[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 136 (Wednesday, October 16, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10560-S10562]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING CHARLES GUGGENHEIM

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President. Let me first ask unanimous consent to 
have printed in the Record ``The Filmmaker Who Told America's Story'' 
by Phil McCombs that appeared in the Washington Post last week.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                    [Washington Post, Oct. 10, 2002]

                 The Filmmaker Who Told America's Story

                           (By Phil McCombs)

       He raced against death, and won.
       Oh, how Charles Guggenheim would have not liked putting it 
     so directly!
       The great film documentarian, who died at Georgetown 
     University Hospital yesterday of pancreatic cancer at 78, 
     left a life's work of subtle, passionate cinematic hymns to 
     what he called, in a last message to friends, ``the essential 
     American journey.''
       His final film, finished just weeks ago, limns a shocking 
     episode of that journey--the ``selection'' by Nazis of 350 
     U.S. troops captured in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 for 
     deportation to a concentration camp because they were Jews or 
     ``looked Jewish.''
       Guggenheim, the son of a well-to-do German Jewish furniture 
     merchant in Cincinnati, easily might have been one of them. 
     His unit was decimated in the battle, but he'd been left 
     behind in the States with a life-threatening infection.
       For more than half a century, as hints and incomplete 
     versions of the story surfaced, it gnawed at him. A few years 
     ago, he began searching for survivors--and found them.
       Early this year, just as Guggenheim was working on the 
     ``death march'' sequence, his cancer was diagnosed.
       For the next six months, he'd work all week on the film, 
     have chemotherapy on Friday, sleep through the weekend and be 
     back on the job Monday.
       A few weeks ago, as he and his daughter, Grace--producer of 
     this and many of his films--were ``mixing'' the final 
     version, he began suffering painful attacks. The cancer had 
     invaded his stomach.
       ``He'd have to lie on the couch while we worked,'' Grace 
     Guggenheim recalled.
       By then, her father was thin and drawn--not unlike his 
     former comrades after they were liberated by U.S. forces 
     following months of slave labor in a satellite camp of 
     Buchenwald.
       ``Does it occur to you,'' Guggenheim's old friend, 
     historian David McCullough, asked

[[Page S10561]]

     him in an interview last month, ``that maybe you were spared 
     to make this film?''
       ``Well,'' Guggenheim answered, ``I felt a deep obligation 
     more after I met the [survivors] than I did before. . . . I 
     said, `I owe them something.' '' Thoughts of his old comrades 
     courage, he added, were a ``source of strength for me'' as he 
     persevered in his battle with cancer to finish the film.
       Just as ``Berga: Soldiers of Another War'' was done, 
     Guggenheim's strength evaporated. He began staying home, 
     sleeping most of the time as his wife, Marion--his steadfast 
     supporter for half a century--tended to him.
       When I visited a few days after McCullough, Guggenheim was 
     weak but still very much himself--that enormous charm, the 
     bright sense of humor, that smile of his that sparkled like 
     the sun.
       He worried that ``Berga'' was being discussed in the media 
     too soon, since it's not due for release until next April. 
     But he was sure of one thing.
       ``This film will hit you right in the gut.''


