Stanford’s contribution to motion pictures began on a dusty track near the Red Barn, where in 1878 Eadweard Muybridge used 12 cameras simultaneously to photograph a horse running, stitched together the frames and made a “movie.” The story is a permanent part of Stanford lore.
What is less well known is how Stanford people have contributed to the movies since. A quick overview of this roster would include eight-time Oscar winner Edith Head, MA ’20, who designed costumes for more than 50 years; producers David Brown, ’36, and Richard Zanuck, ’56, whose credits include some of Hollywood’s greatest hits; and director Roger Corman, ’47, king of the B movies, who nurtured filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, and helped launch the careers of several Stanford alums.
Today, alumni influence all sectors of the film industry. Some are household names, others are known mostly to colleagues and collaborators who prize their work. In this special section, we profile a sampling of professionals that spans the creative, business, legal and technical areas of filmmaking, and also look at theater and reality television through a Stanford lens. This package is far from complete. We could have devoted a dozen pages solely to the award-winning work of documentary filmmakers, for example, and one day perhaps we will. This is a snapshot—a trailer, if you will—of the cinematic scope of Stanford in Hollywood.
Enjoy the show.
