{{Short description|American film historian (1910–1988)}} {{Infobox person | name = Jay Leyda | birth_date = February 12, 1910 | birth_place = Detroit, Michigan, United States | death_date = {{death date and age|1988|2|15|1910|2|12}} | death_place = New York City, United States | occupation = Filmmaker, Biographer | spouse = Si-Lan Chen }}
'''Jay Leyda''' (February 12, 1910 – February 15, 1988)<ref name=rediscovered>David Stirk and Elena Pinto Simon in {{cite book |last1=Christie |first1=Ian |last2=Taylor|first2=Richard |title=Eisenstein Rediscovered|url=https://archive.org/details/eisensteinredisc00chri |url-access=limited |year=1993 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-04950-4 |oclc=252972811 |page=[https://archive.org/details/eisensteinredisc00chri/page/n59 41]}}</ref> was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film historian, noted for his work on U.S, Soviet, and Chinese cinema, as well as his documentary compilations on the day-to-day lives of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson.
==Life and work== Leyda was born on February 12, 1910, in Detroit, Michigan. He was a member of the Workers Film and Photo League in the early 1930s. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1933 to study film making at State Film Institute, Moscow, with Sergei Eisenstein, who had a troubled relationship with Stalin and the Soviet film bureaucracy. He participated in the filming of Eisenstein's lost film ''Bezhin Meadow'' (1935–37).<ref name=rediscovered/> When he returned to the United States in 1936 to become an assistant film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, he brought the only complete print of Eisenstein's ''Battleship Potemkin.'' In the 1940s he translated Eisenstein's writings.
Leyda's wife, Si-Lan Chen, a ballet dancer of international reputation, was the daughter of Eugene Chen, a colleague of the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.
In late 1943, during World War II, Leyda joined the U.S. Army Tank Corps at Fort Knox.<ref name=":Gao">{{Cite book |last=Gao |first=Yunxiang |title=Arise, Africa! Roar, China! Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century |date=2021 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=9781469664606 |location=Chapel Hill, NC}}</ref>{{Rp|page=214}} He was honorably discharged in 1944 after contracting pneumonia.<ref name=":Gao" />{{Rp|page=214}}
Although he did not have a Ph.D., Leyda became fascinated with Herman Melville and became an important figure in the Melville revival. These scholars moved beyond the acceptance of Melville's first-person accounts in his works as reliably autobiographical. To provide concrete evidence, Leyda searched libraries, family papers, local archives and newspapers across New England and New York to gather ''The Melville Log'' (1951) to document Melville's day-to-day activities and transactions.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |title=The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819–1891|year=1951 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace |location=New York |oclc=174510154}}</ref>
Leyda was invited in 1959 to work at the Film Archive of China in Beijing, where he stayed until 1964. His account of Chinese film history, ''Dianying'', was the first full-length treatment to appear in English. Although he could use the basic (and now outdated) Chinese scholarship only in summary translations, Leyda's knowledge of film gave him still useful insights into individual films and techniques.<ref>Jay Leyda, Dianying: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1972), xii</ref>
He was awarded the Eastman Kodak Gold Medal Award in 1984. He taught at Yale University (1969–1972), York University (1972–73) and New York University from 1973 until his death in New York on February 15, 1988, of heart failure.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/18/obituaries/jay-leyda-film-historian-writer-and-a-student-of-sergei-eisenstein.html Andrew L. Yarrow, « Jay Leyda, Film Historian, Writer And a Student of Sergei Eisenstein », 18.02.1988] The New York Times</ref><ref>'''Guide to the Jay and Si-Lan Chen Leyda Papers TAM.083'''
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York, NY.</ref> He was professor and dissertation advisor to noted film historian, Charles H. Harpole (creator of the ten volume History of American Cinema, dedicated to Leyda); leading film theorist, Tom Gunning; and scholar-practitioner Charles Musser. In 1981 he was a member of the jury at the 12th Moscow International Film Festival.<ref name="Moscow1981">{{cite web|url=http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/archives/?year=1981 |title=12th Moscow International Film Festival (1981) |access-date=2013-01-21 |work=MIFF |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130421050907/http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/archives/?year=1981 |archive-date=2013-04-21 }}</ref> He co-curated (with Charles Musser) ''Before Hollywood: Turn of the Century American Film'' (1987) for the American Federation of Arts, a six-part touring program of American films with an accompanying catalog, which the ''New York Times'' called "A fascinating look at the cinema that flourished between 1895 and 1915 in America, before movies could be mentioned in family newspapers."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Before Hollywood: Turn of the Century American Film|last=Leyda|first=Jay|last2=Musser|first2=Charles|display-authors=etal|publisher=American Federation for the Arts|year=1987|isbn=978-0933920910|location=New York|url=https://archive.org/details/beforehollywoodt0000unse}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/07/books/in-short-nonfiction-faking-it-on-film.html|title=IN SHORT: NONFICTION; Faking It on Film|last=Burnette|first=Peter|date=June 7, 1987|work=New York Times|access-date=November 24, 2018}}</ref>
