Saul Swimmer: Let It Be producer, Concert for Bangladesh director (RIP)

[rustywhite]

SAUL SWIMMER Died Mar. 3, 2007
Director Saul Swimmer died at age 70. Mr. Swimmer was known for his connection to "The Beatles." He co-produced the documentary "Let It Be." In addition to capturing the band making music together, Mr. Swimmer's film also gave fans an inside look at the band's disintegration. In 1971 former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr and Mr. Swimmer co-produced the films "Cometogether" and "Blind Man." Mr. Swimmer directed "Cometogether." The following year, former Beatles guitarist George Harrison threw a benefit concert in Madison Square Garden. He called on Saul Swimmer to document the "Concert For Bangladesh." Mr. Swimmer directed the 1968 "Herman's Mermits" movie "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter." In 1982 he directed "We Will Rock You: Queen Live in Concert." Mr. Swimmer's final film was the documentary "Bob Marley & Friends." The movie premiered at the Miami International Film Festival in 2006. Mr. Swimmer spent four years on the film, trying to show the impact Mr. Marley had on the world through his music. The film includes concert footage from Marley at the 1977 Rainbow concert in London.

[julian_craster]

Obituary
Saul Swimmer
Director of 'Concert for Bangladesh'

<< In 1968, he directed a light-hearted musical film for Herman's Hermits, Mrs Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter - named after their US No 1. Although the film is deplorable, it survives as a curio because the cast included Stanley Holloway, Mona Washbourne and a host of British stalwarts>>


A regular on Turner Classic Movies UK.
Surely his best film...


The Independent
Published: 22 March 2007
Saul Swimmer, film producer and director: born Uniontown, Pennsylvania 25 April 1936; died Miami 3 March 2007.

The film producer and director Saul Swimmer is associated with music documentaries, in particular The Concert for Bangladesh (1972), a film of the concert held in Madison Square Garden, New York, in August 1971 featuring George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton.
As well as being the first big charity event by rock stars, the concert was an artistic triumph. "It was a massive undertaking," Swimmer acknowledged on its DVD reissue in 2005:
A concert can be shot so easily on video now, but in those days it was a big deal. We used 16mm cameras and as the film only lasted 15 minutes, the cameramen were having to reload.
He regarded the film as his finest work.
Swimmer was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1936 and as a child put on concerts in his back garden. After Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh he set about making films. His children's short The Boy Who Owned a Melephant (1959) was narrated by Tallulah Bankhead and won an award at the Venice Film Festival.
In the late 1950s, there was a fad for films about juvenile delinquency and Swimmer wrote and directed Force of Impulse (1960), which starred Carrol Naish and Robert Alda. That and his second film, Without Each Other (1962), starring Tony Anthony, are now forgotten.
In 1968, he directed a light-hearted musical film for Herman's Hermits, Mrs Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter - named after their US No 1. Although the film is deplorable, it survives as a curio because the cast included Stanley Holloway, Mona Washbourne and a host of British stalwarts, although Spike Milligan failed to show up. Around the same time, Swimmer made a television documentary, Around the World of Mike Todd (1968), with Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles.
The Beatles owed United Artists a film and, to avoid spending much time on it, hit upon the idea of a cinéma vérité film about the making of a new album. Michael Lindsay-Hogg was the director and he found the group falling apart before his eyes. The Beatles' new manager, Allen Klein, asked Swimmer to assist in making the project a viable proposition and the resulting film was Let It Be (1970). The film broke new ground in revealing the tensions in a band.
Swimmer invited Ringo Starr to take a part in Blindman (1971), again starring Tony Anthony and shot in Spain. The film had an extraordinary plot, even by the standards of the spaghetti westerns it emulated. Anthony plays a blind gunslinger who is hired to escort 50 beautiful women across the desert to 50 sex-starved miners. Starr is a Mexican bandit, captured by Anthony and hung with cowbells so that Blindman will know if he moves unexpectedly. Cometogether (1971) was another catchpenny film which combined the spaghetti western with Easy Rider.
Swimmer was among the first to recognise the talents of Bette Midler and in 1971 brought her to Allen Klein's office to sing for John Lennon. "John and Yoko were there eating breakfast", Swimmer recalled:
Bette sang her heart out, and, right in the middle of the performance, John said, "Any more toast?" When Bette left, John said, "Look at that face!" Yoko said, "Look at that body! Are you kidding?"
In 1971, Ravi Shankar suggested to George Harrison that he organise a benefit show for the people of Bangladesh, who were suffering from the effects of flood and famine as well as civil war. Harrison asked Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton to co-operate and, rather than basing it around individual performances, he chose to have one big super-group.
Klein suggested that Swimmer direct the film, with Phil Spector co-ordinating the music. During the performance of "That's the Way God Planned It", Preston got so excited that he left his organ and danced and Spector, merely hearing the audio from the event, wondered what had happened. The film was shot on 16mm but the pictures were blown up frame by frame for 70mm cinema exhibitions.
When Swimmer made the film Black Pearl (1977), he befriended one of the actors, Mario Custodio, and together they created the company Mobilevision, which projected films on a 60ft by 80ft screen, long predating Imax.We Will Rock You: Queen live in concert (1982), directed by Swimmer, was shown this way.
Recently, Swimmer had been working on a Bob Marley documentary. He had discovered 1977 footage of Marley at the Rainbow in London that had been thought destroyed in a bomb blast. Swimmer introduced the film, Bob Marley and Friends, at a film festival in Miami last year.

Spencer Leigh