Chicago

= Chapter 6 = = **Chicago Beckons - Encyclopaedia Britannica Films** =

Once my duties at OWI were over, I left my office at 224 W 57th Street forever and walked across Columbus Circle to my future office not more than 10 minutes away. I was tense. Many questions came to mind. Am I doing the right thing? Is Encyclopaedia Britannica Films (EBF) going to be my future? Should I be exploring other alternatives? The questions continued until I arrived at the office of Dr. Clyde Arnspiger, the Executive Vice President.

I was well received. There was work for me for a long time Dr. Arnspiger told me. He said my work would be in the Production Department and walked me to another office where he introduced me to Dr. Mel Brodshaug, who was in charge of all film production at EB. For a moment I could hear him better than see him as he was shrouded in cigarette smoke. “Your friend at OWI, Frank Cellier, told me a lot about you and I welcome you as a colleague,” he said. Frank Cellier, a French Huguenot from South Africa, had been my colleague and friend at the Dutch desk at OWI, and he had joined EBF just before me. Dr. Brodshaug described the translation project. But translation was only the beginning -- I had to take care of the narration as well as the preparation of the materials for printing and sending the finished prints to foreign countries. It was all to be my responsibility. He kept me about an hour, then showed me my office. He introduced me to the telephone operator, and I was given my own telephone number. Then my old colleague, Frank Cellier, appeared and took me over to meet other employees, including Jim Brill who had narrated all the original films.

In my office there were large shelves filled with 400 films which I was to translate and turn into Spanish and Portuguese language films. To my relief, I discovered that the vast majority were only 15 minutes in length. On my desk were Teacher’s Guides which contained the full text of the films and suggestions on how to use them in the classroom. I spent the rest of the first day reading the guides and searching for translators in the phone book.

Next day I was scheduled to meet someone in charge of the formalities of becoming an employee. How much would they pay me? Would there be other benefits? Frank told me not to worry - my salary would be the same as his. Having worked for the government I was prepared to wait a while before the formalities were completed. But this was a private company, and everything was settled quickly.

Officially I started working for the film unit of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in January, 1946. At that time our offices were still in New York. I was employed with a simple hand shake; there was no need for me to sign a contract. I had joined a very pleasant team where colleagues were friends.

Jim Brill suggested that I contact the Spanish Department at Columbia University for translation help. I was lucky to find an interested, retired professor who was born in Spain. He took on the translation of my Spanish series. I asked him for the first, translated text, so I could use it as a test for a narrator. He surprised me by proposing to do the voice narration himself. I tested him, and he seemed fine. We worked out a system where in the recording studio, I would tap his shoulder when he needed to start each narration piece. This allowed him to concentrate on the text without having to look at the film which was being projected on the screen.

With the first narration done, my next problem was editing. I had never used the editing equipment that Britannica was using, and their resident editor refused to touch “those foreign versions.” I had to experiment myself with editing the sound track, eventually succeeding. I met the professor three times a week and edited the days in between, sometimes even Sunday. I started the Portuguese versions immediately after the Spanish titles were completed. It was a busy time, but I managed to get an idea also of what my colleagues were scripting and producing. As the foreign versions neared completion, I started to try out my own skills in scripting and producing. I also learned about EB and its history.

Encyclopaedia Britannica was a remarkable institution, a monument amongst reference works. It is the oldest encyclopaedia in the English language and one of the most respected reference books in the world. The first edition was compiled by three Scots: Andrew Bell, Colin Macfarquhar and William Smellie. It was not a coincidence that the Encyclopaedia was first published in 1768 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the home of the writer Walter Scott, the influential philosopher David Hume, and the diarist and author James Boswell. It is one of the most famous, enduring legacies of the Scottish Enlightenment. It was a conservative reaction to the innovative French Encyclopédie by Diderot and d’Alembert published between 1751 and 1765. The Encyclopedia Britannica, together with the German Brockhaus, became the shining example of the modern encyclopaedia. The Britannica not only provided information to its readers but aimed at encouraging them to gain a clear understanding of people, cultures, science and major world events.

When I joined the company, the Encyclopaedia Britannica had not been under Scottish or British ownership for a long time. After long standing financial difficulties, it was acquired in 1928 by the American Sears, Roebuck and Co. They hired a ship to move all the thousands of printing plates from the United Kingdom to the United States. The President of Sears Roebuck and Co., General Robert E. Wood, ordered the printing of the first American edition and introduced new marketing and selling techniques.

During WWII, William Benton, who was then Vice President of the University of Chicago (UOFC), urged Sears to donate Britannica to the University, and General Wood agreed to make such a gift. It took another year to work out the details of the transfer. From then on the University of Chicago became the academic base for the Encyclopaedia, while working in close collaboration with experts from Oxford, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh, Toronto, Geneva, Sydney, Tokyo, Manila, Seoul and other centres of learning and enterprise.

In the beginning, the University of Chicago was also going to market the encyclopaedias itself, but it quickly realized that they did not have appropriate sales and marketing capabilities. So Mr. Benton suggested that he take over the commercial operations of the company and pay the University a royalty. In time, Encyclopaedia Britannica provided the University a substantial income. The University of Chicago had struck a good deal through its collaborations with Benton. By 1973 when Benton died, the royalties had been almost fifty million dollars.

William Benton was someone who had been encouraged by his parents to excel in everything he did. He studied at Yale University, where he became friends with Robert Hutchins. Hutchins became the President of the University of Chicago and he appointed Benton as Vice President in 1937. This was how Benton was introduced to Robert Wood, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co.

Benton set up a separate film unit at the Encyclopaedia Britannica. When he purchased the ERPI company, a producer of educational programs, from Western Electric, he made it part of Encyclopaedia Britannica Films (EBF). Benton brought me into Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, and for this I will always be grateful to him. He was a remarkable man.

