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David Ross Brower Motion Picture Collection
MP 999
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Collection Title: David Ross Brower Motion Picture Collection,
Date (inclusive): 1939-1998
Collection Number: MP 999
Creator:
Brower, David Ross
Extent:
8 cartons and 2 boxes containing 68 reels and 73 videocassettes
Linear feet: ca. 12.5 linear feet
Repository: The Bancroft Library.
Berkeley, California 94720-6000
Abstract: The David Ross Brower Motion Picture Collection consists of 16mm motion picture films and videocassettes. Included in the
collection are 20 reels of home movies; educational works created by Brower and the Sierra Club; and commercial productions
concerning environmental issues.
Languages Represented:
Collection materials are in English.
Physical Location: For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Bulk of collection is open for research; some films are restricted due to poor condition. Contact Head of Public Services
for further information.
16mm films cannot be viewed in the library; contact Head of Public Services to arrange for viewing.
Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts
must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft
Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which
must also be obtained by the reader.
[Identification of item], David Ross Brower Motion Picture Collection, MP 999, The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley.
MP999 C:29 and MP999 C:66 are also available as DVD's shelved as MP999 E:29 and MP999 E:66 respectively. .
Additional Notes on Collection
Abbreviations and terms used to describe film materials:
- si.
- silent
- opt sd.
- optical sound
- mag sd.
- magnetic sound
- col.
- color
- b&w.
- black & white
- dir.
- director
- min.
- minutes
- Print:
- A film containing a positive image printed from a duplicate negative or a reversal film.
- Work print:
- A positive duplicate print used during the editing process in which scenes are spliced together.
Square brackets denote titles and dates supplied by archivist.
Material description based on
Archival Moving Image Materials: A Catalog Manual, 2nd ed.
Title: David Ross Brower Papers,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 79/9 c
Title: Sierra Club Records,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 71/103 c
Title: Sierra Club Office of the Executive Director Records,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 2002/230 c
Title: Sierra Club members Papers, 1892-[ongoing],
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 71/295 c
Title: Friends of the Earth Records,1980-1987,
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 82/98 c and BANC MSS 86/104 c
Title:
David R. Brower - environmental activist, publicist and prophet: an interview, conducted by Susan Schrepfer, 1974-1978.
Berkeley: Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1980.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Brower, David Ross, 1912-
Brower, David Ross, 1912- --Archives.
Sierra Club.
Conservationists--California.
Conservationists--United States.
Environmentalists--California.
Environmentalists--United States.
Conservation of natural resources--United States--History.
Conservation of natural resources--California--History.
Environmental protection--California--History.
Environmental protection--United States--History.
Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico)
Dinosaur National Monument (Colo. and Utah)
Grand Canyon (Ariz.)
Glen Canyon (Utah and Ariz.)
Hetch Hetchy Reservoir (Calif.)
Ship Rock Peak (N.M.)
Stehekin River Valley (Wash.)
North Cascades National Park (Wash.)
Yosemite National Park (Calif.)
Home movies and video.
Educational/cultural works.
Documentaries and factual works.
The David Ross Brower Motion Picture Collection was given to The Bancroft Library by David Ross Brower as part of the David
Ross Brower Papers on December 14, 1998. Additions were made on January 25, 1999, March 8, 2001, and April 3, 2001.
Processed by Jocelyn Saidenberg in 2004-2005.
David Ross Brower was born in Berkeley, California on July 1, 1912, the son of Ross J and Mary Brower. He had three siblings,
Edith, Ralph and Joseph.
In his early years, Brower spent much of his time in the woods surrounding Berkeley, both alone and as a guide for his mother,
leading her on walks and describing the outdoor world after she lost her sight to a brain tumor. His father taught drafting
at the University of California at Berkeley until 1920, when he lost his position and the family lived off the income from
rental apartments he owned. For recreation, he often took his family hiking and camping in the nearby mountains of the High
Sierra.
