''The Tunnel'' was a 90-minute
black-and-white
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
that chronicled how three
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
university students organized the escape of 26 friends and family members by digging a
tunnel
A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...
underneath the
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...
from a former factory in West Berlin into the
Communist East.
Produced by
Reuven Frank
Reuven Frank (7 December 1920 – 5 February 2006) was an American broadcast news executive.
Life and career
Born Israel Reuven Frank (he later dropped his first name) to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, he earned a bachelor's degree in soci ...
and narrated by Piers Anderton, it was an
NBC White Paper
''NBC White Paper'' is a documentary television series on the NBC television network lasting from 1960 to 1989. Producer Arthur Zegart was nominated for an Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic ...
installment that was broadcast on December 10, 1962, and
sponsored by the
Gulf Oil Corporation
Gulf Oil was a major global oil company in operation from 1901 to 1985. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies. Prior to its merger ...
.
''The Tunnel'' earned three
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
s in 1963. It was the only documentary to receive the award as The Program of the Year. It was also honored for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Documentary (awarded to Frank) and Outstanding Achievement in International Reporting (awarded to Anderton).
[Piers Barron Anderton (death notice), ''San Francisco Chronicle'', Thursday, September 23, 2004.](_blank)
/ref>
''The Tunnel'' was the basis for a pair of similarly named German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
projects (''Der Tunnel'') which were released just under four decades after the original. One was the 1999 documentary directed by Marcus Vetter
Marcus Attila Vetter (* 1967 in Stuttgart) is a German documentary filmmaker.
Life and career
Vetter was born to a Turkish father, Cahit Cubuk, and a German mother. After studying in Worms, Buenos Aires and Madrid (with a focus on European Busi ...
, which featured the NBC footage
In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a ( often special) video camera, which typically must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or ...
accompanied by firsthand
Firsthand (sometimes first hand or first-hand) means obtained directly from the primary source
In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, ...
accounts from the actual participants. The other was the 2001 television movie production directed by Roland Suso Richter
Roland Suso Richter (born January 7, 1961 in Marburg) is a German film director and producer.
Biography
Richter was born in Marburg and lived there until making his Abitur in 1980 at the local Elisabethschule. Wanting to pursue a film career, ...
, which was loosely based on the events recorded in the original.
Later, in 2019, the BBC released a ten-part radio documentary about the escape, based on original interviews with the survivors, documents from the Stasi
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maint ...
archives, and the NBC recordings.
Production
NBC, who were in competition with CBS to be first to film a tunnel escape for their news programs, financed the excavation project, giving the students (the 2016 equivalent of) about $150,000 for exclusive rights to film them digging.
An internal memo
A memorandum (plural, : memoranda; abbreviation, abbr: memo; from the Latin ''memorandum'', "(that) which is to be remembered") is a Writing, written message that is typically used in a professional setting. Commonly abbreviated "memo," these m ...
issued by Frank to the crew working on the documentary included the following outline of the goals of television news
News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting various news events and other information via television, radio, or the internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either produced locally in a radio studio or televis ...
production:
Broadcast postponement
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) officially announced on 11 October 1962 that it was going to televise the documentary on 31 October from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. ( EST).[Adams, Val. "N.B.C.-TV Plans Documentary On Berlin Tunnel It Helped Build," ''The New York Times'', Friday, 12 October 1962.] Reluctant to add to global tensions in light of the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...
, the television network
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or multichannel video programming distributo ...
decided on 23 October to indefinitely postpone the broadcast.[Shepard, Richard F. "N.B.C. Postpones Tunnel Telecast," ''The New York Times'', Wednesday, 24 October 1962.]
The Kennedy administration had opposed airing the documentary, worried that NBC was increasing tensions between the United States and Russia at the height of the Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
. Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, ...
, the president's brother and attorney general, was reported to have commented "That was a terrible thing you people did, buying that tunnel." Concerns about the ethics of NBC's involvement and the safety of the students were also expressed.
See also
*Tunnel 57
Tunnel 57 was a tunnel under the Berlin Wall that on 3 and 4 October 1964 was the location of a mass escape by 57 East Berlin citizens to West Berlin. Built from the basement of an empty bakery at 97 Bernauer Straße in West Berlin, under the Be ...
, another tunnel built by the same group of students
* Girrmann Group, another group of students who organized escapes through the sewers in 1961
* Korean Demilitarized Zone#Incursion
References
External links
''The Tunnel'' (documentary film) – NBC Learn.
''The Tunnel'' (film transcript) – NBC Learn.
* ttp://articles.latimes.com/2006/feb/07/local/me-frank7 Collins, Scott. "Reuven Frank, 85; NBC Producer Helped Launch 'Huntley-Brinkley' Show, ''Los Angeles Times'', Tuesday, February 7, 2006.
* https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse?cuecard=62526
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tunnel, The
American documentary television films
NBC News
NBC original programming
1962 television specials
Films about the Berlin Wall
Emmy Award-winning programs
1962 documentary films
1962 films
1960s American television specials
1960s American films