Working in the EBF office was much calmer than in the OWI. There was no pressure from topical events dominating the day. It seemed more academic. Each producer had his own office, but there was also a friendly exchange of ideas and each person helped the other when necessary. It was by this means I discovered there was a subject on Dr.Brodshoug’s desk which needed a writer. I asked to be given a chance. The subject was “How to Make a Book.”

Jim Brill showed me the books I should read before I started to write the script. I also contacted the National Library where I had a friend and he helped me too. I prepared a script which Dr.Brodshoug approved, and Johnny Walker, the cameraman was assigned to me to produce the film. I must admit that Walker was very patient and understanding. We got permission to photograph in a modern print shop in Long Island. In two weeks the film was ready to screen in rough cut before my bosses. A few valuable comments from them helped me to finish the film and it was sent to the National Library’s Educational Section to check for accuracy. They liked it. By the way, all EBF films were always checked by recognized authorities and their name appeared on the film.

With this first success I became a full fledged Associate Producer, which was the title of all producers at EBF. I was given several subjects from which to choose, but I especially remember a series of films I made with Dr. Larry Frank from Columbia University whose specialty was mental development in very young children including how babies and toddlers learn to speak. Together with Professor Frank, I produced a five films series which became very popular. About this time I acquired my first car, a 1935, 8-cylinder Buick. I considered myself lucky to have found the car – it was acquired for little money - because cars were rare after the war. Although it was an older car, it worked. I needed it partly to take Roni regularly to the clinic.

We had just finished the Spanish/Portuguese translations when Clyde Arnspiger, the Executive Vice President asked me to come to the office one evening to screen a few of the completed films to some “…foreigners from South America.” It was cold and snowy, and I drove to work, but parked quite close to my office. It was 8 p.m. and there was no traffic. The screening lasted a couple of hours; I accompanied my clients to the taxi stand and returned to my car. A streetcar came at the same time and stopped at my car and impatiently rang his bells. My car was covered with icy snow which actually rubbed against the streetcar windows and prevented it from passing. People rushed out of the streetcar and pushed my car aside, cursing it for the delay. Then the people returned to the streetcar which moved on. I returned to my snow covered vehicle, turned the key and… brrrr brrr brrr…ten times but it did not start. By now it was almost 11 pm and I was alone. After checking the engine I realized that it was out of gasoline, but this area was full of office buildings and apartments houses and there was no gas station. It was getting colder by the minute, so I set out walking along a street hoping to find one of the garages open. But none were. I rang some of the apartment bells. Silence. I kept trying, and about midnight a person finally answered. At first he was angry and I thought he was going to hit me. But looking at me shivering in the cold, he finally listened to my woes and found a gallon can of gasoline. He wanted $10 for it and I had no choice but to pay. The gasoline did the trick, and the engine started. When I finally got home, poor sick Roni was desperate.

In 1947 it was decided to move the Britannica film unit from New York to Chicago. This was the location of the headquarters of the company and where the core activity of the business - the publishing of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - took place. For our family it meant another move. By then, our family of three had expanded. In April, 1947, our daughter Tanja was born. Tanja was a welcome addition to the family, and our son Sadja now had a sister. She was also a gift from heaven for Roni. After struggling with illness for a long time, the delivery brought Roni back to health. The miracle of birth achieved what erudite doctors had tried in vain to do over the last few years. The birth of Tanja helped Roni regain her strength and fitness. Before we left for Chicago, Tanja was baptized in Astoria, with our friend Tanja Severin as her godmother.

As we were planning our move to Chicago, friends pointed out that I now had two children, and I should get a life insurance policy to protect them. Tanja Severin recommended an agent who happened to be a Yugoslav (Croatian) immigrant. The agent went through the form and asked me all the required questions. Several days later, I received the contract and I was astonished that I was a given a “B” rating. I was so sure that there was a mistake that I called the insurance agency to protest the rating. Since I was unable to get a clear reply, I persisted and was always passed on to a higher executive, but couldn’t get a satisfactory answer. I realized that I had to leave for Chicago soon, so I brazenly called the President of the company. Using the EB name helped me to actually get him on the phone.

I told him that I was appalled at the rating I had received and since I knew that was I completely healthy, I challenged him to let me prove it. I said I was willing to undergo any medical exam that they required. I added that if I was not found to be 100% healthy I would pay for the exam, but if I was proven correct then the insurance company would pay for that and give me an “A” rating. He was so astounded, that he agreed to my proposal and agreed that I could do the medical when I arrived in Chicago.

In Chicago, it took the hospital one week to complete all the tests. On the last day, the doctor asked me if I would mind if he brought a group of medical students in to examine me. He would cover my face and ask them to guess my age. I agreed and a group of medical students did come in and prodded and examined me thoroughly. The doctor called me into his office to discharge me and said “Can you guess what age the students thought you were.” I couldn’t guess. “25," he said, “and you are actually coming up to 40 years of age.” He said that having still a young body was God’s gift to me, but how I treated it from here on was up to me. Up till then I had been a chain smoker and had two packs of cigarettes in my pockets. When I left his office, I threw them away, and from that day I’ve never smoked again. It was not easy, especially since Roni was a smoker, but I’ve stayed with my decision and never regretted it.

Roni and Tanja left for Chicago by train, but I still had to finish two films which were in production. Sadja and I stayed on for two weeks, and then started out by car. The car was the same 1935, 8-cylinder Buick. However, before we left the New York area, I had to pick up Sadja’s citizenship documents (he had recently acquired American citizenship) and the car engine started smoking even before we arrived at the Immigration Office.

