Charles Benton, the son of a U.S. senator, was a film distributor who lobbied for free speech and civil liberties.
“The flame of the public interest really burned in his breast,” said former Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Michael Copps. “He was someone who really believed in democracy and the public interest, and he and I both agreed that communications is at the center of democracy.
“Charles believed that getting broadband out to everyone was not just desirable for democracy but it was really necessary if all our communications networks were going to be online or were going to transition to being online.”
Mr. Benton, 84, died of complications from renal cancer Wednesday, April 29, at his Evanston home, said his wife of 62 years, Marjorie.
His father, William, was a U.S. senator for Connecticut from 1949 to 1953 who earlier co-founded the advertising agency Benton & Bowles. His father also was a vice president at the University of Chicago and longtime publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Mr. Benton, who was born in New York, had a peripatetic youth. During the summers, his family would stay in New York and Connecticut, and in the winter, they would live in various homes that they would rent on Chicago’s South Side. In the spring, the family would stay in Arizona.
“I always used to tease Charles because of the three schools he attended each year that he never learned to read, but he could pack a suitcase,” his wife said.
Mr. Benton graduated from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts and received a bachelor’s degree in 1953 from Yale University. At Yale, he met his future wife, who had been a student at Connecticut College for Women. The couple married right after graduation and moved to the Chicago area, when he took a job as a production assistant in the educational films division of Encyclopaedia Britannica
In 1960, Mr. Benton marketed Britannica films to schools and libraries in downstate Illinois. Mr. Benton became president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Films in 1964 and then president of a newly formed education unit in 1966 before deciding to strike off on his own.
He first formed a nonprofit group, the Fund for Media Research, to study educational uses of new media. In 1967, Mr. Benton purchased a film and video distribution company, Films Inc., from Encyclopaedia Britannica’s education unit. Mr. Benton was president of Films Inc., which distributed 16mm versions of movies produced by Hollywood studios to schools and institutions, from 1968 until 1997.
“Frankly, Charles’ dad didn’t see the value of films, and Charles and I loved films,” Marjorie Benton said. “And, Charles wanted to work for himself.”
Films Inc. was a division of Mr. Benton’s broader holding company, Public Media Inc., which grew to become one of the largest distributors of films to the educational and institutional markets. Films Inc.’s Home Vision video label distributed classic and independent films on DVD, while other units of Public Media sold management and training tapes, laser discs, fine and performing arts tapes, and special-interest tapes.
“We are trying to cover the subject matter with outstanding world-class expertise and knowledge,” Mr. Benton told the Tribune in 1992.
Mr. Benton’s Home Vision label was the educational distributor for the basketball documentary “Hoop Dreams” upon its original release.
President Jimmy Carter in 1978 appointed Mr. Benton chairman of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and as chairman of the first White House Conference on Library and Information Services, which was held in 1979.
Two more presidential appointments followed. President Bill Clinton in 1997 appointed Mr. Benton to be a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. And in 2012, President Barack Obama appointed Mr. Benton to serve on the National Museum and Library Services Board.
Mr. Benton and his wife were early supporters of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who called him “a great supporter of progressive politics” who “always was interested in policy as well as politics.”
“He was really interested in democratizing communications and making sure that with all the technological advances that technology and communications were always available to everyone,” Schakowsky said. “Charles was for a free and open Internet, and he was concerned about ending the digital divide.”
Mr. Benton sat on a number of boards and was a collector of Native American pottery.
In 2012, Mr. Benton and his wife moved into the Mather retirement community in Evanston and donated a sculpture of an eagle by Armenian-born American artist Khoren Der Harootian that had sat in their bedroom to the city of Evanston. The sculpture now graces the lobby of Evanston’s Civic Center.
“I think many more people will enjoy it where it now is,” Mr. Benton told the Tribune in 2012.
Mr. Benton also is survived by a daughter, Adrianne Furniss; a son, Craig; five grandchildren; and a sister, Helen Boley. Another son, Scott, died in 2005.
Services will be held in Chicago this summer and in Washington, D.C., later this year.