A butterfly collector in boyhood, David Brower studied entomology at University of California, Berkeley, but dropped out in
1931 after two years to earn a living. For four years he did clerical work for a candy company in San Francisco, among other
note jobs, while spending all his spare time climbing in the mountains.
Brower joined the Sierra Club in September 1933 sponsored by Richard Leonard, and was added to the
Sierra Club Bulletin's Editorial Board in 1935. He began participating in High Trips, and soon became a leader. He then worked for three years
(1935-1938) as an accountant and publicist for the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. During this period in Yosemite, Brower
continued to spend much of his time climbing, and quickly became an experienced climber. He also befriended many of the climbers
that would influence his later years including Hervey Voge, Bestor Robinson, George Rockwood, Francis Farquhar, and Dick and
Doris Leonard. He participated in a historic attempt on Mount Waddington (Canada) in 1935, and the first ascent of New Mexico's
Shiprock in 1939. He was also a member of the San Francisco Bay Chapter, and was the first editor of the
Yodeler from 1938-1940. In 1941, he became a member of the Sierra Club board of directors.
That same year, Brower was hired as an editor at the University of California Press, where his officemate was fellow editor
Anne Hus. They became friends, but she was still involved with a prior suitor in 1942, when Brower enlisted in the Army and
volunteered for duty in the newly formed Mountain Troops. Three months later he proposed by mail and they were married on
May 1, 1943.
Brower's military service stationed him in a number of training camps, including Camp Hale, Colorado, and the Seneca School
in West Virginia. As a lieutenant, Brower trained troops to scale cliffs, and wrote an instruction manual for mountain troops.
In 1945 Brower was sent to Italy as a member of the 86th Mountain Infantry, 10th Mountain Division of the US Army. He was
awarded a Bronze Star for his service.
Brower returned to California in 1945 and in 1947 he and Anne moved into a small house on Grizzly Peak in Berkeley, California,
where they remained the rest of their lives. Brower rejoined the University of California Press and added duties as an editor
for the
Sierra Club Bulletin.
In 1952, Brower became the Sierra Club's first executive director. During his tenure, Brower helped guide the Sierra Club's
rise to national prominence, building the organization's membership from 2,000 to 77,000 members. Under his direction, the
Sierra Club led the effort to pass the Wilderness Act, halted dam construction that would have flooded Dinosaur National Monument,
and pushed for the creation of the Kings Canyon, North Cascades, and Redwoods National Parks, and the Point Reyes and Cape
Cod National Seashores. Brower also led the Sierra Club into one of its largest campaigns, the fight against proposed dams
in the Grand Canyon; the campaign included a series of innovative full-page ads in the
New York Times that many believe led to the loss of the club's tax exempt status.
While executive director, Brower pursued an aggressive publishing program, editing numerous club publications, in particular
the club's award-winning Exhibit Format Series. Brower's tenure as executive director ended in 1969, with the board forcing
him to resign after a protracted disagreement with members of the board about the construction of a nuclear facility at Diablo
Canyon, and charges of financial irresponsibility. Brower continued his association with the Sierra Club, however, and was
elected to the board of the Sierra Club in 1983 and1986, and again in 1995, when he left after less than a year, feeling the
group was not attacking environmental issues swiftly or strongly enough. He was again elected in 1998, and once again resigned
in 2000, shortly before his death.
Immediately after leaving the Sierra Club, he announced the formation of Friends of the Earth (FOE), along with the League
of Conservation Voters, and the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies. In 1972 he founded Friends of the Earth Foundation,
and in 1973, Friends of the Earth International. FOE is now multi-national and operates in sixty-eight countries, and chartered
what is now nationally observed as Earth Day. Brower was dismissed as chairman of Friends of the Earth in 1984 over issues
of application of funding.
In 1982, Brower established Earth Island Institute, Brower Fund, and the Biennial Fate and Hope of the Earth Conferences.
