John Morse ’81 took a circuitous path to working in film. When he was here earlier this summer, he hosted family, classmates, and Harley community members — including his former Harley film teacher, Alex DeSantis P ’84 (English, 1971-2009) — for a sneak preview of one of the more recent films he’s been involved in, The Optimist.
John, and fellow alum Michael Goldman ’81, worked on the small-budget film, shot in the Redwoods of Marin County, CA, in 2022. Inspired by the life of longtime Northern California shop owner Herbert Heller, the semi-fictional story weaves his later years with flashbacks to his teenage imprisonment at Auschwitz and his daring 1945 escape.
Click below to get to learn more about John, his time at Harley, and his first film job on a Coppola movie!