I stopped at a garage and asked whether they would be able to fix the car’s cooling system in a couple of hours. I explained we were about to go on a 1000 mile trip. When I picked up the car, I was presented with a bill for 15 dollars, but seemingly little had been done to the car. We had only been driving for one hour when smoke rose from the engine again, but somehow we made it to Allentown, Pennsylvania. We stopped at a Ford service station and found an old man who was willing to inspect the engine. He pityingly shook his tired head and pronounced his verdict: “poor gasket”. The cylinders had been poorly wrapped or something like that. The good man said he was sorry but he could not help us, for it was late and he had other urgent work to attend to, but if we wanted to carry out the repairs ourselves we could help ourselves to his tools. “I will give you the keys to the garage, just in case you want to work overnight,” he said, “so you can get in and out”. We got down to business; we had no choice. Sadja was such a great help. I am not the clumsy type, but I know very little about car mechanics. My eight year old son memorised every single detailed part of the engine, so that at any given moment he could tell me which part of the engine belonged where in order for me to put it back. He was very thorough and organised, and as I removed each screw or part he put it down in such an order, that when we started to put it back together, he could hand me each item in the right order. Between the two of us we managed to get the engine apart and make a new gasket out of a template provided by the old mechanic. Thanks to Sadja, we put the engine back together and with trembling hands, I pressed the starter button and lo and behold the car started. We managed to grab a few hours of sleep at a motel across the street and jerkily drove off. We had to be extremely careful during the trip. We stopped the engine regularly whenever smoke rose from the hood. We were lucky at one stage to have offered a ride to a soldier. He helped us push the car whenever it needed to be started again. After an eventful journey of 15 hours we finally arrived in Chicago. The worn-out Buick gave up the ghost in front of the door, where my wife and child were guests of Jim Brill. I managed to sell the wrecked car and a few days later, we bought ourselves an old Ford.

Encyclopaedia Britannica was very generous to its employees. A rented company house was waiting for us to move into. The removal of our furniture from New York to Chicago was also paid for by Britannica. However, when we moved into the house that EB had rented for us, we realized that we could not stay there for long as it was infested with rats. In the EB office, I found out that the film division (EBF) was looking for office space in Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago, so I thought that it would be best to look for a house in that general area.

I set out house hunting early on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday of November, 1947. It was cold and drizzly. Everything had frozen overnight, and then it rained in the morning. Visibility was bad and the roads were slippery. At an awkward crossroads my little Ford hit a city bus. The bus driver was a very sensible and practical man. He did not get mad at me, but instead offered me some good advice. “With weather conditions like these, anything can happen once you loose control”, he said. “Take a picture of the accident, send a letter to the city council and I will confirm your report”. I followed his advice. The council decided I was not to be held responsible for the accident and paid for another second hand Ford. They had my battered Ford repaired and then sold it.

Some months later, EBF had a new Board Member, Paul Hoffman, who was the former president of Studebaker which just come out with an unusual and unique car model. Mr. Hoffman generously offered to help me get a new Studebaker at a very reasonable price. I was very proud of my new car and loved it very much. But at the same time, my then closest friend, Frank Cellier, had remarried and was expecting a baby and had no car, so he persuaded me to sell him the car, because it was so difficult to acquire a new car at a good price. I did so, and regretted it ever after.

Wilmette was a small suburb and it was difficult to find a place we could afford, so I was advised to look in the neighbouring suburbs. After a long search I found an old, but suitable house in Evanston, a suburb in the north of Chicago. It consisted of two apartments, and was two blocks away from a small but lovely park where the kids could play to their heart’s content. We bought the house and since it was more than we could easily afford, we moved into one half, and later rented out the other half to a friendly Hungarian, Mr Kemeny. This helped us pay off the mortgage. We paid a total of 20,000 dollars for the two apartments. A deposit of 9,000 dollars was paid for with our savings in the bank, the rest we borrowed from the bank and paid back in monthly instalments.

When I walked into the house and looked around I realized that it needed work since it had been unoccupied for many years. I wondered where and how to begin. I, who had never held a hammer in my hand and had no knowledge or experience in this matter, was stumped. But as I stood there, wondering, the most incredible thing happened. There was a knock at the door and in walked an elderly gentleman who introduced himself as a neighbour and greeted me warmly. He said he was delighted that someone was going to live in the house and asked if I needed any help. It turned out that with the help and guidance of this wonderful Norwegian neighbour, I was able to renovate this beautiful house.

The first item to tackle was the old heating system. I replaced all the coal fires with a central gas heater. I also put in carpets - when we first arrived there was no floor covering at all. There was another neighbour, a Mr. Avery, who was the former president of a large chain of department stores. Mr Avery’s house had cardinal red, wall-to-wall carpeting, but he was not very fond of cardinal red and had decided to take the carpets out. Since the colour suited our taste, Mr Avery asked one of his workers to deliver the carpets to our house. Now our house looked as good as new. We lived in Evanston until 1950, walking about on our cardinal red carpets.

By the way, we found that Mr. Avery was a character who was locally well-known. For example, he refused to be removed from his position as President, and had to be physically carried out of his office on the orders of his own Board of Directors. Apparently, this story had been the talk of the town, and had been on the front pages of the local papers for a long time.

We were of course, living in the house while we were making the changes. We had moved into the house as soon as it was liveable. We lived on the upper floor. We cleaned the kitchen and the bedrooms and then later the beautiful covered veranda behind the kitchen. The house had a veranda on each floor. Our veranda was very lovely for breakfasts during summer; we even had our dinners there on hot evenings. The rest of the house, from carpets to clean windows was gradually renewed, week by week. Our tenants downstairs, the Kemenys, moved in about a month or so later.

