Jean Bach

Who was Jean Bach?

Jean Bach was an American documentary film director, radio producer and jazz aficionado. Bach directed the 1994 documentary, A Great Day in Harlem, based on a 1954 photograph of the same name. The black-and-white photograph is a portrait of fifty-seven notable jazz musicians who were photographed in front of a brownstone at 17 East 126th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of upper Manhattan.

Bach learned that jazz bassist Milt Hinton had a home movie from the day of photo shoot in 1954. She acquired Minton's home movie and used it or archival footage for her own film, A Great Day in Harlem, an hour-long documentary released in 1994. Her film won the top award from the Chicago International Film Festival and earned an Academy Award for Documentary Feature nomination in 1995.

Bach was born Jean Enzinger in Chicago in September 27, 1918, and raised in Milwaukee. She made fredquent trips to Harlem and the Apollo Theater as a student at Vassar College. She became a fixture in New York's jazz scene for the rest of her life.

Jean Bach died at her home in Manhattan on May 27, 2013, at the age of 94. Her husband, Bob Bach, a production coordinator on What's My Line?, whom she married in 1948, died in 1985.