                        Starring Everyday People

       Guggenheim was a giant.
       In a career that spanned almost six decades, he received 12 
     Academy Award nominations and four Oscars for his 
     documentaries--a feat matched only by Walt Disney.
       Yet acclaim never sullied this modest, friendly man who 
     lived a quiet family life in Washington. Though many of his 
     friends were powerful figures, ``he can sort of take it or 
     leave it,'' as former Missouri representative Jim Symington 
     once said. ``He's an artist.''
       Understatement was Guggenheim's signature--but it mounts in 
     his films until, often, you can't help but cry.
       In ``The Shadow of Hate'' (1995), his wrenching study of 
     bigotry, a dead African American male is shown, hanging from 
     a branch, in a long-faded archival photo.
       Guggenheim's camera pans the white crowd, posing under the 
     lynching tree; stops at a little girl in a pretty dress; 
     slowly zooms in.
       She has a shy smile.
       Yet his outrage at injustice (``Nine From Little Rock,'' on 
     the 1957 school integration crisis; ``The Johnstown Flood,'' 
     about neglect of a dam by wealthy industrialists that led to 
     2,200 deaths in 1889; and ``A Time for Justice,'' on the 
     civil rights movement, all won Academy Awards) merely 
     underscored his fierce love of America.
       ``The truth is, we're living in wonderful times and a 
     wonderful place,'' he once told a filmmakers' organization 
     that had given him an award. ``This country provides more 
     possibility to learn about oneself, and what the journey of 
     humanity has been, than any other place.
       ``There are great stories in what is very common.''
       He crafted celebratory documentaries on presidents Truman, 
     Kennedy and Johnson; on U.S. fighting men in the Normandy 
     invasion (``D-Day Remembered''); on workers constructing 
     iconic American symbols (``Monument to the Dream,'' on the 
     building of the 660-foot Gateway Arch in St. Louis, ``The 
     Making of Liberty,'' on refurbishing the Statue of Liberty); 
     on the immigrants who passed through Ellis Island (``Island 
     of Hope/Island of Tears''); and on American politics 
     (``Robert Kennedy Remembered'' won an Oscar in 1968).
       Guggenheim was awed by the spiritual depth and gritty 
     determination of everyday people--the patriotism of Japanese 
     Americans interned in a camp; workers at the Arch who proudly 
     brought their families on Sundays to show what they'd 
     accomplished; frightened troops riding the launches into 
     Normandy, ready to offer up their lives.
       I remember seeing Guggenheim at the July 4 festivities at 
     the National Archives on the Mall last year. He could have 
     sat with the dignitaries on a dais above the crowd but chose 
     to stand at a spot down below where he could watch the faces 
     of the people.
       ``Look at them!'' he marveled. ``They'll wait in line all 
     day just for a chance to see the Constitution and Declaration 
     of Independence.''
       Born dyslexic, he had a gift for hearing the nuances of 
     common speech. In his films, he lets the voices of 
     participants carry the stories whenever possible.
       ``It was over. I mean, it was quiet, as if nothing had 
     happened,'' says the haunting voice of a former GI in ``D-Day 
     Remembered.'' ``The beach was not any general's business. 
     They had no say, none what-some-ever.''
       ``I cry when I hear that,'' Guggenheim once confided.
       And these, from the liberation sequence in ``Berga'':
       Sanford Lubinsky: ``It got quiet. And then we heard that 
     firing start up again.''
       Edward Slotkin: ``And we look out the front . . .''
       Leo Zaccaria: ``And up the road comes this tank. American 
     tank.''
       Lubinsky: ``When I saw that American flag coming down that 
     road, nothing looked so beautiful in all our born days. That 
     American flag, our flag, sure looked beautiful. It's a very 
     beautiful thing when you haven't seen it for a long while. 
     It's a beauty!''
       The narrations Guggenheim wrote in support of the voices 
     were spare, existential.
       ``The sea was welcoming,'' narrates a deep-voiced 
     McCullough in the D-Day film, ``as if it were paying its 
     respects to the men who had fallen, who out of a nation of 
     millions had been selected, for reasons known only to fate, 
     to represent us on the beach that day.''
       Guggenheim had a second hat, too. He was a founding father 
     of the televised political campaign commercial.
       As a young independent filmmaker in St. Louis in 1956, he'd 
     accepted an offer to run presidential candidate Adlai 
     Stevenson's TV campaign--Guggenheim needed the money--and 
     then gone on to work for other candidates.
       His client list amounted to a veritable political lexicon, 
     including Kennedy, Gore Sr., Symington, McGovern, Moss, 
     Shapp, Brown, Hays, Brademas, Ribicoff, Metzenbaum, Goldberg, 
     Mondale, Pell, Bayh, Church, Biden, Danforth, Hollings.
       Eventually, Guggenheim became disillusioned with what was 
     evolving into a somewhat infamous institution.
       ``If you play a piano in a house of ill repute,'' he told 
     PBS's ``NewsHour With Jim Lehrer'' a few years ago, ``it 
     doesn't make any difference how well you play the piano.''
       By the late '80s, he'd turned full time to his beloved 
     documentaries.
       ``Why have you stayed with this . . . art form of yours all 
     these years?'' McCullough asked in the interview last month. 
     ``What . . . makes you want to get up out of bed in the 
     morning?''
       ``I just feel compelled to say something, if I feel 
     strongly about it,'' Guggenheim replied. ``And I think it was 
     . . . [director] David Lean [who] said that the greatest 
     moment in making films, and probably the most satisfying 
     moment in film, is getting a story you're in love with.
       ``So you search for those things.''
       Last week, as Guggenheim lay dying, ``Berga'' was screened 
     for the board of the Foundation for the National Archives, a 
     nonprofit advisory and fund-raising group of which Guggenheim 
     was president. For most of his films, the archives was a 
     primary source.
       Grace Guggenheim read a message to the group dictated by 
     her dad from the hospital.
       ``Many people know about the Constitution and the 
     Declaration of Independence,'' he'd said, ``but few know the 
     treasures held in the millions of feet of film, in the 
     countless maps and pictures and letters . . .
       ``Story after story is revealed from the work that is 
     accomplished every day at the archives--the incomparable 
     truths, all telling and retelling what is the essential 
     American journey.''
       The guests filed into the theater, the lights went down.
       A long-faded archival photo appeared on the screen, the 
     camera panning slowly across it--fresh-faced American GIs of 
     World War II, in formation.
       Then the narrator's voice--clear, strong:
       ``This picture was taken over 50 years ago. World War II. 
     My company. I'm in there someplace. I can remember their 
     faces just like yesterday. And they went overseas, and I 
     didn't, and some of them didn't come back.
       ``And I've been thinking about it for 50 years, wondering 
     why it didn't happen to me.
       ``That's why I had to tell this story.''