As I had mentioned earlier, just before Christmas, 1947, my mother who had lived through the entire war in Yugoslavia, got her visa finally and in late spring she came to Chicago to join us. My mother was in poor health and had gone through a hard time. She had been in hiding, as my broadcasts for OWI under the name Milan Iskra were widely reported in Serbia, and I was the subject of many vitriolic editorials and articles in the Belgrade and Zagreb newspapers. My mother had taken my stepfather’s name Iskra when she married him, and it was therefore well known that her son was the person broadcasting.

My mother had survived on very little food and had not had proper meals for several years. There is one image that will stay with me for the rest of my life. The very first evening of her stay, Ronnie prepared a typical Yugoslav dinner, with my mother‘s favourite dishes – among these was a pork loin cooked in a very rich sauce. At the end of the meal, as Ronnie was putting away the leftovers, she decided to defat the sauce and was about to toss the fat in the garbage when my mother jumped in and grabbed Ronnie’s arm and admonished her saying, “How could you throw away this very valuable fat?” She could not comprehend that we did not need to save the fat -- that there were not shortages in America. As I have recounted earlier in this memoir, my mother unfortunately did not live very long after coming to the States.

Though I had to commute daily into the city center to the Encyclopaedia Britannica offices, Roni and I started to become involved in the community. Sadja was attending the local elementary school and the principal invited me to join the PTA. The principal’s concern was that the parents who participated in the PTA were primarily the ones who lived along the lake, but a majority of the students came from homes on the west side of Evanston and a large number came from Polish immigrant families. The principal thought that as I was of Slavic background, I might be able to communicate better with the Polish families and encourage them to join the PTA. I discovered that many of the parents were intimidated by the local ladies -- they were not sure that they would be welcomed. I was successful in persuading many of them to overcome their apprehensions and get involved with the school. In a few months, they became comfortable and the PTA developed a better representation of the children in the school.

Another important event was the arrival of a new family across the street. Even before they completely moved in, the children in both households had become good friends. The parents followed their lead and the Snooks (Kay & Allen ) and the Herzogs became life long friends. It was a friendship which lasted till both the Snooks passed away in the late 1990s. When we moved to Wilmette, the Snooks soon followed us and bought a house nearby.

Shortly after we had moved into our house in Evanston, a colleague found new accommodation for our unit in Wilmette. The educational department of the Britannica film unit moved into the former offices of a bank that had gone bankrupt during the financial crash in 1929.

When the move was definite, my colleagues organized a moving day party and I was put in charge of buying the wine. In Chicago, our old offices were in front of a liquor store that had survived Prohibition. I walked into the store and asked the owner if he had any wine, whereupon he stared at me and said that he was so overstocked he was giving a free bottle to any one who bought a bottle of hard liquor. He explained that in the twenties and the thirties, when selling alcohol was illegal in America, the Mafia had forced the owner to buy ten crates of wine for each case of whiskey. He took me down to the cellar and I was astounded to see a whole wall of cases of excellent Châteauneuf du Pape. He said that he did not seem to be able to get rid off it, and so I offered to buy the entire lot, providing he made me a good price. He proposed one dollar per bottle, and I agreed immediately. The man personally delivered the cases of the Châteauneuf du Pape to our offices, and we celebrated the move with some of this wonderful wine.

I worked in Wilmette for twenty-five years. For the first few years, I was commuting daily from Evanston to Wilmette. One day, a friend, who was also a lawyer for EB, said it must be hard to do this daily commute. He suggested that I buy a house just five blocks from the office which his mother, a real estate agent, could easily acquire for us. The idea was attractive, but I was not sure how I could pay for it. I decided to try to get a loan and went to our small, local Wilmette bank and talked with the President with whom I had become acquainted while giving a talk at the local Rotary Club. I presented my financial status and told him of my desire to buy a house in the vicinity. He astounded me by assuring me that I could borrow as much as I needed for this transaction. I pointed out that I had no collateral for such a long term loan, to which he replied, “I know to whom we can lend money. My bank survived the Depression, because we personally know and trust our clients and we would be glad to have you as a member of our community.” He then summoned his secretary and told her to write out a check which he signed and handed to me. I was moved to tears as I accepted the check.

Mr Kemeny, who had been renting half of our house in Evanston, agreed to buy the whole house, and we were moving once more. The house I had found in Wilmette was a hundred years old, and I set about renovating it with my son’s help. Sadja was very good at these things. He was born with a talent for sculpture. In kindergarten, when he was barely four years old, Sadja had modelled a selection of beautiful statuettes, without us knowing it. Later, as he was growing up, he enjoyed making his own toys. Sadja eventually earned a Ph.D. in art history, and became an expert in painting, specialising in the Flemish Primitives between 1450 and 1550. He was one of the three authors who compiled the catalogue of a Jan Gossaert (also known as Jan Mabuse) exhibition. The exhibition was held at the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam between May and June 1965 and later at the Groeningen museum in Bruges. In the preface to the catalogue, Sadja is introduced as the American expert “who has studied Gossaert extensively… through the preparations of his soon to-be-published study, and who has invested all his knowledge and findings in this catalogue.” Sadja also assisted our film crew with the making of Art of the Western World, a documentary commissioned by the National Gallery in Washington. Through this project Sadja was introduced to several experts of the National Gallery who asked him to contribute to their prestigious monthly review. For such a young academic, this was a great honour. He was later invited by the National Gallery to make annual contributions. Although Sadja was a professor for eight years, he never really enjoyed lecturing – he preferred writing. He learned to read at a very young age and developed a great passion for books. He wanted to make books, with pen and paper. Obviously, eventually a computer replaced his pens and typewriter. He became so involved in new technology that he became an Information Technology expert and found a job in Los Angeles in charge of the computer network of a large building company. However, he still most enjoys working with his hands, like when he was a boy. Together with Sadja, I renovated our new home, the one hundred year old house in Wilmette, in 1950. We lived there for fifteen happy years.

