Sidney Meyers

Sidney Meyers (March 9, 1906 – December 4, 1969), also known by the pen name Robert Stebbins was an American film director and editor.

Sidney Meyers is best known for two documentary films: The Quiet One, which he wrote and directed, and for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay; and British Academy of Film and Television Arts winner The Savage Eye, which he co-directed, co-produced and co-scripted with Joseph Strick and Ben Maddow. Sidney Meyers was born in New York City on March 9, 1906 and grew up in East Harlem, then a teeming immigrant neighborhood. He was the eldest child of Abraham and Ida (née Rudock) Meyers, who had immigrated from Poland to the United States around the start of the 20th century. Abraham, a paper-hanger and activist in the Painters and Paper-hangers Union, District Council 9, of the AFL, supported the family as best he could. It was noticed early on that Sidney loved music; a Jewish charitable women's organization arranged for him to have the use of a violin and to receive music lessons when he was a young school-child.

During his years at De Witt Clinton High School Meyers played in the school's award-winning orchestra and joined the American Orchestral Society. While at the City College of New York, majoring in English literature, he continued to play the violin, and later the viola. On completing his studies he spent some three years as a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, then conducted by Maestro Fritz Reiner.

On his return to New York City, where he lived for the rest of his life with his wife Edna (née Ocko) and their son Nicholas, Meyers became interested in film-making and began to search for work in the fields of directing and editing, while playing the violin and viola in a Work Projects Administration orchestra. As was the case with many sons and daughters of immigrant families during the seemingly-endless Great Depression, he was drawn to left-wing political ideas. Using the pen-name of Robert Stebbins he wrote on the cinema for the left-wing arts magazine New Theatre.

Meyers worked for the Federal Arts Project of the Work Projects Administration; in 1937 his film People of the Cumberland appeared under its auspices. During World War II, Meyers served first as the chief American film editor for the British Ministry of Information and later worked as a film editor for the U.S. Office of War Information.

After the end of the War Meyers established a career as a free-lance film editor. He collaborated with directors, producers and other film artists, all of whom felt that his contribution was not limited to editing, as central as the latter may be to the work. Indeed he is best remembered for those films which he directed and wrote, and for which he served as consultant.

Meyers's television editing credits include supervision of the CBS television series East Side, West Side; The Power and the Glory with Laurence Olivier; The Slaves, with Dionne Warwick; the Wisdom Series; Assignment India; Assignment – Southeast Asia.

The Quiet One, which Meyers directed and scripted, established him as one of the leaders in the genre of documentary drama. Meyers collaborated with Ben Maddow and Joseph Strick in the production of The Savage Eye, and with Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider on Film (film). His contribution to Edge of the City was vital.

Meyers continued to work until his untimely death from cancer in 1969: he served as consultant for The Queen (1968), and was script consultant for Joseph Strick's film adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses. Shortly before his death he completed the editing of Joseph Strick's The Tropic of Cancer.

Shortly after his death, the Sidney Meyers Memorial Scholarship Fund was established at the City College of New York.