==Selected filmography== thumb|thumbtime=120|''A Bronx Morning'' (1931) *''A Bronx Morning'' (1931) (11 minutes, black and white, silent), in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A3531&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=1 |title=A Bronx Morning |author=Jay Leyda |year=1931 |work=Museum of Modern Art |access-date=2010-02-12}}</ref> *''People of the Cumberland'' (1937) (21 minutes, black and white, sound), co-directed by Sidney Meyers, also in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A3531&page_number=2&template_id=1&sort_order=1 |title=People of the Cumberland |author=Sidney Meyers and Jay Leyda |year=1937 |work=Museum of Modern Art |access-date=2010-02-12}}</ref> The film was a Frontier Film Group production. Also working on the film were Elia Kazan, Ralph Steiner, Erskine Caldwell, Alex North, Earl Robinson and Helen van Dongen.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Barsam |first1=Richard Meran |title=Nonfiction film|year=1992 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=0-253-20706-1 |oclc=24107769 |page=148}}</ref>
==Selected bibliography== * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |last2=Bertensson |first2=Sergei |title=The Musorgsky reader; a life of Modeste Petrovich Musorgsky in letters and documents |year=1947 |publisher=W.W. Norton |location=New York |oclc=885379}} * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |title=The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819–1891|year=1951 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace |location=New York |oclc=174510154}} * {{cite book |last = Melville, Herman |author-mask = 2|year = 1952 |title = The Portable Melville |publisher = Viking Press| location = New York |ref = none}} * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |last2=Bertensson |first2=Sergei |last3=Satina |first3=Sophia |title=Sergei Rachmaninoff, a Lifetime in Music|year=1956 |publisher=New York University Press |location=New York |oclc=344823}} * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |title=The Years And Hours of Emily Dickinson |year=1960 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |oclc=479248174}} * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |author-mask=2 |title=Kino: A History Of The Russian And Soviet Film |year=1960 |publisher=George Allen & Unwin |location=London |oclc=468224244}} * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |author-mask=2 |title=Films Beget Films: A Study of the Compilation Film |year=1964 |publisher=Hill and Wang |location=New York |oclc=186247574}} * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |author-mask=2 |title=Dianying/Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China |year=1972 |publisher=The MIT Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn=978-0-262-12046-3 |oclc=241457 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/dianyingaccounto0000leyd }} * --- with Walter Aschaffenburg, ''Bartleby: Opera in a Prologue and Two Acts: Based on the Story by Herman Melville.'' (Bryn Mawr, Penn.: T. Presser, 1967). ISBN * —— , "Herman Melville, 1972," in {{cite book|editor-last = Bruccoli|editor-first = Matthew J.|year = 1973|title = The Chief Glory of Every People; Essays on Classic American Writers|publisher = Southern Illinois University Press|location = Carbondale|isbn = 0809306158|ref = none|url = https://archive.org/details/chiefgloryofever00bruc}} * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |author-mask=2 |last2=Voynow |first2=Zina |title=Eisenstein At Work |year=1980 |publisher=Pantheon Books |isbn=978-0-394-41262-7 |oclc=8493672 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/eisensteinatwork0000leyd }} * {{cite book |last1=Leyda |first1=Jay |author-mask = 2|last2=Eisenstein |first2=Sergei |title=Eisenstein on Disney |year=1986 |publisher=Methuen Paperback |isbn=978-0-413-19640-8 |oclc=19256739|title-link=Eisenstein on Disney }} * {{cite book |last = Spark |first = Clare L. |year = 2006 |title = Hunting Captain Ahab : Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival |publisher = Kent State University Press| location = Kent, Ohio |isbn = 0873388887}} Includes Leyda's role in the "Melville Revival." * Si-lan Chen Leyda, ''Footnote to History'' (New York: Dance Horizons), 1984 {{ISBN|9780871271341}}
== References == {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{IMDb name|name=Jay Leyda|id=0508013}} * Jay Leyda Papers, 1925–1956, at the UCLA Library; [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf8779p25t/ Collection Guide] at the Online Archive of California * Jay and Si-lan Chen Leyda Papers 1913–1987, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University [http://dlib.nyu.edu/eadapp/transform?source=tamwag/leyda.xml&style=tamwag/tamwag.xsl&part=body Collection Guide] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100701095153/http://dlib.nyu.edu/eadapp/transform?source=tamwag/leyda.xml&style=tamwag/tamwag.xsl&part=body |date=2010-07-01 }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Leyda, Jay}} Category:1910 births Category:1988 deaths Category:American film historians Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:20th-century American historians Category:20th-century American male writers Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:Herman Melville Category:Russian–English translators Category:20th-century American translators Category:Historians from Michigan Category:Filmmakers from Michigan Category:Writers from Detroit Category:New York University faculty Category:Articles containing video clips