''The Tunnel'' was a 90-minute

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

that chronicled how three

West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...

university students organized the escape of 26 friends and family members by digging a

tunnel A tunnel is an underground or undersea passageway. It is dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, or laid under water, and is usually completely enclosed except for the two portals common at each end, though there may be access and ve ...

underneath the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...

from a former factory in West Berlin into the Communist East. Produced by Reuven Frank and narrated by Piers Anderton, it was an NBC White Paper installment that was broadcast on December 10, 1962, and sponsored by the Gulf Oil Corporation. ''The Tunnel'' earned three

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...

s in 1963. It was the only documentary to receive the award as The Program of the Year. It was also honored for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Documentary (awarded to Frank) and Outstanding Achievement in International Reporting (awarded to Anderton).Piers Barron Anderton (death notice), ''San Francisco Chronicle'', Thursday, September 23, 2004.
/ref> ''The Tunnel'' was the basis for a pair of similarly named

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

projects (''Der Tunnel'') which were released just under four decades after the original. One was the 1999 documentary directed by Marcus Vetter, which featured the NBC

footage In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a digital video camera, which typically must be film editing, edited to create a motion picture, digital video, video cli ...

accompanied by

firsthand Firsthand (sometimes first hand or first-hand) means obtained directly from the primary source. The phrase may also refer to: * ''First Hand'' (album), the debut album released by Steven Curtis Chapman * ''Firsthand'' (TV series), a 2015 documen ...

accounts from the actual participants. The other was the 2001 television movie production directed by Roland Suso Richter, which was loosely based on the events recorded in the original. Later, in 2019, the BBC released a ten-part radio documentary about the escape, based on original interviews with the survivors, documents from the

Stasi The Ministry for State Security (, ; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the (, an abbreviation of ), was the Intelligence agency, state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive pol ...

archives, and the NBC recordings.

Production

NBC, who were in competition with CBS to be first to film a tunnel escape for their news programs, financed the excavation project, giving the students (the 2016 equivalent of) about $150,000 for exclusive rights to film them digging. An internal memo issued by Frank to the crew working on the documentary included the following outline of the goals of

television news News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting various news events and other information via television, radio, or the internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either produced locally in a radio studio or tel ...

production:

Broadcast postponement

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) officially announced on 11 October 1962 that it was going to televise the documentary on 31 October from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. ( EST).Adams, Val. "N.B.C.-TV Plans Documentary On Berlin Tunnel It Helped Build," ''The New York Times'', Friday, 12 October 1962. Reluctant to add to global tensions in light of the

Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...

, the

television network A television broadcaster or television network is a telecommunications network for the distribution of television show, television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or ...

decided on 23 October to indefinitely postpone the broadcast.Shepard, Richard F. "N.B.C. Postpones Tunnel Telecast," ''The New York Times'', Wednesday, 24 October 1962. The Kennedy administration had opposed airing the documentary, worried that NBC was increasing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. Robert F. Kennedy, the president's brother and attorney general, was reported to have commented "That was a terrible thing you people did, buying that tunnel." Concerns about the ethics of NBC's involvement and the safety of the students were also expressed.

References

External links

''The Tunnel'' (documentary film) – NBC Learn.

''The Tunnel'' (film transcript) – NBC Learn.

* [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-feb-07-me-frank7-story.html Collins, Scott. "Reuven Frank, 85; NBC Producer Helped Launch 'Huntley-Brinkley' Show, ''Los Angeles Times'', Tuesday, February 7, 2006.] * https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse?cuecard=62526 {{DEFAULTSORT:Tunnel, The American documentary television films NBC News NBC original programming 1962 television specials Films about the Berlin Wall Emmy Award–winning programs 1962 documentary films 1960s American television specials 1960s American films

Production

Broadcast postponement

See also

References

External links