Robert Drew

• Birth Name — Robert Lincoln Drew • Born — 15 February 1924 • Birthplace — Toledo, Ohio, U.S. • Died — 30 July 2014 • Place of death — Sharon, Connecticut, U.S. • Occupation — Documentary filmmaker • Years Active — 1955–2014 • Children — 3

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. In 1942 he left high school to join the U.S. Army Air Corps as a cadet 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 enemy lines, where he survived for more than three months. After returning to the U.S., he was a pilot in the 1st Fighter Group, the first to fly jet airplanes. He wrote an article for Life magazine about the experience flying a P-80 and was subsequently offered a job with the magazine. Drew said in a 1993 interview that as far back as the late 1940s, "I began thinking about developing a kind of film journalism that was as flexible as candid photography". While working as a writer and editor at Life, he won Harvard University's Nieman Fellowship for journalism. During his Nieman year in 1955, he focused on two questions: Why are documentaries so dull? What would it take for them to become gripping and exciting? His answers were "that documentaries, with their stitched-together footage and stilted narration, had been little more than lectures, and that television had the ability to draw audiences into dramatic stories with an immediacy it had yet to exploit." He formed a unit within Time Inc. with the aim of creating documentary films that would use picture logic rather than word logic. As he articulated it, he envisioned a type of documentary that would "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." To realize his vision, he needed lightweight camera equipment that operated silently, along with recorded synchronized sound. He was able to persuade Time Inc. to finance development of the new equipment. Some of Drew's early short-form documentaries premiered on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jack Paar Tonight Show. In 1960, he founded Drew Associates and recruited like-minded filmmakers including Richard Leacock, D. A. Pennebaker, Terence Macartney-Filgate, and Albert Maysles, all of whom went on to their own celebrated careers. They experimented with new technology, for example, syncing camera and sound with the parts of a watch. Among the best-known works of Drew Associates is Primary (1960), a documentary about the April 1960 Wisconsin primary election between Democratic Party candidates Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy. It is considered one of the first direct cinema documentaries. For the film, Drew had Mitch Bogdanovich make smaller 16mm cameras, which allowed for hand-held use and a much closer look at political candidates and campaigning than was previously possible. 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." After Kennedy responded positively to Primary, Drew "proposed to make a next film on him as a President having to deal with a crisis. '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?'" They got their chance in spring of 1963 when Governor George Wallace of Alabama pledged, as a show of support for segregation, to personally stand in the doorway to block enrollment of the first two African-American students at the University of Alabama. Drew secured permission for his camera crews to film in the White House and in the office of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, as well as in Alabama at the home of Governor Wallace and at the university. The film footage covers the days leading up to June 11, 1963, when Wallace made his infamous stand. The resulting film, Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, aired on TV in October 1963 and fueled discussions about the Civil Rights Movement. It also raised questions about cinéma vérité, and whether the people being filmed alter their behavior out of self-consciousness or a desire to manipulate the process. Over the course of his career, Drew made scores of documentaries and won numerous awards, including an Emmy for Man Who Dances (1968) about the ballet dancer Edward Villella. Drew's films were shown on ABC, PBS, the BBC, and at international film festivals. His subjects included politics, civil rights, social and environmental issues, and the arts. One of his last documentaries was From Two Men and a War (2005), which recounts his experiences as a World War II fighter pilot and his encounters with the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ernie Pyle. Drew's second wife, Anne Gilbert, was a documentarian at Drew Associates and often worked with her husband on film projects. His extended family member Sybil Drew also became a journalist and documentarian. Director Sir Ridley Scott credited his early experience working as an assistant at Drew Associates with turning his career from design to film.

Robert Drew died on July 30, 2014, at his home in Sharon, Connecticut. He was 90.

• Illustration — Who's Out There? (1973), an award-winning NASA documentary film by Robert Drew about the likelihood of life on other planets • Year — Title — Notes • 1954 — Key Picture (Magazine X) • 1957 — American Football • 1957 — The • 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 — The • 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 — The — First Prize, Cannes Film Festival • 1962 — Blackie • 1962 — Nehru • 1962 — The • 1962 — Susan Starr • 1962 — Jane • 1963 — Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment — 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 — The — Cine Golden Eagle • 1969 — Martian Investigations — Cine Golden Eagle • 1969 — The — 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, Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University 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 — A

Robert Drew was recorded at birth as Robert Lincoln Drew. The authorities additionally record the heading Robert Lincoln Drew. His recorded language was English. He was the child of Robert W.

Robert Drew is recorded as film director, film producer and screenwriter.