Social guidance films constitute a genre of educational films attempting to guide children and adults to behave in certain ways. Originally produced by the U.S. government as "attitude-building films" during World War II, the genre grew to be a common source of instruction in elementary and high school classrooms in the United States from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. The films covered topics including courtesy, grammar, social etiquette and dating, personal hygiene and grooming, health and fitness, civic and moral responsibility, sexuality, child safety, national loyalty, racial and social prejudice, juvenile delinquency, drug use, and driver safety; the genre also includes films for adults, covering topics such as marriage, business etiquette, general safety, home economics, career counseling and how to balance budgets. A subset is known as hygiene films addressing mental hygiene and sexual hygiene.
The Ealing comedies is an informal name for a series of comedy films produced by the London-based Ealing Studios during a ten-year period from 1947 to 1957. Often considered to reflect Britain's post-war spirit, the most celebrated films in the sequence include Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), Whisky Galore! (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955). Hue and Cry (1947) is generally considered to be the earliest of the cycle, and Barnacle Bill (1957) the last, although some sources list Davy (1958) as the final Ealing comedy. Many of the Ealing comedies are ranked among the greatest British films, and they also received international acclaim.
Fawcett Comics, a division of Fawcett Publications, was one of several successful comic book publishers during the Golden Age of Comic Books in the 1940s. Its most popular character was Captain Marvel, the alter ego of radio reporter Billy Batson, who transformed into the hero whenever he said the magic word "Shazam!".
An educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. Educational films have been used in classrooms as an alternative to other teaching methods.
London Films Productions is a British film and television production company founded in 1932 by Alexander Korda and from 1936 based at Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire, near London. The company's productions included The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Things to Come (1936), Rembrandt (1936), and The Four Feathers (1939). The facility at Denham was taken over in 1939 by Rank and merged with Pinewood to form D & P Studios. The outbreak of war necessitated that The Thief of Bagdad (1940) be completed in California, although Korda's handful of American-made films still displayed Big Ben as their opening corporate logo.
Sam Katzman was an American film producer and director. Katzman's specialty was producing low-budget genre films, including serials, which had disproportionately high returns for the studios and his financial backers.
Milton R. Krasner, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer who won an Academy Award for Three Coins in the Fountain (1954).
Harry W. Gerstad was an American film editor who sometimes directed films. The Academy Award-winning editor also worked on television. He edited as well as directed for the 1950s program Adventures of Superman. In the 1960s he worked for Bing Crosby Productions and Batjac Productions. Gerstad retired to Palm Springs, California in 1973 and lived there until his death in 2002.
Centron Corporation was a leading industrial and educational film production company, specializing in classroom and corporate 16mm films and VHS videocassettes. A slightly smaller company than its contemporaries such as Encyclopædia Britannica Films, Coronet Films and Learning Corporation of America, it was very successful from the late 1940s through the early 1990s, gaining added fame with the Academy Award-nominated Leo Beuerman in 1969.
John Gervase Dighton was a British playwright and screenwriter.
Bonar Colleano was an American stage and film actor based in the United Kingdom.
Russell Metty, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer who won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color, for the 1960 film Spartacus.
Adelphi Films Limited was a British film production company. With its sister company Advance, it produced over 30 films in the 1940s and 1950s and distributed many more. Adelphi linked Gainsborough Pictures and the raw “kitchen sink” dramas of the early 1960s.
Clinton Charles Sundberg was an American character actor in film and on stage.
Houseley Stevenson was a British-American character actor who was born in London on July 30, 1879, and died in Duarte, California on August 6, 1953.
The Melody Masters were a series of first-rate big band musical film shorts produced by Warner Brothers, under the supervision of Samuel Sax at their Vitaphone studio in New York between 1931 and 1939, and in Burbank, California with producer Gordon Hollingshead in charge between 1940 and 1946.
Encyclopædia Britannica Films 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. Prior to 1943, the company operated under the name of Electrical Research Products Inc. (ERPI) Classroom Films.
Margaret (Trudy) Carlile Travis (1921-2011) was an American director and scriptwriter of numerous short educational, documentary, and industrial and other sponsored films. She wrote the script for the film Leo Beuerman, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary short in 1970.
