Leo Hurwitz Collection, 1910-1992, Bulk 1925-1991
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Leo Hurwitz collection, 1910-1992, bulk 1925-1991 Finding aid created by Stacey Doyle, Ken Fox, and Nancy Kauffman, George Eastman Museum, Moving Image Department, March 2016 Descriptive Summary Creator: Hurwitz, Leo, 1909-1991 Title: Leo Hurwitz collection Dates: 1910-1992, bulk 1925-1991 Physical Extent: 89.5 cubic feet Repository: Moving Image Department George Eastman Museum 900 East Avenue Rochester, NY 14607 Phone: 585-271-3361 Fax: 585-256-3397 Email: [email protected] Content Abstract: The Leo Hurwitz Collection consists of correspondence and papers (both business and personal), scripts, storyboards, publications and clippings, research materials, financial records, promotional material, interviews, festival materials, film and audio dating from 1910-1992, bulk 1925-1991. The collection covers the whole of Hurwitz’s professional career and to a lesser extent his personal life, but with much overlap in the materials themselves. The collection documents Hurwitz's involvement with many notable figures, including Paul Strand, Elia Kazan, Joris Ivens, Paul Robeson, Ralph Steiner, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henri Langlois, Woody Guthrie, James Blue, and Edwin Rolfe. Languages: Collection materials are primarily in English. Other languages represented are German, French, Finnish, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Hebrew. Location: Collection materials are located onsite. Access Restrictions: This collection is open to research upon request. Copyright: George Eastman Museum holds the rights to the majority of the physical materials but not intellectual property rights. The only exception of this is the oral history, which is for 1 on-site review only. This oral history is owned by Columbia University and they must be contacted for permission to copy or cite from the document. Acquisition Information: The collection was formally donated in 1999, with the memorandum of agreement signed by Manfred Kirchheimer on behalf of the Leo Hurwitz estate. Custodial History: Materials were created, collected, and maintained by Mr. Hurwitz during his lifetime. Following his death, the materials were donated to George Eastman Museum by his estate. Materials arrived at the museum in multiple shipments between 1994 and 1998. Funding for this finding aid was provided by a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Hidden Collections Program. Biographical Note The American filmmaker Leo Tolstoy Hurwitz was born on June 23, 1909, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. The youngest of eight, his siblings included his oldest brother William Hurwitz; Peter Hurwitz Hawley; Elizabeth Delza-Munson; Rosetta Hurwitz; Marie Hurwitz Briehl; Sophia Delza; and Eleanor Hurwitz Anderson. Hurwitz's father Solomon Gurewich (1860-1945), a tutor, arrived in the United States from Russia in 1898; his mother, Eva Riva Katcher, was a midwife whom Solomon met while teaching children in Eva's hometown of Rossava, Ukraine. Eva followed Solomon to the U.S. in 1900, bringing with her the first four of the couple's eight children; the rest would be born in the U.S. Solomon worked as a pushcart peddler and factory worker in Philadelphia and then New York City. Though anti-Bolshevik and a life-long anti-Communist Solomon nevertheless attended socialist, anarchist, and trade- unionist meetings, often accompanied by Eva; he also sent several of Leo's brothers and sisters to the Socialist Sunday School.1 Leo Hurwitz attended Brooklyn's Dewey Junior High School and New Utretch High School, where he was the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine The Comet and president of the dramatic society.2 Hurwitz graduated high school in June 1926 and, having received a New York Harvard Club scholarship, entered Harvard College that September. While at Harvard Hurwitz majored in philosophy and psychology, with minors in fine arts and science. He also became a member of the Liberal Club. During his sophomore year Hurwitz decided against becoming a physician, and by his junior year he realized he wanted to work in film. In June 1930 Hurwitz graduated Harvard summa cum laude. Returning to New York City Hurwitz began taking photographs for Harper's Bazaar and writing book reviews for several New York newspapers, including the New York Post. He also worked for an emergency relief agency at an orphanage across from the campus of the City College of New York. Hurwitz left the agency after several months and began working without pay as an assistant editor for Creative Art magazine, where the husband of his sister Sophia, A. Cook Glassgold, was the managing editor. Hurwitz's duties included securing copy and laying out 2 pages of photographs by such photographers and avant-garde filmmakers as Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand, both of whom advised Hurwitz on his own photography. Steiner in particular taught Hurwitz the essentials of dark-room technique and photographic