Brower also founded the Global Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration (CPR) Service to help catalyze the restoration
of natural and human systems and helped organize the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment.
In 1988 and 1990-92, he led delegations to Lake Baikal in Siberia at Soviet request to aid its protection and restoration.
In the fall of 1994, he co-founded the Ecological Council of Americas as a network of organizations in the Americas focused
on problems of environment and economic integration. Brower developed plans for the creation of a National Biosphere Reserve
System, as well as for a National Land Service to replace the current Bureau of Land Management and to have a new mission
of protecting and restoring both public and private lands in the United States. He played a major role in establishing the
National Wilderness Preservation System, and the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (which resulted in the Land
and Water Conservation Fund).
During his lifetime, Brower made 70 first ascents, summer and winter, in Yosemite and the Western United States, and trekked
to 18,000 feet in the Himalaya below Mount Everest (1976) and to Thyangboche (1984). He received the First Class Skier award
in 1942, and, from 1939 to 1956, in the Sierra Club Wilderness Outings Program, he initiated the knapsack, river, and wilderness
threshold trips and led some 4,000 people into remote wilderness.
Brower was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times (in 1978, 1979, and 1998 -- jointly with professor Paul Ehrlich).
In October 1998, Brower received the Blue Planet Prize, awarded annually by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan, for his environmental
accomplishments. He also received numerous honorary degrees.
Brower wrote three memoirs,
Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth,
Work in Progress, and
For Earth's Sake, the Life and Times of David Brower and has been featured in many films. As a photographer and filmmaker, Brower began making films in the mid-1930s and played
a large role in the creation of early conservation films. Among the films that Brower created are
Climbing Shiprock, perhaps his first, which captures the first ascent of Shiprock in New Mexico by Brower and the Sierra Club members.
Brower was directly involved in the production of the Sierra Club films
Two Yosemites,
Skis to the Skyland,
Wilderness Alps of Stehekin,
Skyland Trails of The Kings, and
The Grand Canyon: Living River, Living Canyon. Glen Canyon contains rare images of the canyon prior to flooding due to the construction of the Lake Powell Dam in 1963.
After 50 years of waging personal battles for the environment, David Ross Brower died of cancer on November 5th, 2000. Brower
and Anne had four children: a daughter, Barbara, and three sons, Kenneth, Robert, and John.
Comments about Brower's efforts have ranged widely. Brower especially liked what Russell Train said when he was chairman
of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Nixon administration: "Thank God for Dave Brower; he makes it so easy for the
rest of us to be reasonable."
-Partially from the Earth Island Web Page (http://www.earthisland.org/brower/sub_bio.cfm)
Published works on David Brower, which may be of use to the researcher:
Brower, David R.
For Earth's Sake: the Life and Times of David Brower. Layton, Utah: Peregrine Smith Books, 1990.
Brower, David R.
Work in Progress. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1991.
Brower, David R. and Steve Chapple.
Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: a Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth. [San Francisco, Calif.]: HarperCollins West, 1995.
David R. Brower - environmental activist, publicist and prophet: an interview, conducted by Susan Schrepfer, 1974-1978. Berkeley: Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1980.
McPhee, John A.
Encounters with the Archdruid. New York: The Noonday Press, 1990, c.1971.
Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America, prod. and dir. Kelly Duane, 77 min., Loteria Films, 2004, videocassette.
Scope and Content of Collection
The David Ross Brower motion picture collection consists of 16mm motion picture films and videocassettes. Included in the
collection are 20 reels of home movies; educational works created by Brower and the Sierra Club; and commercial productions
concerning environmental issues.
Brower began making films in the mid-1930s. Among the films that Brower created are
Climbing Shiprock, perhaps his first, which captures the first ascent of Shiprock in New Mexico by Brower and the Sierra Club members;
Two Yosemites, a Sierra Club production about the different fates of Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy Valleys; and home movies of his trips from
1950-1965 to wilderness and recreation areas in Northern California.