Empire Of The Air

Thanks to the whopping success of The Civil War (reviewed in the May, 1990 issue), producer/director Ken Burns (The Statue of Liberty, The Congress) has acquired the status of a Steven Spielberg in the independent filmmaking world. His latest venture, Empire of the Air, while far removed from the blood-soaked battlefields of its predecessor, operates under the same golden rule: a good documentary comes from a good story. In Empire, there are three good stories: between 1906-1954, three men in particular (Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff) would wage an ongoing war to create and control the concept of broadcasting wireless sound across great distances. Dubbed "the father of radio," Lee de Forest is seen early on in the program as he appeared on This Is Your Life, an elderly man deeply grateful for the tribute. Yet, we soon learn that de Forest was often a liar and a thief, and was involved in shady corporations and patent suits for most of his life. His hated rival, Edwin Armstrong, would take de Forest's initial work and make considerable improvements (he eventually discovered FM), yet neither Armstrong nor de Forest had any real business sense. Enter David Sarnoff, a Russian immigrant who landed in America at the age of 9, owned and operated his own newsstand at the age of 14, and assumed the presidency of RCA before he was 40. Combining archival newsreel footage and still photographs, along with contemporary interviews (with, among others, Garrison Keillor, Norman Corwin, Susan Douglas, and Erik Barnouw), Empire of the Air tells the fascinating story of how the lives of these three men were interwoven, leading to both triumph and tragedy, and the birth of the modern electronic mass media. Highly recommended. (Available from: PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698; 1-800-424-7963.)