practice. Hurwitz also contributed film reviews to Creative Art, but due to a lack of funds and equipment his own filmmaking activities were limited to ideas for short films and a feature-length animated adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.3 In late 1931/early 1932 Hurwitz's interests in photography and film led him to the Film and Photo League of New York, where he was soon joined by Steiner, filmmaker/editor Sidney Meyers, and Lionel Berman. In December 1932 Hurwitz filmed the National Hunger March in Washington from its start in Boston -- Samuel Brody, Robert Del Duca, and Steiner joined him in New York City -- and later edited the footage into Hunger 1932 (1933).4 Additional Film and Photo League films on which Hurwitz worked as director, cinematographer, or editor include The Scottsboro Boys (1933) (in cooperation with the International Labor Defense) and Sweet Land of Liberty (1934) (with the Political Prisoners Committee of International Law). In November 1933 the Film and Photo League inaugurated the Harry Alan Potamkin Film School at the Lexington Avenue headquarters of the Workers International Relief.5 Named for the late film theorist and League member, the school was intended to meet the need for formal technical training and education in the history of film and film criticism. Hurwitz taught classes alongside other League members and soon advocated for the formation of a dedicated production unit within the League -- a properly trained "shock troop" consisting of "people who had a life interest in film.6 The idea met with resistance -- some members felt the idea of a select cadre of filmmakers was elitist and ran counter to the idea of the Film and Photo League as a mass democratic organization.7 In response Hurwitz formed NYKino in 1935 with Steiner, Meyers, Jay Leyda, Irving Lerner, and Ben Maddow, many of whom comprised the core group of the Harry Alan Potamkin Film School. Initially funded by Hurwitz's salary from New Theatre magazine, where he began working as managing editor in 1934, NYKino shifted away from the League's strict adherence to documentary form, and began to incorporate dramatization and creative cinematography and editing into the depiction of real-life events.8 NYKino's first projects included the completion of three films begun earlier by Ralph Steiner (Harbor Scenes, Quarry [a.k.a. Granite], and Pie in the Sky [1935]), all of which were edited by Hurwitz,9 as well as a dramatic March of Time-style newsreel "from a left-wing perspective"10 titled The World Today, of which only two segments were produced (Sunnyside and The Black Legion). In 1935 Hurwitz, Steiner, and Paul Strand were hired by writer-turned-filmmaker Pare Lorentz to photograph the Resettlement Administration-sponsored film The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) in Montana, Wyoming, and Texas. That summer, on July 2, 1935, Hurwitz also married the prominent dancer and choreographer Jane Dudley. Upon their return from shooting The Plow That Broke the Plains, Hurwitz, Steiner, and Strand set about transforming NYKino -- at best a part-time endeavor for many of its members -- into what Hurwitz would later describe as "an independent production company with day-to-day continuity and with a full-time staff."11 Frontier Films was officially launched in March 1937 with Strand as president and Hurwitz and Steiner vice-presidents.12 (Steiner, along with Willard Van 3 Dyke, would leave Frontier in early 1938 to form American Documentary Films.) Frontier Films' first completed production was Heart of Spain (1937), based primarily on footage of the Spanish Civil War previously shot by New Theatre editor Herbert Kline and edited by Strand and Hurwitz,13 followed by China Strikes Back (1937); People of the Cumberland and Return to Life (both 1938); History and Romance of Transportation (1939); and White Flood (1940). In 1937 production also began on a feature-length film about American civil liberties alternatively referred to as "Production #5," "Labor Spy," "Edge of the World," "Listen America!" and "Civil Liberties."14 The film would take nearly four years to complete and would not be released until January 1942 by which time it had been renamed Native Land. The departure of additional members, a depletion of funds, and the U.S.'s entry into World War II all contributed to the end of Frontier Films, shortly after the theatrical release of Native Land in early 1942.15 Rejected by the U.S. Army on account of a functional heart murmur,16 Hurwitz spent the early years of the war working on films for several government agencies, including the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (Song of Freedom, 1942, and There Shall Be Freedom, ca. 1943); the United States Navy Bureau of Aeronautics (Tomorrow We Fly, 1943); the Office of War Information (OWI) ("Bridge of Men," 1943, and "On the Playing Fields of America," 1944); and the British Information Services, for whom Hurwitz adapted British documentaries for American use.17 In general, however, work was increasingly difficult to find.