It's Your Life

In this award-winning 1949 series, produced by the Chicago Industrial Health Organization and sponsored by Johnson and Johnson, producer/announcer Ben Park and reporter Don Herbert invite us to meet men and women, old and young, as they struggle to stay healthy in post-war America. 

Unique during its time, this series delved deep into the lives of the people of Chicago as they coped with depression, returned from war, and responded to crises big and small.  The program established its own documentary formula, one that is now common: Ben Park would introduce the program, providing occasional narrative reprieves throughout, while field reporter Don Herbert would go in depth with the people most deeply affected by the subject - allowing them to speak in their own voice, an approach underutilized by their contemporaries, if used at all.

During its brief time it earned the praise of many of the nation's finest health professionals, including Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, who declared that the program "carried more conviction than any health matter than I have heard." The show would only last one year, however, with Park being tapped to create and produce a TV program for the United States Department of Public Health. 

Reporter Don Herbert would later go on to give countless children their first exposure to the wonders of science as TV's Mr. Wizard, a role he would hold for decades.

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This web resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.

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