Since we now lived close to the office, our house became the place for my colleagues to stop for a drink after work. Bill Griffith had been already been with EBF for a number of years, and both he and Dave Ridgeway, were strong, supportive colleagues and were producers of many remarkable EBF films and film series. Warren Everote and his wife June became family friends and even today as I write this, Shanta and I are still very close to Warren and his family. Warren and I shared many projects and experiences during our years at EBF, and Warren eventually skillfully guided the company as its President.

Wilmette was my base, but I would travel often, sometimes very far. I made many films which were used as learning tools for younger children in primary schools. In New Mexico and Arizona, I produced a series on the legendary West which we all know through childhood stories about cowboys and Indians. I wanted to show what the life of a cowboy was currently like, and what happened at a children’s rodeo. The real cowboys and children of Arizona were keen to be my actors.

In Kentucky I worked on Circus, a film about the history of the Cole Brothers, the last ringmasters to travel the United States by train with their artists and animals, just like in the famous animated film Dumbo. The Cole Brothers were on their way to Evansville in South Indiana just then. Burt Lancaster, who would later become a famous film actor, performed in the circus. He was working through the last months of his contract, for he had signed up with Warner Brothers. Contracts with film companies are very exclusive and we were given strict orders not to film him. I went to great lengths in order to keep him out of the picture. Anyway for us it was more interesting to show the role that the elephants played in setting up and breaking down the tents. One day my cameraman and I were shooting one of the elephants involved in this action. Since at 50lbs the Mitchell camera was very heavy, I carried the heavy battery attached to the camera and followed the cameraman about. As I was walked behind him, I tripped over one of the tent ropes, and as I fell I yanked the camera and all 50lbs of it fell on my back. The pain I felt was almost unbearable. My friend and scriptwriter Cellier, bandaged up my back and took me in his car from Evansville to Chicago.

The journey took over three hours. I was treated and given strict instructions to rest. One week later, on a Saturday morning, I over-stretched in order to empty the mailbox. A horrible pain ran through my back. I was close to being unconscious. Luckily my wife and Sadja were at home. Sadja, who must have been twelve at the time, drove me in the car to the emergency ward of the nearby hospital. I still do not know how he managed to do all this by himself. X-rays showed that two of my dorsal vertebrae had been partially cracked or at least heavily bruised. Luckily the young doctor who was taking care of me decided against an operation. Instead he had me covered from chin to waist in plaster for a period of five weeks.

I was fortunate to do some writing from the hospital. I had not asked for all this spare time, but I used it also to learn to paint ceramics. All in all I recovered well. But I suffered from the pain till a few years ago and the only thing that helped was my daily stretching exercises and my daily swim.

Six weeks after the accident with the Mitchell camera I was back at work. I wrote the script for a film about India, part of which was entitled Marriage in Gujarat. An Indian film crew was in charge of the shooting. Through the Ministry of Education the government of New Delhi was planning to dub the production in various Indian languages. However, the policy of employment of the Indian Prime Minister, Pandit Nehru, obliged us to have the film printed by an Indian lab. This turned out to be a disaster. The quality was pathetic, and there was no way we could accept it. An Indian diplomat insisted on us making a formal complaint. “Delhi needs to know that our labs our no good,” he said, “so they can do something about it immediately.” The Indian government accepted our objections, had the film reprinted at its own expense and set new quality standards for the labs.

Encyclopaedia Britannica now allowed me to travel further abroad, and I returned to my beloved Europe. First I filmed “People of Brittany”. The story concerned a family in Brittany who, during the liberation in 1944, had found their house in ruins after it had been occupied by the Germans for four years. The documentary focused on how these people had managed to get back on their feet and lead a normal life again. This was the first film made in Brittany after the Second World War. It remains of historical value for the French government which requested a copy for the Brittany archives as recently as 2001.

I also finished the scripts about Europe during the Medieval period. These included The Education of the Knight, about the knights’ apprenticeship, Fight for Jerusalem, about the Crusades, and The Guilds, about how the guilds were organised. We had a budget of 48,000 dollars which allowed for shooting in France, Switzerland and Belgium. I spent many a pleasant hour at the Grand Place in Brussels, the central market square, which was an ideal setting for my story about the guilds. I have seldom seen a place of such beauty. Later, whenever I visited my Flemish friends, we’d make a pilgrimage to the Grand Place of Brussels.

I stayed in France for three months, mostly near Avignon. I worked with André Tadié whom I met after the war when he ran a film studio in Paris. André has remained a lifelong friend. I was only able to complete all the films of my Medieval period series with the help and support of André. He owned a whole collection of medieval costumes which he had bought from a Swedish company who had wanted to collaborate with Ingrid Bergman on a film about Joan of Arc. He also knew how to deal with the French unions. In the film industry – as well as other industries – the unions then were dominated by the Communist Party. They had no sympathy for American capitalist directors. There were continuous negotiations about employing crew or working conditions for extras. The union leaders were more accommodating because we were making a documentary instead of a feature film and we always managed to find a solution for our problems, even if we had to make do with a Russian make-up artist who was constantly drunk or a Portuguese assistant picked up off the street. But we had a brilliant young cameraman, Maurice Barbier, who was new to the trade at the time, but later would work on some of very large French productions.

We found a power generator amongst the equipment left behind by the Americans when they left in 1945, and we were joined by 50 extras belonging to a military band which only performed once a week and had plenty of time to do other things. Things turned out in such a way that, in the end, we won a prize in Paris -- Prix de Paris--- for the series.

