as president for a time was the future Ford Fund for Adult Education head Cyril Scott Fletcher.

Although production was curtailed during the war (with only two brand-new titles registered for copyright in the year 1945), profits increased dramatically as 150, 000 16mm projectors were in operation by 1946. During this mid-decade period, a great many previously released titles were successfully given new soundtracks in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and other languages for foreign export.

Milan Herzog began a long association with EB in 1946 with ''The Mailman'' and other portraits of common occupations. He eventually became one of the most prolific producers. Popular titles later in the 1950s and 1960s include ''Tobacco and the Human Body'' and ''The Passenger Train (2nd edition)'', along with a series on the Soviet Union co-directed by Arnold Michaelis.

In an effort to keep the films in line with their educational goals, music scores were rarely used prior to the late 1940s and then only selectively used with a greater focus on narration. While this occasionally made them seem a bit static and lecture-like, it also prevented them from aging fast on account of changing musical tastes (a problem with rival educational films of the period).

Curiously the company was slow to make the transition to color, despite the Kodachrome 16mm process being popular with rival companies like Bailey Films and Coronet Films (starting before the war). The first color EB films were not made until 1946–47, covering painting lectures by Eliot O'Hara and scenic portraits of farm life (i.e. ''Spring on the Farm'' and ''Winter on the Farm''). As quoted in the silver jubilee anniversary title ''Making Films That Teach'', "Color is pretty but sometimes expensive for the teaching value you might get from it." Nonetheless, color soon became quite mainstream in the middle fifties, as EB was soon updating popular early titles with all-color remakes such as ''The Woodwind Choir'' and ''Spiders''.

In cooperation with Emerson Films, a couple dramatic biographies on famous people were produced economically in Hollywood, marking the first time hired actors were used. For a brief period, it was decided to move forward in this route and a former movie director Walter Colmes once affiliated with Republic Pictures headed the company for a two-year period before being succeeded by Maurice B. Mitchell who would bring EB Films into its most successful years.

Although the overall quality of EB's product was already ahead of the competition, it had gained further esteem with the arrival of John Barnes, a veteran of CBS radio writing and some stage work. In 1951, Barnes collaborated with producer Gordon Weisenborn in ''People Along the Mississippi'', one of the earliest school films to address the sticky topic of race relations. (One key scene shows a light-skinned Paul stop playing with his darker-skinned friend due to peer pressure.) Passionate about social rights, Barnes once personally protested the censorship of his biography ''Sir Francis Drake: The Rise of England Sea Power'' (featuring an interracial friendship) in Georgia schools.

Before '' Brown v. Board of Education'' (and even years after), many public schools in the United States were still segregated by race. Therefore, EB was initially reluctant to cover many social studies subjects for fear of offending top purchasers in southern U.S. states. As reported to historian Geoff Alexander, Thomas G. Smith stated as late as the 1960s: "if they were filming in a classroom and there were a couple black children in the room, they'd just frame the other way. If they had to choose several kids to be featured and the black kids were taller than the rest, they'd ask for the shorter children."

EB's Golden Age

With Maurice Mitchell leading as company supervisor (starting in 1953), business doubled to $4,500, 000 in a few short years. Westinghouse Broadcasting and Trans-Lux (which distributed some of the films on 35mm for theaters) made some of the company's catalog available to television stations for the first time. During this same period, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and other Hollywood studios utilized Britannica's subsidiary, Films Inc. (owned since 1951), to handle the 16mm educational distribution of their theatrical material.

Adding to the fortunes of the educational film industry in general was the Cold War panic imposed by the Soviet launching of Sputnik, which prompted the U.S. government to spend more federal money on America's schools in an effort to keep the nation in fierce competition. In 1958, Mitchell held a special meeting in Washington D.C. with the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Affairs to include motion pictures and other visual media in federal budgets. (He is seen lecturing on the importance of cinematic education in the following year's ''The Unique Contribution''.) William Benton also campaigned passionately enough and helped get FCC chairman Newt Minnow, Anna Rosenberg Hoffman and Adlai Stevenson II to pressure Congress to pass the National Defense Education Act. (Stevenson soon became a chairman with Encyclopædia Britannica Enterprises and not the only high profile politician to do so. Hubert Humphrey also joined after losing the 1968 United States presidential election.)

One of John Barnes' 1953 contributions, ''The Living City'', earned an Academy Award nomination. The following year, he filmed a series of historical subjects in England, among them the socially conscious ''The Pilgrims'', ''Captain John Smith, Founder of Virginia'', and ''Roger Williams: Founder of Rhode Island''. Some of these gained praise even by mainstream theatrical film critics who traditionally ignored school films, like Howard Thompson of '' The New York Times'' (July 3, 1955).

