Saul Swimmer was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and producer

Film producer

A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 best known for the movie The Concert for Bangladesh

The Concert for Bangladesh

The Concert for Bangladesh was the name for two benefit concerts organised by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, held at noon and at 7 PM on August 1, 1971, playing to a total of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City...

(1972), the George Harrison

George Harrison

George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...

-led Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

 show that was one of the first all-star benefits in rock music

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

. He was also a co-producer of the Beatles 1970 documentary Let It Be

Let It Be (film)

Let It Be is a 1970 documentary film about The Beatles rehearsing and recording songs for the album Let It Be in January 1969. The film features an unannounced rooftop concert by the group, their last performance in public...

.

Early life and career

Born to a Uniontown

Uniontown, Pennsylvania

Uniontown is a city in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh and part of the Pittsburgh Metro Area. Population in 1900, 7,344; in 1910, 13,344; in 1920, 15,692; and in 1940, 21,819. The population was 10,372 at the 2010 census...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 family that included a sister, Esther, and two brothers, Wolford and Alvin, Swimmer attended Antioch College

Antioch College

Antioch College is a private, independent liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States. It was the founder and the flagship institution of the six-campus Antioch University system. Founded in 1852 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1853 with politician and...

before earning a bachelor's degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 from Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....

 in nearby Pittsburgh. He began directing in his 20s, gaining attention for his half-hour children's short "The Boy Who Owned a Melephant" (1959), narrated by actress Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...

. Swimmer's biography at his company's website states the film won a "Gold Leaf" award at the Venice Film Festival

Venice Film Festival

The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...

, but that festival has no such award.

Following that short, Swimmer directed and, with Tony Anthony

Tony Anthony (actor)

Tony Anthony , is a former film actor, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his starring roles in spaghetti westerns.-Early career:...

, co-wrote the independent features

Independent film

An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...

 Force of Impulse (1961), a Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...

 story about a high school football

High school football

High school football, in North America, refers to the game of football as it is played in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both of these nations....

 player who turns to robbery, filmed in Miami Beach, Florida

Miami Beach, Florida

Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States, incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter which separates the Beach from Miami city proper...

, and Without Each Other (1962).

Music and film

Swimmer followed these dramas with the pop

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

-musical comedy Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter

Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter

"Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" is a popular song written by Trevor Peacock. It was originally sung by actor Sir Tom Courtenay in The Lads, a British TV play of 1963....

(1968), starring the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 pop group Herman's Hermits

Herman's Hermits

Herman's Hermits are an English beat band, formed in Manchester in 1963 as Herman & The Hermits. The group's record producer, Mickie Most , emphasized a simple, non-threatening, clean-cut image, although the band originally played R&B numbers...

. The movie was one of a handful of similar films released in the wake of the Beatles' mockumentary

Mockumentary

A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...

-style band feature A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night (film)

A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...

(1964) and the comic adventure Help!

Help! (film)

Help! is a 1965 film directed by Richard Lester, starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—and featuring Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, John Bluthal, Roy Kinnear and Patrick Cargill. Help! was the second feature film made by the Beatles and is a...

(1965).

He broke into documentary filmmaking with the ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 television special

Television special

A television special is a television program which interrupts or temporarily replaces programming normally scheduled for a given time slot. Sometimes, however, the term is given to a telecast of a theatrical film, such as The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments, which is not part of a regular...

 Around the World of Mike Todd (1968), about the movie producer Mike Todd

Mike Todd

Michael Todd was an American theatre and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture...

.

After serving as co-producer of the Neil Aspinall

Neil Aspinall

Neil Stanley Aspinall was a British music industry executive. A school friend of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, he went on to head The Beatles' company Apple Corps....

-Mal Evans

Mal Evans

Malcolm Frederick 'Mal' Evans was best known as the road manager, assistant, and a friend of The Beatles: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr....

-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

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 road movie

Road movie

A road movie is a film genre in which the main character or characters leave home to travel from place to place. They usually leave home to escape their current lives.-History:...

, Cometogether (1971), produced by Beatle Ringo Starr

Ringo Starr

Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...

 and inspired by the Beatles song "Come Together

Come Together

"Come Together" is a song by The Beatles written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The song is the opening track on The Beatles' September 1969 album Abbey Road....

"; and produced a spaghetti Western

Spaghetti Western

Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...

 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

The Concert for Bangladesh

The Concert for Bangladesh was the name for two benefit concerts organised by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, held at noon and at 7 PM on August 1, 1971, playing to a total of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City...

, organized by Beatle George Harrison

George Harrison

George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...

 with Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...

. They along with Starr, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and others performed to raise money for the charity UNICEF, earmarked to aid refugees from the newly independent nation of Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

, the former West Pakistan, who had relocated to India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

In 1977, Swimmer directed the U.S.-Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 co-production The Black Pearl

The Black Pearl (Scott O'Dell)

The Black Pearl is a young adult novel by Scott O'Dell first published in 1967 about the coming of age of the son of a pearl dealer living in the Baja peninsula. It was a Newbery Honor book in 1967.-Plot summary:...

a.k.a. La Perla Negra, adapted from a Scott O'Dell

Scott O'Dell

Scott O'Dell was an American children's author who wrote 26 novels for young people, along with three novels for adults and four nonfiction books...

 children's novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

. He produced and directed the direct-to-video

Direct-to-video

Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...

 rock documentary

Rockumentary

The term rockumentary is a neologism denoting a documentary about rock music or its musicians. The term was used by Bill Drake in the 1969 History of Rock & Roll radio broadcast, and by Rob Reiner in the 1984 mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap....

 We Will Rock You: Queen Live in Concert

We Will Rock You (video)

We Will Rock You is a concert film by English band Queen. It was filmed in Montreal, Quebec, Canada at the Montreal Forum on November 24 and 25, 1981....

(1982), the record of a 1981 Montreal, Canada show.

Later career

Swimmer developed the MobileVision Projection System, a pre-IMAX

IMAX

IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...

 giant-screen technology for projecting movies on a 60x80-foot screen. After the 1991 death of Queen

Queen (band)

Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...

 lead singer Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury was a British musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. As a performer, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and powerful vocals over a four-octave range...

, Swimmer distributed We Will Rock You on MobileVision in 20 countries.

His final work was the documentary Bob Marley

Bob Marley

Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...

 & 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 in London, England, that had been discovered in a London storage vault bombed by the Irish Republican Army

Irish Republican Army

The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...

.

Death

Swimmer, who moved to the Miami-area Key Biscayne, Florida

Key Biscayne, Florida

Key Biscayne is a village in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States on the island of Key Biscayne. The population was 10,507 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau is 10,324....

 in the 1980s and to nearby Coral Gables, Florida

Coral Gables, Florida

Coral Gables is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, southwest of Downtown Miami, in the United States. The city is home to the University of Miami....

 in the 1990s, died of heart failure at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.

External links

• "Sweet Sounds" (review: The Concert for Bangladesh, directed by Saul Swimmer), Time
  Time (magazine)
  Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
  
  , April 17, 1972. WebCitation archive.
• Queen: We Will Rock You (review of DVD and Swimmer commentary), The Digital Bits, December 12, 2001
• Archive of Fricke, David. "Harrison Show Revisited", Rolling Stone
  Rolling Stone
  Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
  
  , October 23, 2005 (Swimmer quote re: Concert for Bangladesh)
• Archive of "13 Questions with Ron Millkie", CampCrystalLake.com