72 | JULY 27 • 2023
S
ue Marx, 92, of
Birmingham, died
July 17, 2023.
Marx, an essentially
self-taught professional
filmmaker who stunned
Hollywood by winning an
Academy Award in 1987
for her documentary short
film, Young at Heart, died
July 17, 2023, at her home in
Birmingham.
That film, perhaps
the highlight of her long
and varied media career,
chronicled the love story
and marriage of her own
widowed father, then in his
80s, and another widowed
artist. The film is still often
shown and studied today.
Years later, she loved to
tell the story about how,
after she triumphantly yelled
“Hooray for Michigan!” to a
national television audience
when presented with her
Oscar, a grumpy Detroit
Mayor Coleman Young later
told her she should have said
“Detroit” instead.
“Yes, Mr. Mayor,” she told
him, and explained that she
wanted to stretch out her
brief time in the spotlight,
and “Michigan has three
syllables and Detroit has only
two.”
Marx made over 200 films
during her storied career.
Her topics ranged widely,
from artists like John Glick to
architecture; from legendary
Michigan author and crusty
Supreme Court Justice John
Voelker to The Relaxation
Station, made to help
children in crisis cope with
stress and anxiety.
Marx founded Sue
Marx Films in 1980 after
a career as a professional
photographer whose lens
captured nearly every famous
person (and some not so
famous) who lived in or
visited the Detroit area in
the 1960s and ’70s, from the
Kennedys to a young Bob
Seger to Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. Her images have
endured: Three years ago, the
Birmingham-Bloomfield Art
Center mounted an exhibit,
“Photographs by Sue Marx:
Images from History: People
who Defined Detroit in
the 1960s,” which managed
to be a success despite the
pandemic.
Remarkably, nothing
in her early life hinted
that she might become
a photojournalist and
filmmaker, let alone an
Oscar-winning one. During
much of her early childhood,
her family might have been
hard-pressed to afford tickets
to a movie.
Suzanne Elaine Gothelf
was born on Nov. 17, 1930,
in Yonkers, N.Y., to Louis
and Leona Gothelf, who
emigrated as children to
America from what is
now Belarus. The Great
Depression was deepening
when Marx was born, and
her parents began working in
a bakery to survive.
During the New Deal,
the WPA found her father
work painting theater sets
in Milwaukee, where her
late and only sister Vivian
was born. Eventually,
the family settled in East
Chicago, Indiana, where her
mother managed hotels and
apartment buildings. “We
were dirt poor,” she later said.
Somehow, her parents
managed to send her to
Indiana University, where she
majored in language arts and
was a member of Sigma Delta
Tau.
After graduating in 1952,
she moved to Detroit to live
with an aunt and uncle and
became a teacher in Oak
Park. She soon met Stanley
“Hank” Marx, the owner of
a lead smelting company,
who she always called “the
greatest man in the world.”
Hank and Sue were married
Dec. 19, 1953, and enjoyed
a happy and intensely loving
partnership until his death in
October 2007.
Terry, the first of her
three daughters, was born
in 1955. Jane followed in
1956 and Elizabeth in 1959.
While raising her daughters,
Marx earned a master’s
degree in social psychology
at Wayne State University.
Soon afterward, Marx began
working as a model. What
she didn’t know is that this
would lead to the next phase
of her life.
“I met some of the
photographers and got
interested in photography
and was so enthralled that I
became a photographer and a
photojournalist,” she said.
She had a thriving
freelance career before she
was approached by WWJ-
TV (now WDIV) in 1970
to produce and direct a
groundbreaking weekly
television show, Profiles in
Black, the first real effort by
local media to tell the stories
and portray the lives of the
metropolitan Detroit area’s
African American residents.
Marx savored this work
as part of her continuing
commitment to Detroit in
light of the city’s changing
demographics.
After the television
program ended nearly a
decade later, she opened Sue
Marx Films in Detroit. While
she excelled in making her
own documentaries, she also
produced films, commercials,
and promotional and
educational videos for a wide
variety of clients.
Marx produced films
for more than 30 years. In
addition to the Oscar, her
numerous awards include
more than 20 Emmys, 11
Cine Golden Eagles, and
other major honors from
numerous film festivals,
plus an Award of Excellence
from American Women in
Radio and Television (now
the Alliance for Women in
Media).
Though she often claimed
that she didn’t know anything
about art, her films on
art and artists are now in
the film collection of the
Museum of Modern Art in
New York.
In recognition of her
achievements, Marx
was invited to join the
International Women’s Forum
- Michigan, and also received
an entrepreneurial award
from Harvard University
and a distinguished women’s
Famed Filmmaker & Photographer
OBITUARIES
OF BLESSED MEMORY
Sue Marx