Murray Lerner (1927-2017) was an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose films ranged from short industrials to science films, from groundbreaking 3-D productions to music documentaries. His films include the legendary Festival! (1967), featuring Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and others at the Newport Folk Festival, and From Mao to Mozart (1980), about the violinist Isaac Stern in China. Both films were nominated for an Academy Award; FROM MAO TO MOZART was awarded an Oscar.

Lerner's hour-long “educational film about education,” To Be a Man, began as a commissioned piece for Yale University, but was soon recognized by National Educational Television as having a wider potential audience, and, in November of 1966, was broadcast on more than 60 local stations across the country. Though commissioned and funded by Yale, the film avoids being an advertisement for the University, thanks to Lerner’s particular take on the intellectual and social lives of the students. As WGBH producer Henry Morgenthau put it in a letter to the University, “…I am left full of admiration for your artistic and institutional courage. It is the best TV film essay I have ever seen…” 

The Yale Film Archive preserved To Be a Man in 2016 from the original 16mm A/B negatives with laboratory work by Fotokem and audio restoration by Audio Mechanics and DJ Audio.