David Maysles

Biography

Albert Maysles (26 November 1926 - 5 March 2015) and David Maysles (rhymes with "hazels") (10 January 1932 – 3 January 1987) were a documentary filmmaking team whose “direct cinema” works include Salesman (1969), Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1976).

Extracted from Wikipedia contributors, "Albert and David Maysles," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, < link > (accessed 23 January 2024).

Early lives

The brothers were born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, living there until the family moved to Brookline, Massachusetts when Albert was 13.[2] Albert and David's parents, both Jewish, were immigrants to the United States; their father, born in Ukraine, was employed as a postal clerk, while their mother, originally from Poland, was a schoolteacher. The family originally settled in Dorchester to be near relatives (the brothers' great-uncle Josef Maysles and his daughter and son-in-law, Becky and Joe Kandib) who had moved there earlier.[3]

David also studied psychology at Boston University, receiving a BA. Also like his brother, David served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in West Germany during the Korean War. In the mid-1950s, he worked as a Hollywood production assistant on the Marilyn Monroe films Bus Stop and The Prince and the Showgirl. David later stated that he grew "disenchanted with conventional filming. The glamour had faded and the filming of take after take had become tedious."[7] By 1957 he had teamed up with Albert to shoot two documentaries behind the Iron Curtain, Russian Close-Up (credited to Albert Maysles alone) and Youth in Poland, the latter of which was broadcast on NBC.[6]

By 1960, the Maysles brothers had joined Drew Associates, the documentary film company founded by photojournalist Robert Drew which also included Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker. Albert would film, while David would handle sound. During this time, the brothers worked on Drew Associates films such as Primary and Adventures on the New Frontier. In 1962, Albert and David left Drew Associates to form their own production company, Maysles Films, Inc.[6][8].

Maysles brothers' collaborative years

The Maysles brothers made over 30 films together. They are best known for three documentaries made in the late 1960s and early 1970s: Salesman (1969), Gimme Shelter (1970), and Grey Gardens (1975). … In order to finance these films and others, the Maysleses also made commercials for clients such as IBM, Shell Oil, and Merrill Lynch.[8]

… Many of the Maysleses' documentaries focus on art, artists and musicians. The Maysleses documented The Beatles' first visit to the United States in 1964, and a 1965 conceptual art project by Yoko Ono called "Cut Piece" in which she sat on the stage of Carnegie Hall while audience members cut off her clothing with scissors. Several Maysles films document art projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude over a three-decade period, from 1974 when Christo's Valley Curtain was nominated for an Academy Award,[7] to 2005 when The Gates (started in 1979 and completed by Albert after David's death) headlined New York's Tribeca Film Festival. Other Maysles subjects include Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, Vladimir Horowitz, and Seiji Ozawa.[8]

Legacy and contribution to documentary cinema

By letting real-life action unfold on camera without interference from the crew, the Maysleses pioneered the "fly on the wall" perspective in documentary cinema. This perspective is typical with the genre of documentary known as Direct Cinema which they helped pioneer. This genre is similar to cinéma vérité. They broke tradition with mid-century documentary tropes by eschewing narration, inter-titles and extraneous music tracks. The editing process could be interpreted as their narrative "voice," depending on what footage and sound they chose to use and how the timeline of the story unfolded in the final cut.

David won a Primetime Emmy for 1985's Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic alongside Albert.[29]

Death of David Maysles

David Maysles, the younger brother, died of a stroke on January 3, 1987, seven days shy of his 56th [sic: 55th] birthday, in New York City.[7][14].

Filmography of Albert and David Maysles

• Youth in Poland (1957)
• Showman (1963) – featuring Joseph E. Levine
• Orson Welles in Spain (1963)
• What's Happening! The Beatles In The U.S.A. (1964) – featuring The Beatles; re-edited and re-released in 1991 as The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit
• IBM: A Self-Portrait (1964)
• Meet Marlon Brando (1965)
• Cut Piece (1965) – featuring Yoko Ono
• Store Front (1965) – featuring Christo and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon
• With Love from Truman (1966, with Charlotte Zwerin) – featuring Truman Capote
• Salesman (1968, with Charlotte Zwerin)
• Gimme Shelter (1970, with Charlotte Zwerin) – featuring The Rolling Stones
• Christo's Valley Curtain (1974, with Ellen Hovde) – featuring Christo and Jeanne-Claude
• Grey Gardens (1975, with Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer)
• "The Burks of Georgia" from Six American Families (1976, with Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer)
• Running Fence (1978, with Charlotte Zwerin) – featuring Christo and Jeanne-Claude
• Muhammad and Larry (1980) – featuring Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes
• Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic (1985, with Susan Froemke, Deborah Dickson, Pat Jaffe)
• Ozawa (1986, with Susan Froemke, Deborah Dickson)
• Islands (1986, with Charlotte Zwerin) – featuring Christo and Jeanne-Claude
• Christo in Paris (1990, with Deborah Dickson and Susan Froemke) – featuring Christo and Jeanne-Claude

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Obituaries

Kleiman, Dena (January 4, 1987). "David Maysles is Dead at 54, Maker of Documentary Films". The New York Times. Retrieved April 22, 2010. Via Internet Archive. < link >

David Maysles, the documentary film maker, credited with his brother, Albert, as being one of the founders of the documentary genre known as cinema verite, died at Roosevelt Hospital yesterday after suffering a stroke Sunday. He was 54 years old and lived in Manhattan.

