The title of “Mr. Polaroid,” on PBS’ “American Experience,” is as apt as it is succinct. Edwin H. Land wasn’t just the cofounder and longtime head of the Polaroid Corp., which for decades had its headquarters in Cambridge. He was central to its development, its character, its success, and, ultimately, its failure. Have you ever heard of the company’s Polavision instant film system? Land assumed everybody would have, an assumption with disastrous consequences.
“Mr. Polaroid” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on GBH. It will also be available at pbs.org and on the PBS App.
Land (1909-1991) spent just one semester at Harvard before dropping out. That didn’t keep him from earning more than 500 patents. His prowess as an inventor brought comparisons to Thomas A. Edison and made him a hero of Steve Jobs. The Polaroid of its ’60s and ’70s heyday has been likened to Apple: its technological innovativeness also put it on the cutting edge of design and style. Polaroid back then was as cool as a corporation could get and still be in the Fortune 500.
Part of that coolness was Land’s being nearly as talented as an entrepreneur and impresario as he was as an inventor. He understood, for example, that associating instant cameras, the company’s best-known product, with art photography would give it cachet — and thus bring in more cash. (At its height, the company had revenues of $2 billion, and that was back when a billion was still a billion.) The first Polaroid Land camera, the Model 95, was introduced in February 1947. Soon after, Land hired no less a figure than Ansel Adams as a Polaroid consultant.
Neither Polaroid’s association with art photography nor the number of Land’s patents is noted in “Mr. Polaroid.” There’s very little about him as a person. No mention is made, for example, of the story that it was his young daughter wondering why she couldn’t see a photograph as soon as it was taken that inspired Land to invent instant photography.
These are instances of a basic patchiness to “Mr. Polaroid.” Segments are devoted to Land’s openness to hiring women and giving them major responsibilities, almost unheard of in corporate America at that time, and his commitment to hiring Black workers. Conversely, Polaroid sold its ID-2 camera system to the South African government for use in apartheid passbooks.
The politics of Polaroid matters, but the attention does seem disproportionate. Much of the wonder of the company was how it mattered in so many sectors: cultural, social, and artistical, as well as technological and financial. The hourlong “Mr. Polaroid” is that rare documentary which might have gained from having more running time.
It does have its virtues. The technical explanations are very good. The wealth of period photographs and news footage are great to look at. But the voice-over, read by the actress Gillian Jacobs, soon gets wearying with its fondness for absolutes: “forever,” “everyone,” “everywhere,” “never,” “always,” “all.” “The SX-70 was nothing short of genius” we’re told. What’s worse than hype? Hype expressed as a cliche.
The SX-70 was the most famous Polaroid camera. The second most famous was the Swinger. Introduced in 1965, it was the company’s first real pop sensation. The documentary includes a clip from one of the TV ads. “Meet the Swinger, Polaroid Swinger/It’s more than alive/It’s only 19 dollars and 95″ (slightly more than $200 today). We‘re told that Barry Manilow sang the jingle — but not that the familiar-looking woman in the ad is, yes, Ali MacGraw. Why mention Manilow and leave out MacGraw?
Mark Feeney is a Globe arts writer.
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