KUPFERBERG, Audrey E. 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born June 25, 1949, in Amsterdam, NY; daughter of Samuel Leib (a dry goods store proprietor) and Rae (dry goods store proprietor; maiden name, Abramson) Kupferberg; married Rob Edelman (a writer and educator), April 30, 1987. Ethnicity: "Eastern-European American Jew." Education: State University of New York, Albany, B.A., 1971; New York University, M.A., 1976; International Federation of Film Archives Summer School, Berlin, West Germany, graduate, 1978. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Racquetball, golf, watching minor league baseball, shopping for clothes.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—378 Division Street, Amsterdam, NY 12010.

CAREER:

American Film Institute, Washington, DC, The American Film Institute Catalog, researcher and writer, 1972-74, motion picture and video archivist, 1976-83; American Film Institute, Los Angeles, CA, assistant director of National Center for Film and Video Preservation and project director of American Film Institute Catalog, 1983-84; Yale University, New Haven, CT, director of Film Study Center, 1987-90; consultant, archivist, and researcher for various film collections, museums, libraries, and universities, 1990—. State University of New York at Albany, lecturer in film history, 1998—.

MEMBER:

Association of Moving Image Archivists.

WRITINGS:

(With husband, Rob Edelman) Angela Lansbury: A Life on Stage and Screen, Carol Publishing Group (Secaucus, NJ), 1996.

(With Rob Edelman) The John Travolta Scrapbook, Carol Publishing Group (Secaucus, NJ), 1997.

(With Rob Edelman) Meet the Mertzes: The Life Stories of I Love Lucy's Other Couple, Renaissance Books (Los Angeles, CA), 1999.

(With Rob Edelman) Matthau: A Life, Taylor Trade Publishing (Lanham, MD), 2002.

World War II ("People at the Center of" series), Blackbirch Press (San Diego, CA), 2002.

American Decades, Volume 2: 1910-1919, Volume 3: 1920-1929, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A biographical memoir about Ida Lupino by her daughter, Bridget Duff, to be cowritten by Audrey Kupferberg and Rob Edelman, possibly for 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Audrey Kupferberg told CA: "I am a film historian and moving image archivist. My favorite period of film history is the 1910s through 1946. I love getting my hands dirty going through nitrate films to discover the unique or best-surviving treasures of our film heritage.

"My favorite authors are women. I particularly appreciate Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edith Wharton, Fannie Hurst, and Maya Angelou. These authors not only tell stories, but delve into the female experience. The first three often do so with wit, and the last two show down-to-earth emotion.

"Because I love early twentieth-century film and theater, I am drawn to writing about entertainers from this period. Since I find life to be an interesting puzzle, biography is my favorite type of writing. Someday I plan to write a novel about my mother's childhood in Bialystok, Poland, before World War I. It will be partly historical, but mainly fantasized."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1983, Judith Michaelson, "Push is on to Preserve Film History," section VI, p. 1; September 16, 1983, Dale Pollock, "Collectors: Film Heroes or Villains?" p. 1.

Publishers Weekly, September 23, 2002, review of Matthau: A Life, p. 61.