                        that guy from st. louis

       Heavily medicated in the hospital last week, Guggenheim 
     still had glorious moments with Marion, Grace and his sons, 
     Davis and Jonathan, both in film work.
       ``One day he had a resurrection of being alert,'' Grace 
     said. ``He hugged us all and said, `I just want to live with 
     you!' ''
       ``He charmed the doctors and hospital staff. He wanted to 
     show them the film and tell them, `This is what you helped me 
     make.' ''
       Through his window, ``he could look out and see a big 
     American flag.''
       They reminisced: How Davis practically had to order his 
     reticent father to narrate ``Berga'' in the first person . . 
     . how everything had gone so perfectly filming on location in 
     Germany, snow just when they needed it.
       Then, a letter arrived from Guggenheim's old friend, 
     producer George Stevens Jr., and Grace read it to her father.
       In 1962, Stevens recalled, he'd just arrived from Hollywood 
     to do documentaries for Edward R. Murrow's U.S. Information 
     Agency when word came that a young filmmaker from St. Louis 
     had seen a USIA film so bad it made him ``ashamed to be an 
     American.''
       ``Find me that guy from St. Louis!'' Stevens had ordered.
       ``You possessed then and ever since,'' Stevens wrote, ``an 
     absolute true compass when it came to the integrity of your 
     work--and our fights to keep the films we made from being 
     dumbed down or made prosaic . . . were stimulating.
       ``I remember `United in Progress' and the beautiful footage 
     you shot of President Kennedy in Costa Rica . . . our venture 
     to LBJ's ranch for `The President's Country' . . . and, too, 
     when I took you [in 1964] to meet Bob Kennedy . . . and my 
     good fortune in having you at my side to start the Kennedy 
     Center Honors--it was just a little scheme back then . . .
       ``I cherish those memories, Charles.''
       A long, long row of candles.


                           The Master's Voice

       In the closing sequence of ``Berga,'' Guggenheim--knowing 
     his time was short--offers a powerful, transcendent final 
     message:
       Milton Stolon (survivor): ``Ah, it's no good to remember. . 
     . . But you have to remember because people, people forget 
     what went on.''
       Then old photos of the survivors returning home to their 
     families flash on the screen--one after another, with their 
     wives and sweethearts and kids.

