Individual 1987

Personal Award: Kevin Brownlow and David Gill

Itself the keeper of one of the richest archives of visual history, the Peabody Awards program appreciates the dedication of those who seek to protect our film and television heritage against the ravages of age, natural calamity and human short-sightedness. At the forefront of that battle are two Britons, Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. In the past seven years, they have painstakingly found, restored and compiled into masterworks for Thames Television vast treasures of the silent cinema. The centerpieces are Unknown Chaplin, which won a 1986 Peabody, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, and Hollywood, the definitive record of the heyday of the silent screen. Thanks to their diligence, new generations of audiences are able to appreciate the beauty, glamour and majesty of the silents. As a result, like Latin before it, the “universal language” of film will endure for the ages. For heroic work in the important field of historic preservation of moving images, personal Peabody Awards to Kevin Brownlow and David Gill.