Film production takes you to unexpected places. In early March of 1947 I found myself in the snow covered mountains of Utah. I was so inspired by the beauty of the pine trees with their snow laden branches glistening in the sun, that I decided that there has to be film made there. As soon as I returned to my office in Wilmette, I raced to the office of EBF’s President Anspiger to propose a film to be made quickly before the snow melted. The film I had in mind was a film about Christmas. The company had a large audience of young school children and I thought there would be a strong market for it. Mr. Anspiger thought it was impossible to get started quickly and complete the film before the snow melted. Since he liked to bet, I proposed that he agree to the film if I called the Utah meteorologist and received a prediction that the snow would remain for the next two months. He agreed to the bet, I made the call, I won, and forty-eight hours later I was on my way to Utah with my crew.

This was a unique film in many ways. The music was an original score written by a school teacher from Evanston, and it was played by the orchestra of the school’s Junior High School. The completed film, Christmas Rhapsody, was a great success. It was even considered for an Oscar nomination, and became one of the very best selling films for EBF.

In 1956 I spent three months in Vienna, working on a series of films about music, orchestras and conductors. I was told that this series was used at least until the early 1980s.

Between 1959 and 1960 I returned to France to shoot Je parle Français, This French Language project was probably the largest single production Britannica ever undertook -- 120 lessons on film, with dozens of actors and travel to a variety of locations over at least half a year. Even the origins of the project are unusual. We heard at a convention that a French teacher at a small Ohio college founded by French Huguenots, used film to train military officers in French before they were sent to posts in Algiers. It was a complete immersion course. I went to investigate and saw Professor Rosselot teach and heard her students speak. The film she used was her personal creation – very clever but amateurish. I was fascinated and persuaded our management to finance a much expanded French language project. Professor Rosselot took a year’s leave of absence, and I became the producer of the series in France with a French crew.

As I was to work in France for a long period of time, my wife wanted to take a long visit in Zagreb with her family. We decided to send our daughter, Tanja, to a Swiss summer school which was recommended to us by a friend, the retired Swiss consul, who had served in Zagreb and who now lived across the street from the school in the Lake Geneva region. It turned out to be an important decision for our production.

As I was returning from the school, I noticed that the street below was Rue d’Etang. This sounded familiar to me. Why? I remembered that the well- known inventor of a very, modern, portable sound recorder, a Mr. Kudelski, had his workshop on that street. I walked around and found the place. I had seen a small Kudelski recorder used by journalists in Germany and heard that he was about to release a larger, portable machine for recording in synchronicity with a film camera. It is difficult to explain what this meant for me and my project. Try to imagine the equivalent - a light-weight laptop computer instead of the much larger tower computer. The sound equipment I had for my giant project was very large and heavy, and I was about to produce 120 short films with dialog, all over France, Switzerland, and Belgium!

I entered the building and met the secretary. She confirmed that the first Nagra had been tested and approved, but was promised to a German company. I tried to get to see the boss, but was told that he was in the hospital where his wife was giving birth to their first child. She called in Kudelski’s second in command, a Polish technician, who received me cordially and heard my reasoning why I should get “Nagra No 1” and not the Germans. The secretary and the technician promised to talk to the boss about my needs, and if he agreed, they would let me know in a couple of hours. I left and went to a flower shop where I selected a glorious bouquet to be sent to the hospital immediately with a letter of congratulations from me. Later I returned to the workshop, and got the good news. The recorder was mine. “Return tomorrow,” they said, but I decided that there will be other clients after the Nagra, so I wrote a check for $1000 then and there. The sale was sealed.

But that is only half the story. Six months later my crew and actors arrived in Lake Geneva to shoot a park scene by the monument of Calvin. We had only permission for a short time, and just then the Nagra broke down. After an hour of trying to fix the machine, I phoned my friends at the Nagra factory. The secretary recognized my voice and accent and asked me what impossible request did I have now? I explained I needed a replacement Nagra for a couple of hours. I will pay, of course, I said. She replied that they have a waiting list for as many Nagras as they can produce. They were just packaging the next one again for Germany. I begged to speak to the big boss, but he was not around. I did get to speak to the Polish technician, and suggested that my Nagra could be repaired while I use theirs for 2 hours, and he began to understand my plight. The packaged Nagra was driven to the park and the Polish manager himself came to check on my “No 1", as he called my machine. We did our shooting with the replacement while the “No1” was being repaired. The kindness of the Nagra people was a real blessing

As with the earlier medieval films, my friend André Tadie and his company, Tadie Cinema, opened their doors to make the production efficient. André even lent us his son Alain, to be the “do-it-all” -- the technical genius for repairs during shooting.

I could write a whole chapter of anecdotes from this project, but permit me just one. The principal actress for the course needed to be a girl about 16 years of age. It took days to find such a girl, but we finally did. She was a student at the Comédie-Française. “Superb!,” we all shouted after testing her. We had found our actress, and set the starting date for July 6th which was not far away. Two days before starting, I received a telephone call at 7a.m. A hesitant, crying woman’s voice said, “Ah, ah, I don’t know how to tell you this, you were so kind to my daughter, but last night she got a call from the Comédie-Française giving her the principal role in a Molière play. If she refuses, she will never get another chance.”

Well, what could we do? The girl was bound by contract to us, but we did not have the heart to ruin a career. So André Tadie and I went over all the people we had considered during the many days of casting. We needed to decide who to call back. Then we discovered an actress who was out of town during our first interviews and had just come back that morning. She came, we tested her, we liked her. and we started shooting in two days. As I mentioned, my wife, Roni, was in Europe and she came by for a few days to see us at work. Our new principal actress and Roni became friendly. Roni mentioned to me that she found the girl somehow subdued. The next day Roni told me that the girl felt guilty because she had told us a lie. She was not 18 years old, as she said. She even had a child. I decided quickly that since she looked 18 and acted well, it just didn’t matter. We just wouldn’t tell anyone else her age. On the final night of shooting we had a celebration, and she invited her husband to join us. But there came about a great tragedy - on the way to Montmartre her husband was killed in a car crash.

