Charles Guggenheim

Charles Guggenheim (March 31, 1924-October 9, 2002) was a U.S. film director and producer.

Related Topics:
March 31 - 1924 - October 9 - 2002 - U.S.

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Born into a wealthy Cincinnati, Ohio family (his father was a furniture manufacturer). While studying agriculture in college in 1943, Guggenheim was drafted into the United States Army. Upon discharge from the service, he decided against an agricultural career and moved to New York to pursue a career in broadcasting.

Related Topics:
Cincinnati - Ohio - United States Army - New York

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He founded Charles Guggenheim and Associates, a film production company, he became interested in politics, and soon moved the company from New York to Washington, D.C., where he became a media adviser to many Democratic political figures. After Robert Kennedy's assassination, Guggenheim put together a tribute to him culled from the thousands of feet of film he had shot of Kennedy over the years.

Related Topics:
Charles Guggenheim and Associates - Robert Kennedy

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The resulting film, Robert Kennedy Remembered (1968), won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. Although Guggenheim occasionally ventured into feature film production, he stayed mostly with documentary films, where he received his first Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject for 1964's Nine from Little Rock about the desegregation effort in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. He won two more Oscars for short subject documentary filmmaking, in 1989 and 1994.

Related Topics:
Robert Kennedy Remembered - Academy Award for Live Action Short Film - Documentary film - Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject - Nine from Little Rock - Little Rock, Arkansas

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His last documentary, ' (2003) (TV), was about a group of 350 American soldiers captured by the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge who, because they were Jewish or the Nazis thought they "looked Jewish", were sent to concentration camps instead of POW camps. (Guggenheim, who was Jewish, had himself been a member of the unit that was captured, but a severe illness caused him to be left behind when the unit was posted to the front lines so he was not with them when they were captured). He finished the film just a few months before his death in October of 2002.

Related Topics:
Nazis - Battle of the Bulge - Jew - Concentration camp - POW camp

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Guggenheim married Marion Street in 1957. They had three children: Davis, Grace, and Jonathan.

Related Topics:
1957 - Davis

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