10 Things I Learned: The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew & Associates

As I began work on The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew and Associates, I knew that 1960’s Primary was really the birth of what we think of as the modern documentary: observational photography based on access to an interesting subject, presenting “real life” as it is lived. I also knew that this new form required new technology—a mobile, quiet camera that could synchronize with a sound recorder. But I had always assumed that the technology arose first and then filmmakers and artists found uses for it. What I learned while working on this release was the extent to which the opposite was true: Robert Drew and his fantastic team of filmmakers (Richard Leacock, D. A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles, and Terence Macartney-Filgate) had a clear vision of the kind of documentary they wanted to make, and they had to commission the development of a camera to realize that vision.

Although Primary is now acknowledged as having been crucial to the history of documentary film, it was not considered a revelation in its time—in fact, it was barely seen. Broadcast television executives did not know what to make of this documentary that featured occasionally blurry in-the-moment camerawork, did not lecture to its audience with a voice-over narration, and did not sum up its thesis with a moral. Drew Associates had spent five weeks editing the film down to fifty-three minutes, but the response Robert Drew got from a TV executive he presented it to was a dismissive one: “You’ve got some great footage there, Bob.” Upon learning that there would be a chance to syndicate the film to six Time Inc.–owned television stations as a half-hour program, Richard Leacock locked himself in a hotel room overnight and emerged the next morning with a twenty-six-minute cut of it, which is also presented in our release.

In John F. Kennedy, Drew Associates found the perfect subject for the first modern documentary: he was telegenic, witty, and thoroughly presidential. It’s hard to believe now, but at the time of the Democratic primary of 1960, Kennedy was an underdog. Primary captures his winning television personality; so much so that, in a 1998 panel discussion with the filmmakers shown in a supplement on our release, Albert Maysles reveals that the filmmakers were accused of clearly supporting Kennedy’s candidacy, when in fact most of them had actually preferred the more liberal Hubert Humphrey. Drew, who intervenes to say that he had favored Kennedy, remembers that once during filming he had asked Maysles which of the two candidates he’d supported. After a pause, Maysles had responded, “Bob, if you knew how far off I was from caring about this, you wouldn’t believe it.”

Having established access to Kennedy with Primary and Adventures on the New Frontier (made in the first days of Kennedy’s time in office, in 1961), Drew now wanted to film the president facing a decision in a moment of crisis, and he got his wish when he and his team were permitted to film Kennedy’s struggle to integrate the University of Alabama, in 1963. As I was researching this moment of domestic-policy crisis, I was surprised to discover that Kennedy had in fact gone into office exclusively focused on foreign policy, specifically with the USSR and its premier Nikita Khrushchev. In a supplement on our release, historian Richard Reeves notes that the first draft of Kennedy’s inauguration speech (with the famous “ask not what your country can do for you” line), there wasn’t a single word devoted to domestic policy. After an advisor pointed this out to Kennedy, he added a perfunctory “at home and” to a sentence about human rights “around the world.”

Having grown up with a rather hagiographic image of Kennedy as a virile athlete and naval officer, it was surprising for me to learn how sickly he had been all his life. In fact, one of his ailments, Addison’s disease (a hormonal disorder), was considered fatal until doctors discovered that it could be treated with regular shots of cortisone, which Kennedy administered to himself. He also had constant back pain, and many features of the Oval Office meeting shown in Crisis can be traced back to that: those present stand for much of the meeting, and when they do sit, Kennedy sits in a rocking chair.

In that meeting, as indeed throughout the film, Robert Kennedy emerges as a serious member of his brother’s Cabinet, consistently offering good advice. Originally pressured by their father into nominating Bobby for the position of attorney General, JFK gradually came to realize that his brother was his best advisor. In an interview included on our release, former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder says that Robert Kennedy was “our greatest attorney general,” and that it is no accident that the building housing the Department of Justice is named the Robert F. Kennedy Building. After working on this release, I came to the conclusion that, however revered he may be, Robert Kennedy is actually an underrated American hero.

I asked Eric Holder if he would ever have considered allowing cameras into the attorney general’s office while he was there making decisions, and his “No” was very quickly given. He also told me something amusing: the room used as Robert Kennedy’s “office” in Crisis is actually a somewhat large conference room.

Of course, Crisis isn’t just about the Kennedys; there are two very brave young people who are subjects of the film as well—James Hood and Vivian Malone. These were the two students who fought to integrate the University of Alabama. I interviewed Holder with his wife, Sharon Malone, who is the sister of Vivian. They told me that Malone’s time at the University of Alabama was very fraught, but she bore it with impassive nobility. “Probably a bigger accomplishment than getting into the University of Alabama,” Holder says, “was graduating from the University of Alabama.” Vivian Malone went on to work at the Department of Justice, in the civil rights division, and then became director of civil rights and urban affairs at the newly established Environmental Protection Agency.

The pressure these students were under was tremendous, and unfortunately Hood did not last very long at the university. He wrote a badly received editorial in the student newspaper, lambasting the tactics of the civil rights movement’s leadership—then, following a national outcry, he tried to deny he wrote it. Facing pressure from university regents, looking for any excuse to get rid of the African-American students, Hood decided to depart the university that fall. Happy to leave Alabama, Hood went on to finish his studies at Wayne State University, got a master’s degree in criminal justice and sociology from Michigan State, and finally returned to the University of Alabama, where he received a doctorate in 1997. The previous year, Hood met with a reportedly repentant George Wallace and forgave him for the events of 1963.

These events were landmarks in the history of American civil rights. In Crisis, Robert Kennedy advises his initially reluctant brother to make a nationally televised speech about civil rights. That speech, partially ad-libbed, committed the moral weight of the presidency of the United States to the cause of civil rights. It is true that Lyndon B. Johnson eventually did the legislative heavy lifting required for civil rights legislation to pass, but it is unlikely he could have achieved those victories without the power of John F. Kennedy’s speech on June 11, 1963.