Lewis Jacobs

Lewis Jacobs

American, 1905 - 1997
BiographyFebruary 22, 1997
Lewis Jacobs, 92, Writer and Teacher
Lewis Jacobs, a writer, film maker and teacher, died on Feb. 11 at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, L.I. He was 92 and lived in Great Neck, L.I.

Mr. Jacobs was the author of ''The Rise of the American Film,'' first published in 1939 and subsequently reprinted six times. Initially trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Art Students League of New York, he turned to film as a mode of expression and became not only a film maker but also a critic. He founded Experimental Cinema, a magazine devoted to film as art and as social force. In Hollywood, he worked as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia studios until 1950, when he began making his own films.

He went on to teach courses on film at the City College of New York, the New School for Social Research, the Philadelphia College of Art and New York University. He edited a number of books, including ''Introduction to the Art of Movies'' (1960), ''The Emergence of Film Art'' (1968) ''The Movies as Medium'' (1968) and ''The Documentary Tradition'' (1971).

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