Pierce Rafferty

Who is Pierce Rafferty?

Filmmaker Pierce Rafferty grew up in Connecticut and moved to New York City in 1982. Some of his relatives include grandfather Marvin Pierce, president and later chairman of McCall Corporation, the publisher of the popular women's magazines Redbook and McCall's; and an early New England colonist named Thomas Pierce, also an ancestor to Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States. Pierce attended Phillips Academy Andover and briefly attended Yale University.

Pierce and his former spouse, Margaret Crimmins, founded Petrified Films, Inc. in 1984, a pioneering independent stock film footage library that held the Elmer Dyer Film Library, Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures' feature film outtakes.

Pierce spent more than a decade organizing and cataloguing vaults all over NYC that were filled to the ceilings with cans of film. Located in New York City's The Meatpacking District, Petrified licensed archival footage to film, television, and commercial producers before being acquired by The Image Bank. The Image Bank was later acquired by Getty Images. With his brother Kevin Rafferty and Jayne Loader, Pierce made the cult classic film The Atomic Cafe.

He is now Director of the Henry L. Ferguson Museum, Fishers Island, New York