Robert Drew
Robert Lincoln Drew was an American documentary filmmaker known as one of the pioneers—and sometimes called father—of cinéma vérité, or direct cinema, in the United States. Two of his films, Primary and , have been named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The moving image collection of Robert Drew is housed at the Academy Film Archive. The Academy Film Archive has preserved a number of his films, including Faces of November, Herself: Indira Gandhi, and Bravo!/Kathy's Dance. His many awards include an International Documentary Association Career Achievement Award.
Biography
Robert Drew was born in Toledo, Ohio. His father, Robert Woodsen Drew, was a film salesman and a pilot who ran a seaplane business. Drew grew up mostly in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. He left high school to join the U.S. Army Air Corps as a cadet in 1942 and qualified for officer's training. At the age of 19, he was a combat pilot in Italy flying the P-51 dive bomber, completing 30 successful combat missions. During that time he met Ernie Pyle, an important experience for a pilot who would become a journalist. Drew was shot down behind the lines, where he survived for more than three months. Back in the U.S., he was a pilot in the First Fighter Group, the first to fly jet airplanes. He wrote an article for Life magazine about the experience of flying a P-80, and was offered a job.While working at Life as a writer and editor, Drew held a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. In 1955 he focused on two questions: Why are documentaries so dull? What would it take for them to become gripping and exciting?
He developed a unit within Time Inc. to realize his vision of developing documentary films that would use picture logic rather than word logic. Drew envisioned—as he explained in a 1962 interview—a form of documentary that would "drop word logic and find a dramatic logic in which things really happened". It would be "a theater without actors; it would be plays without playwrights; it would be reporting without summary and opinion; it would be the ability to look in on people’s lives at crucial times from which you could deduce certain things and see a kind of truth that can only be gotten from personal experience."
He formed Drew Associates around this time. Some of his early experiments premiered on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jack Paar Show. Drew recruited like-minded filmmakers including Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, Terence Macartney-Filgate, and Albert Maysles, who all have had internationally renowned careers. They experimented with technology, syncing camera and sound with the parts of a watch. For Primary, Drew had Mitch Bogdanovich make the smaller 16mm cameras that allowed for handheld use
One of Drew Associates' best known films is Primary, a documentary about the Wisconsin Primary election between Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy. It is considered to be one of the first direct cinema documentaries. According to critic Matt Zoller Seitz, Primary "had as immense and measurable an impact on nonfiction filmmaking as Birth of a Nation had on fiction filmmaking."
On June 11, 1963, the Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the entrance of the University of Alabama to oppose integration. His defiance of court order rapidly became a national issue in the U.S. Drew Associates had a cameraman in the Oval office and recorded the meetings over the crisis. The result played on TV in October 1963. Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment not only fueled discussions over the Civil Rights Movement, it also triggered a profound questioning over the political power of cinema verite or direct cinema. Politicians became more cautious about allowing access by documentary filmmakers, working closely with many of the original Drew Associates filmmakers who had and have continued to have documentary careers of their own.
For , Drew convinced President John F. Kennedy to let his crews shoot candidly in the White House, and Drew Associates filmmakers took cameras into the Oval Office and into the home of Alabama Governor George Wallace who was resisting desegregation. "I proposed to make a next film on him as a President having to deal with a crisis," Drew has recalled. "'Yes,' he said, 'What if I could look back and see what went on in the White House in the 24 hours before Roosevelt declared war on Japan?'"
The film includes candid presidential meetings over the crisis precipitated by Wallace when he planned to physically block the entry of two African-American students to the University of Alabama. The program aired in October 1963 on ABC and triggered a storm of criticism over the admission of cameras into the White House.
Drew's films have been shown on ABC, PBS, the BBC, and film festivals all over the world. Film director Sir Ridley Scott credits his early experience working at Drew Associates as an assistant with turning his career from design to film.
Drew has made scores of documentaries and has won awards internationally. His subjects have included civil rights, other social issues, politics, music, dance and more. One of his most recent was From Two Men and a War, which recounts his experience as a World War II fighter pilot and his encounters with the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ernie Pyle.
Death
Drew died on July 30, 2014, at his home in Sharon, Connecticut.Select filmography
| Year | Title | Notes |
| 1954 | Key Picture | |
| 1957 | American Football | |
| 1957 | ' | |
| 1958 | Balloon Ascension | |
| 1958 | Weightless | |
| 1959 | Bullfight | |
| 1960 | On the Pole | |
| 1960 | Yanki No! | |
| 1960 | Primary | Best Documentary, Flaherty Award Blue Ribbon Award, American Film Festival Outstanding Film, London Film Festival National Film Registry, Library of Congress |
| 1961 | Adventures on the New Frontier | |
| 1961 | ' | |
| 1961 | Petey and Johnny | Outstanding Film, London Film Festival |
| 1961 | Mooney vs. Fowle | Outstanding Film, London Film Festival |
| 1961 | On the Pole: Eddie Sachs | |
| 1962 | ' | First Prize, Cannes Film Festival |
| 1962 | Blackie | |
| 1962 | Nehru | |
| 1962 | ' | |
| 1962 | Susan Starr | |
| 1962 | Jane | |
| 1962 | ' | National Film Registry, Library of Congress First prize, Venice Film Festival Cine Golden Eagle First Prize, International Documentary Film Festival, Bilbao |
| 1964 | Faces of November | First prize, Venice Film Festival |
| 1966 | Storm Signal | First prize, Venice Film Festival |
| 1968 | Man Who Dances | First Prize, International Cinema Exhibition, Bilbao, Cine Golden Eagle Emmy Award, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences |
| 1968 | On the Road with Duke Ellington | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1968 | The New Met | First Prize, International Cinema Exhibition, Bilbao Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1969 | Jazz: The Intimate Art | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1969 | ' | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1969 | Martian Investigations | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1969 | ' | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1973 | Who's Out There? | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1976 | Parade of the Tall Ships | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1977 | Kathy's Dance | Cine Golden Eagle Silver Hugo, Chicago Film Festival Blue Ribbon Award, American Film Festival |
| 1978 | Talent for America | |
| 1979 | Grasshopper Plague | |
| 1979 | Maine Winter | |
| 1979 | One Room Schoolhouse | |
| 1982 | 784 Days That Changed America: From Watergate to Resignation | Peabody Award American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award International Film and TV Festival of New York Gold Award |
| 1982 | Herself, Indira Gandhi | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1982 | Fire Season | |
| 1984 | Warning from Gangland | |
| 1984 | Marshall High Fights Back | Cine Golden Eagle Nomination, Emmy Award First Prize, Education Writers Association |
| 1985 | Shootout on Imperial Highway | |
| 1986 | For Auction: An American Hero | Best Documentary, DuPont-Columbia Award Cine Golden Eagle Nominee, Emmy Award |
| 1988 | River of Hawks | |
| 1988 | Your Flight is Cancelled | |
| 1988 | Messages from the Birds | |
| 1990 | London to Peking: The Great Motoring Challenge | |
| 1991 | Life and Death of a Dynasty | Cine Golden Eagle |
| 1996 | L.A. Champions | |
| 1996 | On the Trail of the Vanishing Birds | |
| 2005 | From Two Men and a War | |
| 2008 | ' |