Peter Robin Gimbel

Obituary from the New York Times:

PETER GIMBEL IS DEAD AT 59; A FILM MAKER AND JOURNALIST

Published: July 13, 1987

Peter Gimbel, a film maker and underwater photojournalist who filmed the sunken Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria and the great white shark, died of cancer yesterday at his Manhattan apartment. He was 59 years old.

Mr. Gimbel, whose father, Bernard, was chairman of Gimbel Brothers Inc., graduated from Yale University with degrees in English and economics. After 10 years as an investment banker, he left the business world to become an explorer, fascinated, as he put it, by obscure environs.

In 1956, he became the first person to scuba dive to the Andrea Doria. In the next 30 years, he explored and photographed the sunken liner, producing two documentaries: The Mystery of the Andrea Doria in 1975, and Andrea Doria: The Final Chapter in 1984, which included the opening of the liner's safe on live television.

In 1963, Mr. Gimbel led an 89-day mission into the unexplored Vilcabamba Range in the Peruvian Andes, sponsored by The National Geographic Magazine and the New York Zoological Society.

In 1971, his fascination with the great white shark led him to write, produce direct and photograph Blue Water, White Death. Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the film as so pure that it's as poetic as anything I've seen in a long time.

Mr. Gimbel is survived by his wife, Elga; a son, Peter Bailey Gimbel; a daughter, Leslie Gimbel Goldman, and two sisters, Hope Gimbel Solinger and Caral Gimbel Lebworth, all of Manhattan.