Textbook Cases: Postwar Adolescent Development in Crawley Films’ McGraw–Hill Film–Text Series

This article explores a series of mental hygiene films produced by Crawley Films in the 1950s to support a McGraw–Hill textbook, Adolescent Development, first published by Elizabeth B. Hurlock in 1949. These films reflect a post-WWII turn to social guidance and a pedagogy of health, part of the “mental hygiene point of view” that came to dominate postwar sex education via psychology and family life education curricula. As part of this analysis, the article discusses pre- and post-production negotiations and competing interests at play between Hurlock’s textbook, the series’ sponsor, and Crawley Films, which was tasked with adapting key concepts faithfully from the textbook to the screen. These exchanges, in the form of letters between Crawley Films (specifically Judith Crawley, who scripted the series) and the McGraw–Hill division in charge of overseeing the textbook films, are illuminated by examining archival material from the Crawley Collection housed in Library and Archives of Canada.