Film and Radio Guide (Oct 1945-Jun 1946)

December, 1945 FILM AND RADIO GUIDE 43 their children the best tools for learning.” Meanwhile, Powell a n d the Bi’itannica have been giving the country still another kind of visual education. Powell, with Walter Yust, editor of the Britannica, and Grace Pagano, director of fine arts, made up a committee to choose representative paintings by the best American artists to form the Encyclopaedia Britannica Collection of Contemporary American Painting. Exhibitions have been held in Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington, D. C., and Dayton; the collection is booked solid through the spring of 1947. Commenting on the collection of 135 canvases, Powell says: “Britannica has always been interested in education and broad CLiltuial movements, and showing American painting to the American people seems to us to fit into this picture very well.” The collection has dovetailed with Encyclopaedia Britannica Films in providing pictures to be reproduced as standard slides, and 116 canvases are being put on 2x2 kodachromes for this purpose. Full-color slides will be sold in a portable case with a set of lecture suggestions and a copy of Co)itemporary American Painting, a book on the Britannica Collection, bj^ Grace Pagano. Recently the Chicago schools used planographed reproductions of five of the paintings to illustrate the Chicago Radio Council’s broadcast on the rivers of America. Powell is gratified by such examples of one educational agency reinforcing the work of another. When the Britannica Collection was hung in the corridors of Britannica’s Chicago offices, before going on tour, Powell watched for its impact on the employees. One result has been the first Employee’s Art Show, for which Britannica employees E. H. Powell, President of Britonnico and of Britannica Films, Corporations controlled by the University of Chicogo. submitted 100 original drawings, water colors, pieces of sculpture, and oil paintings — three of them portraits of Powell ! One of these showed him in cowboy costume, an allusion to his ranching hobby. His own contest entry was a striking Colorado landscape done in unusual tones of deep green. Powell’s sociable nature developed in an “enormous Early General Grant house overflowing with relatives,’’ where he was born in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in 1888. H i s parents named him Elkan, but the name has been overlooked since he won the nickname “Buck” on the football team. The story of his rise to the presidency of Britannica has a strong Horatio Alger flavor. He started work in the shipping room at Sears, Roebuck and Co., progressed to the position of advertising manager, then to the office of secretary and treasurer. At that time Sears owned the Encyclopaedia Britannica, later given to the University of Chicago, and Powell was appointed president on the basis of his record as a Sears executive. In addition to his two presidencies, he is a director of a number of subsidiary companies and the Chicago Better Business Bureau. He and his wife, Ethel Corbet Powell, celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary this year. They have three children, whose questions, it is fabled, drove their desperate father to introduce the Britannica Junior. No. 39: Jock C. Coffey “There is a design to life. The perfect pattern is rarely apparent to the young man, but as the years pass, the pieces fall into their proper place and the picture takes form.” So says Jack C. Coffey, Director of School Relations for Encyclopaedia Britannica Films Inc., an “evangelist” insofar as pictures are concerned. The use of teaching films in the classroom affords him an opportunity to crusade for this idea. Born February 5, 1901, at Caddo Mills, Texas, Jack recalls that at the age of eighteen, when he was a cadet at Wentworth Military Academy, Lexington, Missouri, his interest in learning history was aroused through chalk talks by his teacher. History to young Coffey at that time was a vague subject until a faculty officer vitalized his lectures with quickly drawn blackboard sketches. Important dates in history became realistic. Military maneuvers became a fascinating game. In the recesses of his mind was stored the idea that pictures made things plain. After his graduation from Wentworth in 1919, Coffey entered the University of Missouri, majoring in advertising in Missouri’s famous School of Journalism founded by Walter Williams. During his junior and senior years there, he relates that his funds became too low