The Maysles brothers were among the handful of film makers to first use the technological advance of the small camera - light enough to fit on a cameraman's shoulder - to capture the drama of daily experience. Their films, a form they described as the cinematic equivalent of the nonfiction novel and called direct cinema, constituted a major departure from the more traditional documentary technique of running narration and static face-to-face interviews.

The brothers' best-known documentaries were Salesman, which chronicled the adventures of four Bible salesmen (1969); Gimme Shelter, a record of the latter part of the Rolling Stones' 1969 American tour (1970), and Grey Gardens about Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale, the reclusive aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Onassis (1975).

Vincent Canby, film critic of The New York Times, hailed Salesman as such a fine, pure picture of a small section of American life that I can't imagine its ever seeming irrelevant, either as a social document or as one of the best examples of what's called cinema verite or direct cinema.

Films Generated Controversy

Their films were praised for their artistry, compassion and devotion, but were not without controversy.

There were those who asserted that the film makers' frequently stark portrayals constituted exploitation -particularly the scene in Gimme Shelter in which a young man is stabbed to death by Hell's Angels at a Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, and the candid self-revelations in Grey Gardens, in which Mrs. Beale and her daughter are photographed in their cat-infested house. The film makers, however, repeatedly defended their technique as portraying the truth.

We have built our reputation by confronting the actual world, they once wrote in a letter to The New York Times. We have labored in each of our films to get as close to the truth as we could.

--Mon., Jan. 5, 1987 Obit in Boston Globe, p. 47. Headline: "David Maysles, 54, film maker; known for documentaries, 54" "Services were held Sunday, Jan. 4 in Southhampton, N.Y. for David Carl Maysles, 54, of New York City .... He died of an aneurysm Saturday in Roosevelt Hospital, New York City." a Brookline native ... raised in Brookline and earned a bachelor of arts degree in psychology and a master's degree at Boston University. " [ ] and his brother, Albert, 60, were widely acclaimed as the Maysles Brothers, operating their Manhattan firm, Maysles Film Co. [New Paragraph] They were noted worldwide for making films without sets or scripts, preferring to record life as it unfolded naturally before their cameras."
[since this is no longer a Private Profile, I have removed the reference to survivors - some may be living - L]

References

• David Carl Maysles in the Massachusetts, U.S., Birth Index, 1860-1970 < AncestrySharing > Name David Carl Maysles Birth Date 1932 Birth Place Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• David C Maysles in the 1940 United States Federal Census < AncestrySharing >
• David Mayshes in the 1950 United States Federal Census < AncestrySharing >
• The Boston Globe, January 5, 1987, Page 47. (Newspapers.com accessed January 23, 2024), clip page for David Maysles.
• Newsday, January 5, 1987, Page 32.(Newspapers.com accessed January 23, 2024), clip page for David Maysles, filmmaker. “… Mr. Maysles is survived by his wife …; two children; his brother Albert and sister Barbara. A memorial service will be held in Manhattan at a later date.”
• FindAGrave images and biography.
• http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/maysles.html January 04, 1987 (dead link)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_and_David_Maysles cites
  • 2. "Albert Maysles - Page - Interview Magazine". interviewmagazine.com. July 22, 2012. Retrieved December 2, 2015. < link >
  • 3. "Documenting the Life of Documentary Filmmaker Albert Maysles - Culture". Forward.com. March 6, 2015. Retrieved December 2, 2015 < link >
  • 6. McElhaney, Joe (2009). Albert Maysles. Urbana and Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press. pp. 4–10. ISBN 978-0252076213. < GoogleBooks >
  • 7. "David P. Maysles, Documentary Filmmaker, Dies". Los Angeles Times. Times Wire Services. January 5, 1987. Archived from the original on October 10, 2015. Retrieved October 10, 2015. < link >
  • 8. Anderson, Carolyn (2013). "Maysles, Albert". In Aitken, Ian (ed.). The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 619–620. ISBN 978-0415596428. Retrieved October 18, 2015. < link >
  • 14. Kleiman, Dena (January 4, 1987). "David Maysles is Dead at 54, Maker of Documentary Films". The New York Times. Retrieved April 22, 2010. Via Internet Archive. < link >
  • 29. David Maysles|Television Academy < link >
• McElhaney, Joe (2009). Albert Maysles. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0252076213.
• Saunders, Dave (2007). Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties. London: Wallflower Press. ISBN 978-1905674152.
• Official website Maysles Films http://mayslesfilms.com/
• David Maysles at IMDb https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0563100/
• Finding aid to Albert and David Maysles papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library. < link >
• Maysles Films at Library of Congress, with 3 library catalog records < link >
• Les frères Maysles, le spectacle de la vie < link >
• Schudel, Matt. (9 March 2015) “Albert Maysles: Pioneer of cinéma vérité who with his brother David was best-known for 'Grey Gardens' and 'Gimme Shelter '”< Independent.co.uk > “Until David Maysles' death in 1987, the brothers made films about musicians, various social issues, celebrities and Bible salesmen. Albert was the cinematographer, lightweight camera on his shoulder, while his brother recorded the sound. They were Oscar-nominated for best documentary for their 1973 film Christo's Valley Curtain, about the structure-wrapping artist Christo, which the New Yorker's Calvin Tomkins called "by far the finest film I have seen about an artist and his work."”