There were so many things during the year long production that we - André and I - will never forget. We were very proud when we finished the project -- to have all 120 lessons completed and a 300-page book for students and teachers.

Just before undertaking the French project, I had taught a course on film history at Northwestern University. One of my students, Tom Smith, who later became a very good friend and successful producer has written about his memories of that time, and I’ve let him say it here in his own words:

In the 1959- ’60 academic year, Dr. Jack Ellis, head of Northwestern’s film department, took a one-year sabbatical to UCLA. To keep things running while he was at UCLA, Ellis enlisted the help of two professionals: Gilbert Altschul, Chicago producer of industrial films and TV commercials, and Milan Herzog, Head of Production for Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. Milan taught a night class in film history. He may have served a full school year (three academic quarters) but I only attended his winter quarter offering – beginning after the Christmas break of 1959 and going to Easter (1960).

What made Milan’s lectures so interesting was not a good syllabus outline but the force of his personality. He held the students spellbound with his eye-witness stories. The lectures sometimes dealt with film history but they also covered events like the origins of the Great War (1914/1918) and a vivid description of Adolf Hitler who Milan had personally seen. He also ran a roster of films representing the development of the art. For each he provided a summary analysis and placed them in the perspective of history.

The class was held in an auditorium which provided good 16mm picture and sound. There was double the seating capacity for enrolled students. But the popularity of his class grew lecture by lecture and unregistered students began attending, not only to see the films but to be entertained and informed by this dynamic man as he recounted tales from his life. At times it was “standing room only.” We had to get there early to get a good seat. Milan welcomed everyone regardless of their status.

He did no testing and told students that grades would be determined solely by term papers, due at the end of the class. I planned a paper on Max Sennett, the early Hollywood producer of madcap silent film comedies. I began gathering material for the paper but like most college kids I put off writing my paper till ten days before it was due. Then calamity befell me. I was hit with a severe strep throat and bedridden with a high fever. I didn’t know how to contact Milan as he didn’t have an office at Northwestern and I didn’t know his EBF phone number. I was fully expecting an “incomplete” for the course. But when the grades came in the mail, he had given me an “A.” It was obviously a mistake. When I recovered and managed to get an appointment to see him, I told him of the error and promised to finish the paper in a few weeks. I showed him the rough research I had already done for the paper. Milan said the grade was no error. He fully expected me to turn in an “A” paper. What he didn’t know was that I was busy with my other courses, a part time job, along with a student film project. I didn’t have time to do an “A” paper and was planning to turn in “B” work. Now I’d have to go the extra mile for him and I did.

That course may have altered my life. Milan and I got on well during the class and when I was awarded my Fulbright to study film in Paris he told me he too would be in France filming EBF’s French language series. He urged me to contact him when I got to Paris. He began filming in the summer of 1960 and when my wife Elaine and I arrived in the fall we called on him in Paris. We were living in a cheap hotel and were on a very tight budget. Milan and his wife Ronnie treated us as if we were their children. They took us out for meals at upscale restaurants and drove us on memorable outings outside Paris. Most important of all, Milan gave me a part time job on the French Language project which eased my restricted budget.

The French language course was well received by EBF and the schools. As a result, the company began getting questions from educators as to why a French course and not a Spanish one. There were many Spanish courses taught, especially in the western part of the United States.

The EBF Board decided to do a Spanish Course and the President asked me to start production as soon as possible. As a result, in 1961 I did a similar project in Mexico and Spain to teach elementary Spanish. The Spanish course followed the story of a Mexican boy who is the son of Spanish immigrants and who goes to Spain to visit his grandfather.

There is another interesting story associated with the Spanish Project. As I was organising the production crew and hiring people and scouting locations in Mexico, I was told that I needed to get the permission from the Education Department. The professor that was helping me arranged for me to meet the official in charge. When we were in her office, I turned to the Professor to explain the details, but the lady asked who was in charge and when I said it was me, she said that I should be giving the details. Since I did not speak any Spanish, I was very nervous and was sweating profusely, but using my Latin and French, I made up the language and explained the project in as much detail as I could, the lady listened attentively and at the end of my speech turned to me and speaking in perfect English said that she was very impressed with my effort. The result was that not only did we get a lot of cooperation from the Department, but she also accepted my invitation for dinner.

World events often influenced our working program at EBF For example, EBF undertook a film about the moon. Our art director, Bill Peltz, prepared a large three dimensional model of the moon as we knew it then from the face which was always turned to the earth. It was a masterpiece of craftsmanship and we were proud to ask the animation department to shoot the whole model and endless details of its surface. It resulted in a fine film, which ended with the words “... and what is on the other side of the moon no one knows.” The finished, 20-minute film was released and quickly purchased by our best school and college customers. However, not long after this successful release, the Russians in 1959 sent their Luna 3 satellite around the moon and photos of the “other side” appeared in all the newspapers. Poor EBF, poor Milan, poor Bill Peltz. The only way out was to change the ending by adding new material of the far side. It was no small job, believe me.

The consequences in 1957 of the first Russian satellite, Sputnik 1, were strongly felt by our educational system. Science teaching had been neglected for years in high schools. As a result of Sputnik, a lot of money became available through the federal government’s Department of Education and they asked all educational producers to propose ways to develop science programs in schools. EBF was among the first contacted, and it produce a series on beginning physics.

