Marilyn Pedersen West, a painter, writer, and fashion model, who worked for social causes. They had a daughter, Victoria. In 1970 they separated, and remained separated until her death in 1980. Documentaries Many relatively conventional jobs followed, until 1954, when Leacock was asked to make a reportage on a traveling tent theater in Missouri: the first film he had written directed, photographed, and edited himself since Canary Bananas. This film, Toby and the Tall Corn, went on the American cultural TV program, Omnibus, in prime time and brought him into contact with Robert Drew, an editor at LIFE magazine in search of a less verbal approach to television reportage. Another new contact, Roger Tilton, wanted to film an evening of people dancing to Dixieland music spontaneously. Leacock filmed Jazz Dance for him, using hand held camera techniques. Leacock's search for high quality, mobile, synchronous equipment to facilitate observation was ongoing. Along with fellow film maker Robert Drew, he developed the method of separating the wire from the microphones and the cameras. Leacock explains the problem with Louisiana Story and pre-synchronized sound filmmakers:Like all documentary filmmakers, he [Flaherty] had an identity problem in that period. They couldn't deal with sync sound. It tied them down. Made them rigid… Except for the drilling sequence, which was shot with sound, it was essentially a silent film. And it wasn't till 1960, when we were filming Primary, that we were able to jump into the new world.Frustrated with the obtrusiveness of the process of synching footage and sound, Leacock knew there had to be a way to separate the two. In 1958, the idea became obvious. "We had to have a mobile quartz camera, and we had to have a mobile quartz tape recorder, and we couldn't have cables connecting them." Leacock took the same design as in an Accutron watch and put it in the camera. This allowed proper synchronisation. They then took their design to RCA who showed interest; and after receiving money from LIFE magazine, Drew and Leacock were able to make the first model and shoot their film Primary. As Leacock pointed out, “nothing has really changed since then, I mean it is a little bit better… basically the same thing." Brian Winston describes Leacock as the father of modern documentary because of this development. "He was the catalyst for the development of the modern documentary, liberating the camera from