Inside cover of Marlon Brando’s address book, which he lost during a 1949 production of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’

“On bended knee I beg you to return this. I lost eight others already and if I lose this I’ll just drop dead!”

These are Marlon Brando’s words inscribed on the flyleaf of his address book, which was later dropped on the stage of the Barrymore Theatre in New York City during the 1949 run of A Streetcar Named Desire. Brando’s portrayal of the rugged and aggressive Stanley Kowalski in the play stands as the defining performance against which all subsequent actors of the part are judged.

In 1947, Brando auditioned for role. His audition was persuasive, and Tennessee Williams agreed to his casting…

‘Lark And Termite’ by Jayne Anne Phillips

Born in West Virginia in 1952, writer Jayne Anne Phillips published her first story collection in 1976. The publication of Black Tickets in 1979 prompted Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer to call Phillips “the best short story writer since Eudora Welty.” Phillips’s subsequent publications, which have been praised for their poetic prose and in-depth examinations of war and family dynamics, have continued to garner critical acclaim and major literary prizes, including her most recent novel, Lark and Termite, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2009. Materials related to Phillips and Lark and Termite are highlighted in the Ransom Center’s exhibition Culture Unbound: Collecting in the Twenty-First Century.

Lark and Termite explores the effects of the…

Each Friday, the Ransom Center shares photos from throughout the week that highlight a range of activities and collection holdings. We hope you enjoy these photos that reveal some of the everyday happenings at the Center.

A blooming Redbud tree in front of the Harry Ransom Center. Photo by Anthony Maddaloni.

John Lahr, Senior Drama Critic of The New Yorker, at work in the Ransom Center’s reading room. Lahr presented the Harry Ransom Lecture, ‘Tennessee Williams and the Out-Crying Heart,’ Thursday evening and is currently working on a biography of Tennessee Williams. Photo by Anthony Maddaloni.

Visiting English professor and former Ransom Center fellow Vanessa Guignery was one of the readers at the Poetry on the Plaza event celebrating works in the current…

Continue Reading Photo Friday

Noah Gordon. Photo by Anthony Maddaloni.

Noah Gordon is a Master of Arts student in English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He teaches tenth grade American Literature as a student teacher at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. He recently spent time at the Ransom Center gathering materials to use in his classroom with high school sophomores and writes here about that experience.

Your high school English teacher probably wanted only your final draft. Even process-based writing instructors expect the final version to represent the author’s best work: scrubbed of grammatical errors and clunkers, defined and refined in logic and narrative structure. As much as possible, the product should be perfect.

It’s no wonder that writing is…