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These early films were made to be shown at churches and similar venues. But by the mid-1960s, World Wide was making a serious effort to produce films that would be shown in regular theatres and be taken just as seriously as regular Hollywood films.

While distribution was still handled from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's headquarters in Minneapolis, World Wide had its own sound stages and post-production facilities in Burbank, California—just one block away from the Walt Disney Studio.

Much of their artistic direction over the next two decades came from James F. Collier, who wrote the screenplay for The Restless Ones and directed many of the films that followed. In his films, he often looked for ways to push beyond the Billy Graham "formula."

Two a Penny (1967) stars British pop legend—and committed Christian—Cliff Richard as a would-be drug dealer who is hostile toward his girlfriend's newfound faith, and whose salvation, at the end, is still an open question. For Pete's Sake (1968) puts the crusade at the beginning of the story, and then explores, with self-deprecating humor, the hurdles that a newly saved family must overcome as it puts its faith into practice.

The studio's greatest success, on many levels, was The Hiding Place (1975), based on the autobiographical best seller by Corrie Ten Boom, whose Dutch family was split up and sent to concentration camps for hiding Jews in their home during World War II. The film has the look and feel of an epic, and it has a gritty realism that few other Christian films have matched. Jeannette Clift, who played Ten Boom, was nominated for Golden Globe and BAFTA awards, and there were rumors that the Academy considered her, too.

This was followed by Joni (1979), in which Joni Eareckson—the quadriplegic victim of a diving accident—re-enacted her own life story. Bob Buck, an electronics engineer who was involved with his church's audio-visual program in Trumbull, Connecticut, served the BGEA as a "theatre manager" during this era, and he estimates he saw Joni 29 times.

"They were packed houses always," he recalls. The BGEA booked theatres in advance, and gave Buck "great big boxes of tickets" to distribute to churches and other groups; admission was free, but the tickets were needed to ensure that the theatres were not over-crowded.

Buck says the BGEA also avoided showing its films in the multiplexes that were springing up around that time, "because they didn't want to have competing crowds in the lobbies."

Evangelism techniques had changed by then, too, Buck notes. "In those early movies, after the movie was over, there was a guy at the front of the theatre who gave an invitation—but by the time they got to The Hiding Place they had stopped doing that, so a clip was added to the end of the movie with Billy Graham addressing the audience," he says.

Sometimes, materials explaining Christianity were handed out to audience members; these included response cards that were mailed directly to BGEA headquarters in Minneapolis.

Collier, who passed away in 1991, directed three more films for World Wide Pictures: The Prodigal (1983), which marked the first time that Graham himself took part in the dramatic action, even if it was only in one scene; Cry from the Mountain (1985), set in Alaska; and Caught (1987), the last of which was World Wide's first—and so far only—film to be rated PG-13, because it dealt with drug addiction and male prostitution in Amsterdam.

By then, changes in the broader culture and in the distribution of films had caught up with World Wide Pictures. Churches were planning their own big events, and many stopped having Sunday night services, where some of these films had been shown. There was less demand for 16mm films, and most churches did not yet have video projectors. World Wide sold off its Burbank studio, and focused on making films for the TV and direct-to-video market, which people could watch with their friends in their own living rooms.

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Billy Graham's Top Five	Printer view
For more than 50 years, the evangelist's organization has been making films for the purpose of bringing viewers to Christ. And it's worked—more than 2 million times.