Jaglom, Henry
JAGLOM, HENRY
JAGLOM, HENRY (1941– ), U.S. director-actor. Born in London, England, Jaglom grew up in New York City. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1961, he studied acting, writing, and directing at the Actors' Studio and performed in off-Broadway theater. Jaglom moved to Hollywood in the late 1960s and made appearances on such television shows as Gidget and The Flying Nun. In 1967, he went to Israel to film a documentary on the Six-Day War, which never achieved wide release in the United States. Back in Hollywood, Jaglom secured his first feature-film role as a drug addict in Psych-Out (1968). Jaglom's work on his Six-Day War documentary earned him a spot as an editor for the Dennis Hopper film Easy Rider (1968), which then led to his directing A Safe Place (1971), a U.S. box-office disappointment that did well in Europe. In 1974, Jaglom was instrumental in bringing to the screen the Vietnam War documentary Hearts and Minds, which won an Oscar. With the money Jaglom earned from Safe Place, he was able to finance his next film, Tracks (1976), a tale of an Army sergeant haunted by Vietnam. In 1977, Jaglom married Patrice Townsend. Jaglom gradually began to adopt a cinema verité approach to filmmaking in which the actors under his direction were encouraged to improvise, and he increasingly drew from his own life for inspiration to make films. Following his divorce from Townsend in 1982, Jaglom directed Always (1985), which focused on the last days of their marriage. In Someone to Love (1987), the director interviews 60 friends to talk about why they are alone; the film features the final on-screen appearance of Orson Welles. Among later films, Eating (1991) explores women's issues with food; Babyfever (1994) looks at women and the biological clock; and Going Shopping (2005) examines women's consumerist urges.
websites:
"Jaglom, Henry," in Contemporary Authors Online (Gale, 2002); Henry Jaglom – biography, at: www.henryjaglom.com; Henry Jaglom – imdb, at: www.imdb.com/name/nm0415617; "'To Tell the Truth' – Henry Jaglom's Cinema of Emotional Verité Radiance," at: www.standard8media.com/rainbowfilms/radmag.htm.
[Adam Wills (2nd ed.)]