Maysles, Albert (1926– ) and David Paul (1932–1987)
MAYSLES, ALBERT (1926– ) and DAVID PAUL (1932–1987)
MAYSLES, ALBERT (1926– ) and DAVID PAUL (1932–1987), U.S. directors. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the brothers attended Brookline High School and studied psychology at Boston University. Albert taught psychology at Boston University in the late 1940s and in 1955 traveled to the Soviet Union to make his first film, Psychiatry in Russia. In 1956, David worked as a production assistant on the Marilyn Monroe films Bus Stop and The Prince and the Showgirl. In 1957, the brothers took a motorcycle trip together from Munich to Moscow. While in Poland, they focused on the student protest movement as the subject of their first film together, Youthin Poland. The next documentary for the brothers, Primary (1960), focused on the 1960 Democratic primary election campaigns of Kennedy and Humphrey. In 1962, they formed their own production company, Maysles Films, Inc., which made commercials and industrial films to support their cinéma vérité style of documentary filmmaking. Their next films were Showman (1962) and What's Happening: The Beatles in the USA (1964). In 1965, they released Meet Marlon Brando, which followed the actor during publicity interviews, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. The brothers found themselves caught in the middle of a debate on objectivity in documentary filmmaking with the release of the National Society of Film Critics award-winner Salesman (1968), which portrays four door-to-door high-pressure Bible salesmen in Boston who sell to poor Catholic families. They returned to rock 'n' roll with Gimme Shelter (1970), a film that follows Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones on a North American tour and ends with the infamous concert at Altamont Speedway in California during which a murder occurred. The Maysles' Grey Gardens (1975) portrayed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' cousins, Edith and Edie Beale, an eccentric mother and daughter living in a decaying East Hampton mansion. The brothers also produced films on celebrated artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, including the Academy Award-nominated Christo's Valley Curtain (1974) and Running Fence (1978). David died of a heart attack in New York in 1987. Later that year, Albert received the Emmy Award for the brothers' Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic (1986). Albert continued to direct such films as Christo in Paris (1991), Abortion: Desperate Choices (1993), Umbrellas (1994), Letting Go: A Hospice Journey (1996), and The Gates – A Project for New York City (2005).
bibliography:
"Maysles, Albert," in: Contemporary Authors (Gale, 2005); "Maysles, David," ibid. (Gale, 2003); "Maysles, Albert and David," in: International Directory of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 2: Directors (2004); Albert Maysles – imdb, at: www.imdb.com/name/nm0563099; David Maysles – imdb, at: www.imdb.com/name/nm0563100; Mayles Films Inc. Biography, at: www.mayslesfilms.com.
[Adam Wills (2nd ed.)]