- He founded a documentary film company, Drew Associates, in 1960, on the central premise that there would be no direction of the subjects of his films, meaning they would not be coached on how or what to say whatever they had to say. In the process, he hired some of the most important documentary filmmakers of the last fifty years, from 1960s through the 2000s, including Ricky Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, and Albert Maysles.
- He was much honored during his career, including by the Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Prize, Blue Ribbon prizes by the New York Film festival, the International Documentary Association Career Achievement Award, an Emmy, first prizes for documentary at the Venice Film Festival, an unprecedented 19 Cine Golden Eagles, a Robert Flaherty Award for Single Documentary (from the British Television Academy) for Primary (1960) (which also won the 1960 London Film Festival), and the Dupont-Columbia Best Documentary award for For Auction: An American Hero (1986).
- Before graduating high school, he enlisted as a cadet in the U.S. Army Air Corps (U.S. Army Air Force or USAAF) during World War II. After his training, in 1943, he was assigned to a combat squadron near Naples, Italy, from where he flew 31 missions before his plane was shot down behind enemy lines on January 31, 1944, just sixteen days before turning twenty years old. He was able to elude capture by the Nazis, surviving for three and a half months eluding the Germans in a mountainous area near the northern Italian town of Fondi, before making his way back through Nazi and American lines, enabling him to return to his unit to continue fighting before returning to the U.S. just before the end of the war to enroll in the first U.S. class for jet fighter pilots.
- Considered by many to be the father of American cinéma vérité, which he preferred to call "reality filmmaking".
- He was a pioneer of the modern documentary form who specialized in the intimate, spontaneous style known as cinema verite. Earlier, he was a photographer and editor with Life magazine.
- Along with others, many trained by him, he was the subject of a documentary made by another party, Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (1999), produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
- Two of his films were chosen to be included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, as "as works of enduring importance to American culture," Primary (1960) and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963).
- He had three children by his first wife, Thatcher Drew, Lisa W. Drew, and Derek Drew. He also had three grandchildren.
- Life visited his fighter training base to do a story on jet fighters, and when he submitted his own essay for the magazine, about flying jet fighters, eventually that led to Time-Life hiring him to be a correspondent for Life Magazine.
- Jill Drew, his daughter-in-law, who succeeded him as General Manager of Drew Associates, is active in producing new documentaries, and also distributing the company's library of films.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content