King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis

As one of the first public figures to have his entire career documented, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became an astute judge of the media and knew how to exploit his celebrity to further his cause. After King was assassinated, television pioneer Ely Landau envisioned producing a 10-minute film tribute to the slain leader. Landau and his colleague Richard Kaplan assembled thousands of reels of film and rebuilt events from a variety of sources in their effort to condense King's life without losing his message. The first edit ran 10 hours, but the team eventually pared it down to 185 minutes. The resulting documentary, , illustrates King's development as one of the preeminent champions of the civil rights movement, while demonstrating how he became a media sensation.

 was added to the National Film Registry in 1999.