Leo Hurwitz, an award-winning documentary film maker who dealt with social justice and similar themes and who was on an industry blacklist in the 1950’s.
He was 81 years old. He died of colon cancer, his wife, Nelly, said.
In a long career that began with newsreels depicting the hunger marches of the Great Depression, Mr. Hurwitz made 15 principal films, including “Native Land” in 1942, co-directed by Paul Strand, narrated by Paul Robeson and with a musical score by Marc Blitzstein, and “Dialogue With a Woman Departed,” a four-hour visual poem to his late second wife and co-worker, Peggy Lawson, that won an International Film Critics Prize in 1981. A Native of Brooklyn
Mr. Hurwitz was a native of Brooklyn and a graduate of Harvard University. He was a cameraman and co-writer of the script for Pare Lorentz’s landmark documenatary on the Dust Bowl, “The Plow That Broke the Plains.”
In 1936 he helped found Frontier Films, the first nonprofit documentary production… read more
Leo Hurwitz, an award-winning documentary film maker who dealt with social justice and similar themes and who was on an industry blacklist in the 1950’s.
He was 81 years old. He died of colon cancer, his wife, Nelly, said.
In a long career that began with newsreels depicting the hunger marches of the Great Depression, Mr. Hurwitz made 15 principal films, including “Native Land” in 1942, co-directed by Paul Strand, narrated by Paul Robeson and with a musical score by Marc Blitzstein, and “Dialogue With a Woman Departed,” a four-hour visual poem to his late second wife and co-worker, Peggy Lawson, that won an International Film Critics Prize in 1981. A Native of Brooklyn
Mr. Hurwitz was a native of Brooklyn and a graduate of Harvard University. He was a cameraman and co-writer of the script for Pare Lorentz’s landmark documenatary on the Dust Bowl, “The Plow That Broke the Plains.”
In 1936 he helped found Frontier Films, the first nonprofit documentary production company in the United States, for which he made “Heart of Spain” on the Spanish Civil War and “Native Land,” about American labor struggles of the 1930’s.
In World War II Mr. Hurwitz worked on films for the Office of War Information, the British Information Service and other Government agencies. After the war, in the early days of commercial television, he was a producer-director and chief of news and special events for CBS television.
In 1947 he produced “Strange Victory,” a documentary that dealt with racism in the United States after the war. The film won awards at the Karlovy-Vary and Venice Film Festivals. Working Without Credit
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, while blacklisted for his strong left-wing political beliefs, he continued to work as an independent film maker and, without credit, co-produced, directed and edited several segments for the “Omnibus” series on CBS.
In 1961 he directed the television coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, whose summary program, “Verdict for Tomorrow,” won Emmy and Peabody Awards. From 1964 to 1966 he made a group of films for National Educational Television, including “Essay on Death,” dealing with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, “The Sun and Richard Lippold” and “In Search of Hart Crane.”
In the mid-1960’s he and six other directors brought a lawsuit against the Directors Guild of America that resulted in a United States Supreme Court decision forcing the guild to remove a loyalty oath from its membership application.
From 1969 to 1974 he was professor of film and chairman of the Graduate Institute of Film and Television at New York University. His work has been the subject of several retrospectives showings, including ones at the Museum of Modern Art, the Public Theater and the Cinemathique Francaise in Paris. At his death he was working on a script for a film on the abolitionist John Brown.
His first wife, from whom he was divorced, is Jane Dudley, a modern dancer and choreographer. His second wife, Miss Lawson, who worked with him in films for many years, died in 1971. He is survived by his third wife, the former Nelly Burlingham; a son, Tom, of Manhattan; a brother, Peter Hawley, of Yonkers; four sisters, Elizabeth Munson, of Manhattan, Marie Briehl, of Hollywood, and Sophia Delza and Eleanor Anderson, both of Manhattan, and three grandchildren. —New York Times