[[Page S10562]]

       The final shot: a joyful GI, the camera panning down to his 
     smiling little girl sitting on a tricycle.
       And Guggenheim's clear voice-over:
       ``These are just a few of the faces in my story, but there 
     are millions of faces, and millions of stories.
       ``That have never been told. And deserve to be.
       ``You should remember that.''

  Mr. HOLLINGS. The great advantage of serving in the U.S. Senate is 
the exposure to your colleagues in the Senate, all who are talented, 
and the exposure to various individuals in Washington involved in the 
issues. The principal issue for one serving in the U.S. Senate is 
reelection. That's how I met Charles Guggenheim.
  It was 30 years ago. Charles had the reputation of producing the best 
candidate films and after handling me, remarkably, he retained that 
reputation. My staff had just contacted him when they came back to me 
and surprised me with the request that Charles wanted to follow me when 
I went home that weekend. I said let's wait, it's too early for 
filming. The answer was no, it's not for filming, Mr. Guggenheim wants 
to travel with you to see if he likes you. I said fair enough. I want 
to see if I like him. I will never forget that weekend. After reciting 
the Pledge of Allegiance at the Rotary Club, the Realtors, the tobacco 
barn, the Democratic Party rally, and nine other times, I thought I may 
lose Charles. But he stuck with me. I learned to love him.
  There are two kinds of geniuses in this world: the intellectual and 
the sensitive. The intellectual is the type who goes through a magazine 
just turning the pages and catching up in the back part with the story, 
remembering it all. Or the type that reads a book in a couple of 
evenings. But then there is the sentimental genius. They feel the 
words. You tell me that a friend is sick and I feel sorry for him. You 
tell Charles a friend is sick and he starts feeling bad. No one could 
read people better. He would have me do one take over and over and over 
just to make sure the light was right, or the sound was exact, very 
sensitive to the environment and feelings of those around him. No doubt 
this made him an Oscar winner four times and a nominee twelve times. 
But this search for the authentic also made him give up on us 
politicians 20 years ago. The political short was no more the positive 
attributes of the candidate depicting his record in a colorful way, but 
the framing of the opponent with a half-truth, with a negative spin 
that meets the poll. Outrageous hypocrisy. Charles would have none of 
it and he turned exclusively to documentaries.
  Charles' brilliance was in telling the story so that you were there 
in the historic moment. I watched him in his work. We would meet at 
6:30 in the morning two or three times a week at Ali Rosenberg's St. 
Albans for tennis. Ali didn't let us start until just before 7:00 so 
the three of us would chat about the events of the day. Charles had the 
keenest wit about the political happenings in Washington and, talking 
along, I realized his genius. It wasn't just the sensitivity, but the 
historian. For the D-Day film he searched the Pentagon archives for 2 
years finding things that the military historians had no idea of. Then, 
to give life to the depiction, he searched to identify the exact 
outfit, down to the platoon or squad. Then he found a member of that 
platoon or squad still living to narrate the scene. For another 2 years 
he looked for Jewish POWs for his most recent film. He was mainly 
concerned about his own outfit from which he was separated. They were 
captured in the Battle of the Bulge; the Jewish prisoners separated and 
inflicted with torture and death. He wanted to tell this story of the 
POW Holocaust that had never been told. He was tickled that the weather 
was kind, just right for his takes at the prison camps in Germany. He 
smiled at his luck. And then the cancer hit. He struggled this year to 
finish the course. Amazing Grace, his beautiful daughter, worked with 
him to complete the film. In this city of families split asunder, the 
Guggenheims have shone as a star of cohesion. Jonathan worked as a 
Senate Page and now produces on the West coast. Davis has just 
completed a cameo production on education. And that gracious lovable 
Marion continues to worry about everybody except herself. Charles was 
particularly proud when he went west for his last nomination. His 
daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Shue, won an Oscar. Knowing Charles, the 
sensitive, the authentic, his was not to receive Oscars but to render 
to others in his film. But surely, if he had one to give, it would be 
to Marion.

                          ____________________