- Saul Swimmer
Saul Swimmer (born
April 25 ,1936 ,Uniontown, Pennsylvania ; diedMarch 3 per theAssociated Press orMarch 7 per "The Miami Herald " and "Variety", 2007,Miami, Florida ) was an American documentaryfilm director and producer best known for the movie "The Concert for Bangladesh " (1972), theGeorge Harrison -ledMadison Square Garden show that was one of the first all-star benefits inrock music . He was also a co-producer of theBeatles 1970 documentary "Let It Be".Biography
Early life and career
Born to western
Pennsylvania family that included a sister, Esther, and two brothers, Wolford and Alvin, Swimmer attendedAntioch College before earning abachelor's degree fromCarnegie Mellon University in nearbyPittsburgh . He began directing in his 20s, gaining attention for his half-hour children's short "The Boy Who Owned a Melephant " (1959), narrated by actressTallulah Bankhead . [Not listed inIMDb , it was released by Universal on Oct. 6, 1959, and starred Bankhead'sgodson , Brockman Seawell (Eugenia Rawls' son), per the site [http://home.hiwaay.net/~oliver/tbmelephant.htm Tallulah: A Passionate Life] and the book "Tallulah Bankhead: A Bio-Bibliography" by Jeffrey L. Carrier (Greenwood Press, 1991; ISBN-10 0313274525, ISBN-13 978-0313274527), the latter of which specifies it played the Palace Theatre inNew York City .] Some sources state the film won a "Gold Leaf" award at theVenice Film Festival , but that festival has no such award.Following that short, Swimmer directed and, with Tony Anthony, co-wrote the independent features "
Force of Impulse " (1961), aRomeo and Juliet story about ahigh school football player who turns to robbery, filmed inMiami Beach, Florida , and "Without Each Other " (1962).Music and film
Swimmer followed these dramas with the pop-
musical comedy "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter " (1968), starring the British pop groupHerman's Hermits . The movie was one of a handful of similar films released in the wake of the Beatles'mockumentary -style band feature "A Hard Day's Night" (1964) and the comic adventure "Help!" (1965).He broke into documentary filmmaking with the ABC
television special "Around the World of Mike Todd" (1968), about the movie producerMike Todd .After serving as co-producer of the
Neil Aspinall -Mal Evans -produced Beatles documentary "Let It Be" (1970), Swimmer and his indie-movie colleague Tony Anthony co-wrote and co-directed the surrealistic U.S.-Italy road movie , "Cometogether" (1971), produced by BeatleRingo Starr and inspired by Beatles song "Come Together "; and produced aspaghetti Western about a blind but deadly gunfighter, "Blindman" a.k.a. "Il Ciceo" a.k.a. "Il Pistolero Ciceo" (1971), starring Anthony and Starr.The following year, Swimmer directed "
The Concert for Bangladesh ", organized by BeatleGeorge Harrison withRavi Shankar . They along with Starr, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and others performed to raise money for the charityUNICEF , earmarked to aid refugees from the newly independent nation ofBangladesh , the former West Pakistan, who had relocated toIndia .In 1977, Swimmer directed the U.S.-
Spain co-production "The Black Pearl" a.k.a. "La Perla Negra", adapted from aScott O'Dell children'snovel . He produced and directed thedirect-to-video rock documentary "" (1982), the record of a 1981Montreal, Canada show.Later career
Swimmer , developed the
MobileVision Projection System, a pre-IMAX giant-screen technology for projecting movies on a 60x80-foot screen. After the 1991 death of Queen lead singerFreddie Mercury , Swimmer distributed the "We Will Rock You" on MobileVision in 20 countries.His final work was the documentary "
Bob Marley & Friends", completed in 2005 and distributed in 2006 after Swimmer worked on it for more than five years, using footage, of the 1977 Rainbow concert inLondon, England , that had been discovered in a London storage vault that had been bombed by theIrish Republican Army .Death
Swimmer, who moved to the Miami-area
Key Biscayne, Florida in the 1980s and to nearbyCoral Gables, Florida in the 1990s, died ofheart failure atMount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.Footnotes
References
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/movies/22swimmer.html?ref=obituaries Associated Press via "The New York Times" (March 22, 2007): "Saul Swimmer, 70, Film Documentarian, Dies"]
* [http://www.miamiherald.com/512/story/45791.html "The Miami Herald" (March 19, 2007): "Saul Swimmer, 70: Television, Rockumentary, Movie Director", by David Smiley]
* [http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117961416.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2584 "Variety" (March 19, 2007): "Director Swimmer Dies at 70"]
* [http://cache.zoominfo.com/cachedpage/?archive_id=0&page_id=16349404&page_url=%2f%2fwww.mobilevisionusa.com%2fpeople.htm&page_last_updated=2%2f14%2f2001+8%3a58%3a59+PM&firstName=President-Saul&lastName=Swimmer ZoomInfo.com: Saul Swimmer, President, MobileVision Technology, Inc.]
* [http://www.miamifilmfestival.com/2006/detail.asp?filmid=F06-067 Miami International Film Festival: "Bob Marley & Friends"]External links
*imdb name|id=0842664|name=Saul Swimmer
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944505,00.html?promoid=googlep "Time" magazine (April 17, 1972): "Sweet Sounds"] (review: "The Concert for Bangladesh", directed by Saul Swimmer)
* [http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews2/queen.html "The Digital Bits" (Dec. 12, 2001): "Queen: We Will Rock You"] (review of DVD and Swimmer commentary)
* [http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/8652068/harrison_show_revisited "Rolling Stone" (Oct. 23, 2005): "Harrison Show Revisited", by David Fricke] (Swimmer quote re: Concert for Bangladesh)
* [http://www.melodymakers.de/forum/archive/index.php?t-4762.html "The Miami Herald" via Melodymakers.com: "Miami International Film Festival: Rare Footage Sets Film Apart", by Jacqueline Charles]
* [http://www.campcrystallake.com/interviews/ronmillkie.htm CampCrystalLake.com: "13 Questions with Ron Millkie"]
* [http://victormiller.com/autobiography/index.html VictorMiller.com: Autobiography] (screenwriter, "The Black Pearl", on Swimmer)
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