I had read about a series of programs in preparation at Pittsburgh’s educational television station. It was to be a series of 60 lectures given by Professor David Lutyens which were enhanced with demonstrations and experiments. This was a time before tape recordings or VCRs, so we had the problem of how do we photograph the professor while he does a show which is being seen live on television. We worked out a method after experimenting in our local studio. Over the television camera which was in its normal place, we positioned another camera for filming simultaneously.

For several weeks our cameraman Buddy Botham and director Dave Ridgway worked on the production. Each night after filming, editors prepared the material for lab printing, and the prints were mailed immediately to schools all over America. It was a great success. A similar method was used by Dave Ridgway in the Chemistry series, although not overnight production. EBF continued with similar, large projects in Earth Sciences and the Humanities. In 1958 we established our own studio near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. We were preparing to make a series of films about sciences under the supervision of the famous MIT Films. In 1959 we started working on what was to become the most prestigious film project of the Encyclopaedia Britannica: a series of 65 episodes about the liberal arts. John Barnes was in charge of this project. It compared with the 50 volumes of the collection of Great Books, another prestigious initiative of Britannica, in which Mortimer Adler compiled some of the most important writings of the great minds of Western civilisation.

I was involved in most of these projects directly or indirectly. Over the years I was promoted from senior producer, to director of production, then to Vice President and finally Senior VP. As a consequence I spent a lot of time flying from Chicago to New York - where John Barnes, wrote and directed and edited films for the Humanities series - or to Hollywood, where Larry Yust worked with Professor Al Baez on middle grade science. I worked myself with Dr. Baez in Boston.

This is a long but by no means complete description of the whole range of our production. There were also extensive Biology and Health productions, and numerous primary grade undertakings. In 1956 I spent three months in Vienna, working on six films about music, orchestras and conductors. It was exciting work made for workaholics. We had an excellent Board of Directors and practical managers who checked, criticized and encouraged the staff.

Sometimes, however, the involvement of the Board was inconvenient. Once, when I was deeply involved in production in Europe, our President and my good friend, Warren Everote, called me and said that the Board had questioned the large expense of my production and wanted to see what was making it so costly. “Do you have anything sufficiently completed that you ►could show them?” he asked. I said I had. “Then hop on the next plane and bring it over for tomorrow’s Board meeting,” he said. I sent my crew ahead to Geneva, while I flew back to Chicago and Warren presented a 15-minute segment on Mont St. Michel. Right afterwards, the same night, I flew back to Europe and drove to Geneva. That was hard, but it was an exception. My crew was delighted when I reported that after the screening the Board applauded what they had seen.

I spent a lot of time away from home, and my family seldom travelled with me. My wife was not very interested in film and preferred to stay at home with the children. However one time, in 1956, we all travelled together. I was filming in Jamestown for the preparations of the 350th anniversary of the first permanent British settlement in North America, founded in Virginia on May 24th, 1607. Among other things, I tried to evoke the arrival of the three English ships, and the harsh living conditions of the first settlers. My children were determined members of the cast. Sadja, who was a young man by then, had to eat raw fish. Tanja, who was ten years old, had the time of her life trampling down the grapes in a large tub with her bare feet, which was the way wine was made at the time.

Roni also came to visit me when I was filming my Spanish course in Mexico in 1961. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer shortly before the trip. From that moment on she was undergoing regular radiation treatment, but her health gradually deteriorated. Long after that, in 1972, Roni also accompanied me to Europe, where she worked as an accountant on a project. During this trip, we had the chance to revisit our homeland. We travelled to Dubrovnik and then on to Zagreb. To her, this was one of the most wonderful things she did later in life. However, it was in Zagreb we were told that Roni only had a couple more years to live.

In 1965 our house in Wilmette burned down, actually the outer walls were almost all standing, but the inside was completely destroyed. The fire started in the basement because of a failure in an electric heater. We had left the heater on because it was February and bitter cold. It was so cold the water from the fire hoses froze almost immediately. I was at work, watching all this on the local television channel before I realised it was actually my own house burning. I rushed home in a panic. Luckily there were no casualties, but the damage was huge. The firemen tried to save as much as they could, but our whole collection of books went up in flames. The fire consumed all of Sadja’s art books which he had invested all his money in as a young man. Even now it hurts to remember his grief.

However, on this occasion we also experienced the spontaneous helpfulness of the American people. A neighbour immediately told us to move into his house. He was leaving on holiday and wanted someone to look after his house. We were even told that he left sooner than planned in order to provide us with shelter. A member of the Rotary, who remembered an informal talk I had given at the club, offered me his son’s house. His son had been elected as a local Representative to Congress and had moved to Washington. His name was Donald Rumsfeld, now infamous as the Secretary of Defence in the government of George W. Bush.

Encyclopaedia Britannica offered me an interest free loan of 10,000 dollars to help buy a new house. But I began to wonder if there was any point in looking for a new permanent home in Wilmette or nearby Chicago. Would we stay there for much longer? Things were changing in the film unit. A significant part of our productions were now based on the West Coast in Hollywood in an office which I had helped set up.

In 1966 I became Vice-President of Britannica Film Productions. In 1968 I was appointed Senior Vice-President, but by then I had begun to think about retiring. I was sixty and fancied doing something else. So I applied for early retirement. I was informed that the Board of Directors refused, and offered me a different proposition. That turned out to be Hollywood. EBF wanted to reinforce the management of the Hollywood unit and I was asked whether I would be willing to move there full time. I was familiar with the work at the unit - I used to spend at least a couple of days a month in there, and I knew all the people. It was proposed I become General Manager of the West Coast Hollywood office, and I accepted. It seemed our future was in Los Angeles