Documentary Classics: 'King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis' (1970)

An immediate celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy is presented through archival documentary - oh, and some celebrity guests show up, too.

I’m bringing back an old column from the Nonfics website days, and I’d like to start with a film just released on Blu-ray for the first time: King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis. I’m putting this one out just under the wire late in the afternoon on the last day of Black History Month — a bonus day this February as it’s a leap year. Kino Lorber sent me a copy while I was away and I finally got the chance to look at it. Little of what I have to say about the film’s history, quality, and lasting significance has to do with its latest home video edition. Still, obviously, this disc looks better than the version on YouTube that I’m sure many people have turned to.

First, it should be noted that I’m accepting 1970 as the year of its release. It’s accurate. Typically, I go by IMDb for the first date of a film’s showing, but the site is in error affixing the year 1969 to King. The first release date listed there is claimed to have happened on October 22, 1969, which is actually the date of a press conference announcing the project instead. You can see a photo of Coretta Scott King, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, and Sidney Poitier with a poster for the documentary via Alamy, though the caption gives October 22 as the day of the event while the credited date for when the picture was taken is October 21. It’s possible the event was on October 21 and then the image was first published on October 22?

By way of the FBI Files on Martin Luther King Jr., we can find more information on the press conference as was reported in newspapers at the time. Held at the Americana Hotel in New York City, the event featured a brief presentation of footage appearing in the documentary, including clips of King leading the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and “refuting calls to violence by black militants in the 1960s.” Other attendees were Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti, National Association of Theatre Owners President Julian Rifkin, Reverend Andrew Young, and producer Ely A. Landau, who is noted as being the person behind the project and is reported to have worked on it “for more than a year without compensation” (he also spent a lot of his own money on the film out of pocket). He began with an idea for a short tribute. It became something much bigger — by some accounts a work potentially 10 hours in length.