Burton Benjamin, executive producer of CBS's documentary series The Twentieth Century (1957-1966), was born October 9, 1917 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Sam Benjamin and Ruth Bernstein Benjamin. He worked as a reporter for the Cleveland News while still in high school, and covered sports for the Michigan Daily while attending the University of Michigan. Graduating in 1939, he became a general and sports writer for the United Press International before joining the Newspaper Enterprises Association (NEA), which was part of the Scripps-Howard chain. During World War II, Benjamin served in the United States Coast Guard.
In 1946 he began ten years of employment at RKO-Pathé, for whom he wrote, produced, and directed a series of shorts, This Is America (1946-1951). While still at RKO-Pathé, he produced and directed the documentary footage for a two-hour television special, Light's Diamond Jubilee (1954), for David O. Selznick. The next year “Pepito,” a script written by Benjamin and his brother James, won the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Republic competition; the brothers later adapted the script for live television, and Kraft Theatre aired it as “Welcome to a Stranger.”
In 1956 Benjamin quit RKO-Pathé to freelance. He was associate producer of the film Bermuda Affair (DCA, 1957) and producer of a United States Steel film about ore mining in Venezuela. For television he wrote scripts for Kraft Theatre, Robert Montgomery Presents, and Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, and served as associate producer and story editor for Philip Wylie's series Crunch and Des. He also wrote fiction and non-fiction articles for Look, Colliers, and This Week; Life used his article on the sinking of the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria in 1956.
In January 1957 Benjamin was hired by CBS television to produce The Twentieth Century, a weekly documentary series. Isaac Kleinerman, hired as the associate producer, had worked with Benjamin as a film editor at RKO-Pathé, and on two other documentary series: Victory at Sea and Project XX. Benjamin enlarged the focus of The Twentieth Century from primarily historical documentaries in the first season to more contemporary reports, biographies, and future projections made up of original, newly-filmed material. Among his innovative techniques were use of newsreel footage of actual events combined with interviews of eyewitnesses, use of Walter Cronkite as an on-screen narrator to enunciate the theme of the episode, and use of scripts written by experts on the topic under consideration although the experts may have had little or no previous experience writing for television. Before the series went off the air in 1966, it received numerous awards, among them three from the Overseas Press Club, two Emmys, two Peabodys, two Sylvanias, two from the Edison Foundation, and one Certificate of Appreciation from the Department of the Army.
For more information on The Twentieth Century's accomplishments and reports, see the “Nine Year Report; 1957-1966” in box 14, folder 6. Benjamin was promoted in 1967 to the post of senior executive producer of CBS News. In that capacity, Benjamin produced numerous episodes of CBS Reports including Emmy-winning specials such as “Justice Black and the Bill of Rights” (1971), “The Mexican Connection” (1972), “The Rockefellers” (1973), and “Solzhenitsyn” (1974). In 1971 he also produced “Justice in America,” a series of informal conversations with Lyndon B. Johnson and Dwight D. Eisenhower. From 1975 to 1978, Benjamin was executive producer of CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. From 1979 to 1981, Benjamin served as CBS director of the news division and vice president. Benjamin was a senior executive producer out of New York at two different times, 1968-1975, and again 1981-1985. Burton Benjamin retired from CBS in 1985.
Benjamin wrote Fair Play: CBS, General Westmoreland, and How a Television Documentary Went Down (1988) about the handling of the documentary “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception” and the libel lawsuit brought by General Westmoreland against CBS. Walter Cronkite wrote the forward for the book, commenting “[Benjamin] was undoubtedly the finest documentary producer with whom I was ever privileged to work.”
Burton Benjamin was married to Aline L. Wolff, a book editor and critic, in 1942. They had two daughters. Benjamin died September 18, 1988 in Scarborough, New York.
Sharbutt, Jay. “Burton Benjamin; CBS News Producer.” Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1988.
Pace, Eric. “Burton Benjamin, 70, Dies; Former Head of CBS News.” The New York Times, September 19, 1988.
