Charles Eli Guggenheim (March 31, 1924 – October 9, 2002) was an American documentary film director, producer, and screenwriter.
[1] Upon discharge from the service, he finished his college education at University of Iowa in 1948 and then moved to New York City to pursue a career in broadcasting.
Guggenheim's first job was working for Lew Cohen at CBS, where he was exposed to the new media of film and storytelling.
He was subsequently recruited to St. Louis, Missouri, to serve as director of one of the first public television stations in the country, KETC.
Storck and Guggenheim also collaborated on a well-received political film for Pennsylvania governor Milton Shapp in 1966.
That year, Guggenheim moved his company and his family to Washington, D.C., where he became a media advisor to many Democratic political figures.
His last documentary was produced with his daughter and colleague (since 1986), Grace Guggenheim, the 2003 TV documentary film Berga: Soldiers of Another War, a little-known story about a group of 350 American soldiers captured by the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge who, because they were Jewish or the Nazis thought they "looked Jewish", were sent to slave labor camp and worked beside civilian political prisoners.
Soldiers and Slaves, a companion book to the film, was published by Roger Cohen, New York Times and Herald Tribune columnists using research materials.