Richard Wormser

Richard Leopold Wormser (born November 11, 1933) is a documentary filmmaker and the author of books, primarily for young adults. Born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he is the son of Irving Wormser, who worked in distribution for Columbia Pictures, and Dorothy Smolen. He graduated from Bucknell University in 1955, as a Political Science major and received a Masters in Sociology from Fordham University in 1959. While studying for at the Sorbonne in 1960-61, he spent time in Paris with William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Returning to the United States, Wormser worked for The Citizen (Shamokin PA), a weekly newspaper in the early 1960s. He is married to Annie Heminway, the author of numerous books on the French language. After writing a number of articles on the Selinsgrove State School and Hospital, Wormser worked there as a hospital assistant, leading to his role as executive producer and writer on Toymakers (1963) a 28 minute documentary, which examines the institutional experience of a mildly retarded 16 year old boy at Selinsgrove State School and Hospital in Pennsylvania, comparing him with others who are more severely retarded. Working a series of level-entry jobs in New York, he met Bill Jersey and became his assistant and sometime producer--the start of a life-long association. They worked together on The Seasons Change (1968), a film that would counter the "official Chicago" version of the convention. He was a writer/creative producer on Jersey's NEH funded feature The Other Side of Victory (1976). In 1985 they again collaborated on The Fight Ministers (1986), which Wormser directed. Wormser went on to produced and direct a number of documentaries, including Lifers: Learn the Truth at the Expense of Our Sorrow (1991), which takes an in-depth look at a group of men serving life terms in prison who are trying to prevent troubled teenagers from following the same path they did. He directed and, with Bill Jersey and Sam Pollard, produced Farmville: An American Story (1997), which led to the four-part Peabody Award-winning series The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002), which he directed with Bill Jersey. Wormser went on to write the book of the same name, which accompanied the series. Wormser moved his base to Arkansas where he made five films for the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation: The Elaine Riots (2003), about the second worst race riot in American history, The Road to Removal (2004), about the forced exodus of the Cherokee from Arkansas and Tennessee; Hubert (2005), the struggles of a severely handicapped man; Lives in the Balance (2005-7), about four at risk middle schoolers; and Delta Blues (2008) about a dying town on the Mississippi, trying to revitalize itself. Afterwards he moved to New Haven, Ct., where he has made a number of documentaries. Most recently he directed and American Reds (2015) about the rise and fall of the Communist Party USA in the Depression through the post-World War II era.