George Tyssen Butler (12 October 1943 – 21 October 2021) was a British filmmaker and photographer, and a pioneer of the theatrical documentary. Some of his most popular films include Pumping Iron (1977), which introduced a wider audience to Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Endurance films, retelling Sir Ernest Shackleton's saga of Antarctic survival, and Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (2004), about his friend John Kerry's leadership in the peace movement. Butler's films are known for their combination of high artistic, educational and entertainment values, as he believed well-crafted documentaries can hold their own against dramatic features. In addition to his feature-length documentary classics, Butler has also produced acclaimed IMAX features, such as the award-winning Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure (2001) and Roving Mars (2006). Early life Born in Chester, England on 12 October 1943, Butler grew up in Somalia, Kenya, and Jamaica, the son of Dorothy (West) and Tyssen Desmond Butler. He was educated at De Carteret College in Jamaica, Groton School, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His father was a British Army officer and received military training at Sandringham. Butler's mother was a Boston Brahmin socialite. She travelled to Kenya to marry his father during WW II, but due to war secrecy she did not know where exactly she would be meeting him (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 November 1940). Butler was born in Chester, then travelled to Kenya and Somalia with his father. There, he grew up with animals, such as the gazelle he thought was his sister, accompanied by Askari warriors. The family then moved to Jamaica, where among other things his father worked to support Jamaican veterans of the Second World War. Butler came to Groton from Jamaica with an English accent, dark tan and exotic ways at odds with the staid conservatism of that school. Career After earning an M.A. in creative writing from Hollins College in Virginia, Butler worked as a reporter for Newsweek. Objecting to the Vietnam War, he joined VISTA (the domestic Peace Corps) as a volunteer, working in the inner city of Detroit's North End, where he established a successful community newspaper, The Oakland Lion. The author of a number of books, Butler collaborated with David Thorne and former Secretary of State John Kerry on The New Soldier (1971), a highly praised book about the Vietnam Veterans Against War. In 1972, a photo assignment for Life magazine to