By GEOFF DUPAIX
Artifacts dating back to the time of Joseph Smith were filmed Wednesday at the Harold B. Lee Library for a PBS documentary about the prophet.
Lee Groberg, an independent film maker, is putting together the documentary, “American Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith” which will be aired on PBS around September 1999.
“We are gathering artifacts and documents from wherever they exist and melting them together as a montage for a part of this documentary,” he said.
This is the second documentary film Groberg has made on some aspect of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The first film was “Trail of Hope” which aired on PBS last August.
“As I visited with (PBS) on other ideas, they were very intrigued by the idea of telling the story of Joseph Smith because virtually everyone has heard of Joseph Smith, but no one knows very much about him,” he said.
But there was little publicity about the filming. Wayne Beck, head of security for the HBLL, said the filming was kept quiet was for security reasons and to avoid the attention that comes when a film crew is at work.
“The facility was not designed to accommodate large groups of onlookers and it’s very difficult to do this kind of work in such a public place, so we wanted to keep a very low profile,” he said.
Some of the items that were filmed included a ring that Joseph Smith wore, a rocking chair from the mansion house in Nauvoo and a LDS hymn book from 1835.
