Jay Leyda
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Jay Leyda (February 12, 1910 – February 15, 1988)David Stirk and Elena Pinto Simon in was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film historian, noted for his work on
U.S The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
,
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, and Chinese cinema, as well as his documentary compilations on the day-to-day lives of
Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...
and
Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...
.


Life and work

Leyda was born on February 12, 1910, in
Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...
,
Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
. He was a member of the
Workers Film and Photo League The Workers Film and Photo League was an organization of filmmakers, photographers, writers and projectionists in the 1930s, dedicated to using film and photography for social change. History Founded in 1930, the WFPL produced documentaries of ...
in the early 1930s. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1933 to study film making at State Film Institute, Moscow, with
Sergei Eisenstein Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein; (11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, he was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is no ...
, who had a troubled relationship with Stalin and the Soviet film bureaucracy. He participated in the filming of Eisenstein's lost film '' Bezhin Meadow'' (1935–37). When he returned to the United States in 1936 to become an assistant film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, he brought the only complete print of Eisenstein's ''
Battleship Potemkin '' Battleship Potemkin'' (, ), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent epic film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by Sergei Eisenstein, it presents a dramatization of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 ...
.'' In the 1940s he translated Eisenstein's writings. Leyda’s wife, Si-Lan Chen, a ballet dancer of international reputation, was the daughter of Eugene Chen, a colleague of the Chinese revolutionary
Sun Yat-sen Sun Yat-senUsually known as Sun Zhongshan () in Chinese; also known by Names of Sun Yat-sen, several other names. (; 12 November 186612 March 1925) was a Chinese physician, revolutionary, statesman, and political philosopher who founded the Republ ...
. In late 1943, during World War II, Leyda joined the U.S. Army Tank Corps at Fort Knox. He was honorably discharged in 1944 after contracting pneumonia. Although he did not have a Ph.D., Leyda became fascinated with
Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...
and became an important figure in the Melville revival. These scholars moved beyond the acceptance of Melville's first-person accounts in his works as reliably autobiographical. To provide concrete evidence, Leyda searched libraries, family papers, local archives and newspapers across New England and New York to gather ''The Melville Log'' (1951) to document Melville's day to day activities and transactions. Leyda was invited in 1959 to work at the Film Archive of China in Beijing, where he stayed until 1964. His account of Chinese film history, ''Dianying'', was the first full length treatment to appear in English. Although he could use the basic (and now outdated) Chinese scholarship only in summary translations, Leyda’s knowledge of film gave him still useful insights into individual films and techniques. He was awarded the
Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...
Gold Medal Award in 1984. He taught at Yale University (1969–1972), York University (1972–73) and New York University from 1973 until his death in New York on February 15, 1988, of heart failure. He was professor and dissertation advisor to noted film historian, Charles H. Harpole (creator of the ten volume History of American Cinema, dedicated to Leyda); leading film theorist, Tom Gunning; and scholar-practitioner
Charles Musser Charles John Musser (born 16 January 1951) is a film historian, documentary filmmaker, and a film editor. Since 1992, he has taught at Yale University, where he is currently a professor of Film and Media Studies as well as American Studies ...
. In 1981 he was a member of the jury at the 12th Moscow International Film Festival. He co-curated (with Charles Musser) ''Before Hollywood: Turn of the Century American Film'' (1987) for the
American Federation of Arts The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is a nonprofit organization that creates art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishes exhibition catalogues, and develops education programs. The organization’s founding in 1909 ...
, a six-part touring program of American films with an accompanying catalog, which the ''New York Times'' called "A fascinating look at the cinema that flourished between 1895 and 1915 in America, before movies could be mentioned in family newspapers."


Selected filmography

*'' A Bronx Morning'' (1931) (11 minutes, black and white, silent), in the collection of the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
. *''
People of the Cumberland ''People of the Cumberland'' is a 1937 short film directed by Sidney Meyers and Jay Leyda and produced by Frontier Films. The film is designed to support the U.S. labor union movement and it mixes non-fiction filmmaking and dramatic re-enactions ...
'' (1937) (21 minutes, black and white, sound), co-directed by
Sidney Meyers Sidney Meyers (March 9, 1906 – December 4, 1969), also known by the pen name Robert Stebbins was an American film director and film editor, editor. Sidney Meyers is best known for two documentary films: ''The Quiet One (film), The Quiet On ...
, also in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. The film was a Frontier Film Group production. Also working on the film were
Elia Kazan Elias Kazantzoglou (, ; September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003), known as Elia Kazan ( ), was a Greek-American film and theatre director, producer, screenwriter and actor, described by ''The New York Times'' as "one of the most honored and inf ...
, Ralph Steiner,
Erskine Caldwell Erskine Preston Caldwell (December 17, 1903 – April 11, 1987) was an American novelist and short story writer. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native Southern United States, in novels such as '' Tobacco Road'' (19 ...
,
Alex North Alex North (born Isadore Soifer; December 4, 1910 – September 8, 1991) was an American composer best known for his many film scores, including ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' (one of the first jazz-based film scores), '' Viva Zapata!'', ''Spartac ...
,
Earl Robinson Earl Hawley Robinson (July 2, 1910 – July 20, 1991) was an American composer, arranger and folk music singer-songwriter from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is remembered for his music, including the cantata " Ballad for Americans" and songs s ...
and Helen van Dongen.


Selected bibliography

* * * * * * * * * --- with Walter Aschaffenburg, ''Bartleby: Opera in a Prologue and Two Acts: Based on the Story by Herman Melville.'' (Bryn Mawr, Penn.: T. Presser, 1967). ISBN * —— , "Herman Melville, 1972," in * * * Includes Leyda's role in the "Melville Revival." * Si-lan Chen Leyda, ''Footnote to History'' (New York: Dance Horizons), 1984


References


External links

* * Jay Leyda Papers, 1925-1956, at the UCLA Library;
Collection Guide
at the
Online Archive of California In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity, and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed as "on lin ...
* Jay and Si-lan Chen Leyda Papers 1913-1987, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York Universit
Collection Guide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leyda, Jay 1910 births 1988 deaths American film historians American experimental filmmakers 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers Herman Melville Russian–English translators 20th-century American translators Historians from Michigan Filmmakers from Michigan Writers from Detroit New York University faculty