Robert Guenette, an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, died on Oct. 31 from brain cancer. He was 68.
Guenette left home at 16 to become an actor in New York City, but he quickly developed a passion for filmmaking. He took a job at CBS and worked his way up from assistant editor to network news producer.
In 1971, Guenette produced and co-wrote "They've Killed President Lincoln," a documentary that aired on NBC. During the making of this movie, Guenette developed a technique of reenacting historical events and then filming them using modern newsreel cameras. This revolutionary idea earned him and co-writer Theodore H. Strauss an Emmy for outstanding achievement in cultural documentary programming.
Guenette produced "Monsters! Mysteries or Myths?" an investigation into the existence of the Loch Ness monster, the Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot in 1974. The show, which was narrated by Rod Serling, was the highest-rated documentary in television history. Two years later, he produced "Victory at Entebbe!" a TV movie about the Israeli raid and rescue of Jewish hostages from Arab terrorists in Uganda.
Guenette later produced the documentaries "The Crucifixion of Jesus," "The Plot to Murder Hitler," "Cortez and Montezuma: Conquest of an Empire" and "Peary's Race to the North Pole," for CBS. He was also the co-founder of the International Documentary Association and the Los Angeles Media & Education Center.
In 2001, Guenette received the International Documentary Association Pioneer Award for Distinguished Lifetime Service to the Documentary Community.
Thanks to Google.com (and to you),
I have finally found a mention of Guenette's
"Crucifixion of Jesus" (other than by the TBN
network, which has been showing it recently and
gives a brief description at www.TBN.org).
As IMDb does NOT list it (though narrated by John
Huston & music by Elmer Bernstein & a David Wolper
production) I was up all night trying to tell them
what I knew about the film (via their tortuous
system for entering new material). If you have a
simple email address for IMDb, maybe you could
forward them the above Robert Guenette obituary,
just so they'll know the work actually exists and
that they do not have it listed. (Unfortunately,
I was not able to include Guenette's name in my
detailed submission of last night, as I only learned of it this evening when viewing the film
for a second time.) Thanks for putting this info
on the internet!