Peter R. Gimbel (February 14, 1927 – July 12, 1987) was an American filmmaker and underwater photojournalist.

Biography

Born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, he was the son of Alva (née Bernheimer) and Bernard Feustman Gimbel and heir to the

Gimbels Gimbel Brothers (known simply as Gimbels) was an American department store corporation that operated for over a century, from 1842 until 1987. Gimbel patriarch Adam Gimbel opened his first store in Vincennes, Indiana, in 1842. In 1887, the compa ...

department store chain. His great grandfather was

Adam Gimbel Adam Gimbel (1817–1896) was the founder of the Gimbel Brothers Company. Biography Gimbel was born to a Jewish family in Bavaria in 1817 where he worked in the local baron's vineyard.Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1951, earning degrees in both English and economics.Credo Reference Topic
"Peter Robin Gimbel"
/ref> He spent ten years as an investment banker but after the death of his twin brother at age 29, he left banking to pursue a career in exploration. He parachuted into the Peruvian Andes with G. Brooks Baekeland (grandson of

Leo Baekeland Leo Hendrik Baekeland (November 14, 1863 – February 23, 1944) was a Belgian chemist. He is best known for the inventions of Velox photographic paper in 1893, and Bakelite in 1907. He has been called "The Father of the Plastics Industry" ...

, the inventor of Bakelite) and Peter Lake in search of the lost Inca city of Vilcabamba. He was the first to dive the wreck of the ''

SS Andrea Doria SS ''Andrea Doria'' , was an ocean liner for the Italian Line (Società di navigazione Italia) home-ported in Genoa, Italy, known for its sinking in 1956, where of the 1,706 passengers and crew, 1,660 were rescued, while 46 passengers and crew ...

'' and his photos of the ship were published in ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

'' magazine in August 1956. He produced two documentaries about the ship ''The Mystery of the Andrea Doria'' and ''Andrea Doria: The Final Chapter''. He opened the safe of the Andrea Doria on live television in 1984. Gimbel also directed and produced the 1971 film ''

Blue Water, White Death ''Blue Water, White Death'' is a 1971 American documentary about sharks which was directed by Peter Gimbel and James Lipscomb. It received favourable reviews and was described as a "well produced odyssey" and "exciting and often beautiful". It s ...

'' which was the first cinematic filming of

great white shark The great white shark (''Carcharodon carcharias''), also known as the white shark, white pointer, or simply great white, is a species of large mackerel shark which can be found in the coastal surface waters of all the major oceans. It is nota ...

, featuring Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor,

Rodney Fox Rodney Winston Fox (born 9 November 1940) is an Australian film maker, conservationist, survivor of an attack by a great white shark, and one of the world's foremost authorities on that species. He was inducted into the International Scuba D ...

Stan Waterman Stanton A. Waterman (born April 5, 1923) is a five-time Emmy winning cinematographer and underwater film producer.Peter Benchley Peter Bradford Benchley (May 8, 1940 – February 11, 2006) was an American author, screenwriter, and ocean activist. He is known for his bestselling novel '' Jaws'' and co-wrote its film adaptation with Carl Gottlieb. Several more of his works ...

's book, ''Jaws''.

Personal life

Gimbel married three times. His first wife was socialite Mary Bailey with whom he had two children, Peter Bailey Gimbel and Leslie Gimbel Goldman (Bailey remarried to director

Sidney Lumet Sidney Arthur Lumet ( ; June 25, 1924 – April 9, 2011) was an American film director. He was nominated five times for the Academy Award: four for Best Director for ''12 Angry Men'' (1957), ''Dog Day Afternoon'' (1975), ''Network'' (1976), ...

). His second wife was model Virginia Taylor. In 1978, he married actress

Elga Andersen Elga Andersen (née Helga Hymen or Hymmen) (2 February 1935 – 7 December 1994) was a German actress and singer. She starred in more than one dozen French films in the 1950s and 1960s and also debuted as a recording artist in the 1950s. She per ...

Death

Peter Gimbel succumbed to cancer on July 12, 1987 at the age of 60.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gimbel, Peter 1927 births 1987 deaths American people of German-Jewish descent American underwater divers Place of death missing American twins Underwater photographers Yale University alumni Gimbel family