In addition to many artistic subjects and some of the best school films covering ''The Renaissance: Its Beginnings'', Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he also spearheaded a "Humanities" series sponsored in part by the Ford Foundation (which had previously back an equally ambitious, but less successful financially, ''Physics: The Complete Introductory Course'' that was co-scripted by future president Warren Everote). His coverage of Thorton Wilder's ''Our Town'', Charles Dickens and ''Plato's Apology, the Life and Teachings of Socrates'' were all typical of Barnes' knack for making classics more entertaining to middle and high schools. Occasionally he would battle the front office for this reason, since sometimes "entertainment" was questioned in regards to "education". As Geoff Alexander profiled in a series of letters regarding his and director Douglas Campbell's treatment of ''Macbeth'', president Maurice Mitchell had plenty to say in a letter written June 24, 1964:

Barnes successfully fought back.

Ever the idealist, he once stated in a 1966 interview: "I have an idea—a faith, I suppose it really is—that some of my films—or a single film, or even a single sequence in a film or a shot in a film—will light up a young mind somewhere, light it up so that nothing—unsympathetic teachers, lack of a decent place to live or lack of love—can ever plunge it into darkness."

Meanwhile, William's son Charles Benton had troubles of his own, often dealing with his cautious father. He had joined in 1953 as an assistant to top producer Milan Herzog (and later vice president in the mid-1960s), moving up through the ranks by organizing the company's mailing lists. As marketer for Films Inc. (a subsidiary of EB) and later president of filming, Charles was most enthusiastic in adding both profits and prestige by outsourcing major companies like David L. Wolper and National Geographic Society under the EB banner. Neither the senior Benton nor co-head Mitchell was particularly supportive. Father to son (in a January 7, 1966 letter): "As you know, I am exceedingly uneasy about your preoccupation with products which do not carry the EBF imprimatur. I have the feeling that you hope to get something for nothing."

Charles left in 1967 (partly pressured out by the elder Benton and Mitchell) and soon convinced EB to split off Films Inc. as a separate company with him in charge. That same year saw two other upsets to the company hierarchy. Mitchell himself accepted a chancellor job with the University of Denver that summer and was replaced by the more disciplined (keeping films under budget) Warren Everote, a veteran at EB since 1946 and previously president for a short period earlier that decade. In July, William Deneen left to start up a rival company with Columbia Pictures: the Learning Corporation of America would quickly become one of EB's biggest rivals in the 16mm field.

During his past decade with EB, William Deneen's specialty was geography films, being owner of an independent film company since 1950 that was distributing through EB until they absorbed his company and made him vice president. Among his most famous in-depth looks of everyday life overseas were a series on Japan, ''Hungary and Communism'' and a trio shot on Samuel Bronston's sets of '' Fall of the Roman Empire'', including ''Claudius: Boy of Ancient Rome''. These were certainly the most expensive ''looking'' school films of the era, despite being made very economically.

Despite dramatic changes in management, combined with some cost-cutting, the 1960s and early seventies produced many memorable classics. A Bill of Rights series both dramatized and explained major legal battles that school students often take for granted (examples include ''Freedom to Speak, People of New York Vs. Irving Feiner'' and ''Free Press Vs. Fair Trial By Jury- the Sheppard Case'', latter produced by Stanley Croner). John Barnes, who also contributed to some of these, tackled ''Shaw vs. Shakespeare'' on the historical accuracy and personality of Julius Caesar; this was filmed in 1969 with the cast and sets of a failed British play ''Her First Roman''. Larry Yust and Clifton Fadiman adapted Shirley Jackson's controversial short story ''The Lottery'' despite its shocking (for 1969 school students) ending.

Didactic science films were not always successful in keeping bored students awake and alert, but EB fared better than much of the competition. Special praise goes to cinematographers such as the very prolific Isidore Mankofsky, who could insert many close-ups of menacing hands zooming at the screen and low-angle shots of vacationers among the geological close-ups of the typical ''The Beach: A River of Sand''. Charles F. Finance (who carried on through the 1980s), Stanley Croner and Warren Brown were among those who contributed this and other popular favorites of the long running American Geological Institute series. 8mm loops covering chemistry and medical topics were another market tapped into at this time for the serious science student to study subjects in more detail.

In addition, throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, were a wide assortment of full color biology films covering everything from protozoa to hummingbirds to veracious army ants on the hunt; many of these were produced by John Walker and Bert Van Bork