Background
Stuart Galbraith IV was born on December 29, 1965 in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the family of Stuart E. and Mary A. Galbraith.
commentator critic essayist cinema historian
Stuart Galbraith IV was born on December 29, 1965 in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the family of Stuart E. and Mary A. Galbraith.
Stuart received Bachelor of Arts (magna cum laude) at Eastern Michigan University, and then he earned Master of Arts at University of Southern California in 1997.
Galbraith first worked professionally as a film reviewer and long-running home video columnist for The Ann Arbor News. Galbraith’s "Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films", the first English-language book about the genre, was published in 1994, soon followed by "The Japanese Filmography." Galbraith’s 1998 book "Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo! The Incredible World of Japanese Fantasy Films" was an oral history of the genre.
Galbraith worked as an archivist for the USC-Warner Bros. Archives, and later worked at the Warner Bros. Corporate Archives before writing "The Emperor and the Wolf", a joint biography of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune, and the first biography of either man published outside Japan.
Then Galbraith returned to archive work, as a “film detective” for MGM, tracking down the original camera negatives to more than three dozen "lost" films. On DVD, Galbraith’s essays have accompanied Criterion's three-disc "Seven Samurai", Optimum's "Rashomon", and BCI Eclipse's "The Quiet Duel."
Stuart provided audio commentary for the Special Edition DVD of "Tora! Tora! Tora!", and interviewed Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond for his audio commentary track for "The Sadist." Galbraith's audio commentary for Classic Media's "Invasion of Astro-Monster" was released in 2007 and nominated for a Rondo Hatton Award. Since August 2003, Galbraith has been a reviewer for the website DVD Talk, where he has published more than 1,900 reviews.
In addition to his work as a cinema scholar, until 2009 Galbraith published a monthly home video column for the English-language edition of the Daily Yomiuri. He also records narration and voice-over for industrial and educational films. Galbraith’s "The Toho Studios Story" was published in 2008, and "Japanese Cinema", edited by Paul Duncan, was published by Taschen in 2009.
Also in 2009 he recorded a commentary track for AnimEigo’s "Tora-san, Our Loveable Tramp."
Galbraith has been selected as a member of the Online Film Critics Society.
In 1990, Stuart married Anne Sharp, but they divorced in 1994. In 2003 Galbraith moved to Kyoto with his second wife, Yukiyo Nishi. Their daughter, Sadie, was born in 2007.