Sports / Film & TV / Business & brands
Jam Handy
1886–1983 · Olympic swimmer and water polo player, industrial filmmaker
Two-time Olympic bronze medalist who built the Jam Handy Organization in Detroit into one of America's largest producers of industrial and training films.
- Born
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 97- Birth name
- Henry Jamison Handy
- Also known as
- Henry Jamison Handy
- Detroit years
- 1923–1983
- Field
- Sports, Film & TV, Business & brands
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Jam Handy won an Olympic bronze medal in the breaststroke at the 1904 St. Louis Games and, twenty years later, another bronze in water polo at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Between and after those Games he built a pioneering career in educational and sponsored films. After World War I he represented a film producer as its Chicago–Detroit industrial agent, working mainly for the auto industry, and in 1923 he moved his own company to Detroit, buying a building on East Grand Boulevard near General Motors headquarters. The Jam Handy Organization produced thousands of films and many more slidefilms for General Motors, other corporations and the U.S. armed forces, and Handy is credited as a pioneer of the filmstrip and of distance learning. He lived and worked in Detroit until his death in 1983, at 97. His company's Gothic-style studio building is now the Jam Handy event space, and his papers are in the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library.
Highlights
- Olympic bronze in swimming (1904) and water polo (1924)
- Moved the Jam Handy Organization to Detroit in 1923
- Produced an estimated 7,000 films for industry and the military
- International Swimming Hall of Fame, 1965
- His papers are held by the Detroit Public Library's Burton Historical Collection
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1923–1969
The Jam Handy (former Jam Handy Organization studio)
The Gothic Revival building that served as his company's sound stage from the 1930s to the 1960s; it is now a performing-arts and event venue.
Memorial
Detroit Public Library — Main Library
Holds Handy's personal papers and the surviving records of the Jam Handy Organization.