Early lives The brothers were born in the
Dorchester neighborhood of
Boston, living there until the family moved to
Brookline, Massachusetts when Albert was 13. Albert and David's parents, both Jewish, were immigrants to the United States; their father, born in Ukraine, was employed as a postal clerk, while their mother, originally from Poland, was a schoolteacher. The family originally settled in Dorchester to be near relatives (the brothers' great-uncle Josef Maysles and his daughter and son-in-law, Becky and Joe Kandib) who had moved there earlier. Albert originally pursued a career as a
psychology professor and researcher. After serving in the
U.S. Army Tank Corps during
World War II, Albert obtained a
BA from
Syracuse University and
MA in psychology from
Boston University. He taught psychology at Boston University for three years, also working as a research assistant at a mental hospital and as head of a research project at
Massachusetts General Hospital. As an outgrowth of his research work, he traveled to Russia to photograph a mental hospital, and returned the following year with a camera provided by
CBS to film his first documentary,
Psychiatry in Russia (1955). Although CBS did not air the film, it was televised on
NBC, on the
public broadcasting station
WGBH-TV in Boston, and on Canadian network television. David also studied psychology at Boston University, receiving a BA. Also like his brother, David served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in
West Germany during the
Korean War. In the mid-1950s, he worked as a Hollywood production assistant on the
Marilyn Monroe films
Bus Stop and
The Prince and the Showgirl. David later stated that he grew "disenchanted with conventional filming. The glamour had faded and the filming of take after take had become tedious." By 1957 he had teamed up with Albert to shoot two documentaries behind the
Iron Curtain,
Russian Close-Up (credited to Albert Maysles alone) and
Youth in Poland, the latter of which was broadcast on
NBC.
Maysles brothers' collaborative years The Maysles brothers made over 30 films together. They are best known for three documentaries made in the late 1960s and early 1970s:
Salesman (1969),
Gimme Shelter (1970), and
Grey Gardens (1975).
Salesman documents the work of a group of door-to-door
Bible salesmen in New England and Florida. Deeper down, the film is a dissection of the degenerative and devastating effects of capitalism on small towns and individuals, but more than any political statement the film is about normal people in all their ugliness and truthfulness.
Gimme Shelter, a film about
The Rolling Stones'
1969 United States tour culminating in the disastrous
Altamont Free Concert, unexpectedly captured on film the altercation between Altamont attendee
Meredith Hunter and
Hells Angels member Alan Passaro that resulted in Hunter's death. Film footage shows Hunter drawing and pointing a
revolver just before being stabbed by Passaro, who was later acquitted of Hunter's murder on self-defense grounds after the jury viewed the footage.
Grey Gardens depicts the lives of a reclusive upper-class mother and daughter,
"Big Edie" and
"Little Edie" Beale (who were, respectively, the aunt and cousin of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), residing in a derelict mansion in
East Hampton, New York. In order to finance these films and others, the Maysleses also made commercials for clients such as
IBM,
Shell Oil and
Merrill Lynch. However, the brothers also received criticism from those who thought that they had actually planned or otherwise influenced scenes. The Maysles brothers threatened legal action against
The New Yorker after this accusation. They also sent an open letter to
The New Yorker refuting Kael's claims; however, because the magazine at the time did not publish letters, the letter did not appear in print until 1996. In the case of
Grey Gardens, the brothers were also accused of unfairly exploiting their subjects.
Death of David Maysles David Maysles, the younger brother, died of a stroke on January 3, 1987, seven days shy of his 56th birthday, in
New York City. Following his death, Albert was involved in litigation with David's widow over the terms of a financial settlement. According to David's daughter Celia Maysles, this resulted in the family developing a "code of silence" regarding David. In 2007, Celia released a documentary about her father,
Wild Blue Yonder, which included interviews with Albert.
Later life and death of Albert Maysles After his brother's death, Albert Maysles continued to make films. His notable works include ''
LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton (2001, co-directed with Deborah Dickson and Susan Froemke), which focused on the struggles of a poor African-American family living in the contemporary Mississippi Delta, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; and The Love We Make'' (2011, co-directed with Bradley Kaplan) which documented
Paul McCartney's experiences in
New York City following the
September 11, 2001 attacks, and premiered on
Showtime on September 10, 2011, the eve of the tenth anniversary of the attacks. Albert continued the series of documentaries begun with David about the public art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. He also contributed cinematography to
Leon Gast's
Academy Award-winning documentary
When We Were Kings, about the "
Rumble in the Jungle"
Muhammad Ali –
George Foreman heavyweight championship boxing match. In 2005, Albert founded the Maysles Documentary Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the exhibition and production of documentary films that inspire dialogue and action, located in
Harlem. Albert died of pancreatic cancer at his home in
Manhattan on March 5, 2015, aged 88. His films
Iris, about fashion icon
Iris Apfel, and
In Transit, about the longest train route in the United States, were released posthumously later that year. At the time of his death, Albert had also been working on an autobiographical documentary
Handheld and from the Heart. ==Legacy and contribution to documentary cinema==