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.

Undergraduate intern Kelsey Handler unfolds a painting made by a Devil's Island prisoner from the René Belbenoit Collection. Photo by Kelsey McKinney.

Ransom Center members enjoy an exclusive tour of the current exhibition,

Filmmaker and special effects pioneer Tom Smith discusses his work at the KLRU studios. Photo by Pete Smith.

Mike Wallace interviewing Margaret Sanger on "The Mike Wallace Interview," September 23, 1957. © Mike Wallace.

“Whether you agree or disagree with what you will hear, we feel that none will deny the right of these views to be broadcast.”
-Mike Wallace

Mike Wallace rose to prominence in 1956 with the New York City television interview program Night Beat, which soon developed into the nationally televised prime-time program The Mike Wallace Interview.

Well prepared with extensive research, Wallace asked probing questions of guests framed in tight close-ups. The result was a series of compelling and revealing interviews with some of the most interesting and important people of the day, including Justice William O. Douglas, Frank Lloyd Wright, Pearl Buck, Salvador Dali, Oscar Hammerstein and Henry…

Cover of "Industrial Light & Magic: The Art of Special Effects" by Tom Smith.

The archive of visual effects producer Thomas Smith has been donated to the Ransom Center. Smith worked on the special effects for such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. (1982), Star Trek: The Search for Spock (1983), Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989). Below, he shares why he chose the Ransom Center as the repository for his papers and why it’s important to preserve these materials.

Why did you choose the Ransom Center as the home for your archive?

I began making 16 mm films right after I was discharged from the Air Force. I worked in…

Student volunteer Carly Dearborn and Ransom Center Curator of Film Steve Wilson with materials from the Tom Smith collection. Photo by Pete Smith.

Thomas Smith (b. 1938), visual effect producer for such films as Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (1980) and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), has donated his archive to the Ransom Center. Smith was hired by George Lucas as the first head of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and worked on the special effects for such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989).

The Smith collection comprises 22 boxes and documents Smith’s professional work through the 1980s…

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.

Library Assistant Richard Mikel works on placing a mylar cover on the book 'Gold Comes in Bricks.' Photo by Kelsey McKinney.

Junior work study Miles Foster-Greenwood has worked on compiling data for hundreds of photographer E. O. Goldbeck’s panoramic images. Photo by Kelsey McKinney.

Senior work study Simonetta Nieto works on housing for a costume from Robert De Niro’s collection. Photo by Kelsey McKinney.

In the late 1970s, screenwriter Paul Schrader began writing a script titled Born in the U.S.A., and he asked Bruce Springsteen to write a song for the film. The script sat on Springsteen’s table until one day, while working on a song called “Vietnam,” he noticed Schrader’s script, sang the title, and “Born in the U.S.A.” became the hit title song of one of Springsteen’s best-selling albums. Springsteen eventually wrote a new song for the script, which Schrader renamed Light of Day (1987).

Drafts of Schrader’s Born in the U.S.A. and Light of Day scripts and correspondence between Schrader and Springsteen are just a few of the many highlights found in Schrader’s archive, which opens for research today at the Ransom Center.

From drafts of the Taxi Driver (1976) screenplay to Schrader’s baby book, from an outline for Raging Bull (1980) to letters from Schrader’s parents, the archive encompasses Schrader’s career and personal life.

Photographs abound in the archive. Of particular note are film stills, on-set photos, and publicity shots for Taxi Driver, the film that launched Schrader’s career. One photo shows Schrader and a young Jodie Foster at the Cannes Film Festival, and another shows Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro laughing on set. Invoking De Niro’s Taxi Driver character Travis Bickle, Scorsese inscribed a photo of him with Schrader: “From one Travis to another.” In an e-mail, Schrader wrote that he felt like a Travis Bickle “at one time.”

Immediately following Jaws’s blockbuster success, Steven Spielberg asked Schrader to write a screenplay for what would become Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Spielberg read Schrader’s script, but they didn’t agree on how the story should progress. Spielberg ended up writing the script himself, but drafts and notes for Schrader’s version are included in his archive.

In the mid-1980s, Bob Dylan asked Schrader to direct a music video shot in Japan for his song “Tight Connection to My Heart.” Unhappy with the result, Schrader later called the video “a source of embarrassment.” In addition to scripts, photographs, and film documenting the video production, Schrader’s archive includes a 2002 letter to an executive at Sony in which Schrader looks back on the project 16 years later:

“It was a disaster. Bob had asked me to do it but I really didn’t ‘get’ the new music video language. He didn’t want to do it and by the middle of the shoot I didn’t want to do it. I remember saying to him at one point, ‘Bob, if you ever hear I’m making another music video, just take me out in the back yard and hose me down.’”

When asked how he felt about his archive opening to the public, Schrader responded, “I hope to be too busy to even give it a thought.”

Production still of Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro on the set of 'Taxi Driver' (1976).

Paul Schrader's outline for the 1980 film 'Raging Bull.'

Leger Grindon is a professor of film and media culture at Middlebury College where he has taught since 1987.  He is the author of Knockout:  the Boxer and Boxing in American Cinema (University Press of Mississippi, 2011), Hollywood Romantic Comedy:  Conventions, History and Controversies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and Shadows on the Past:  Studies in the Historical Fiction Film (Temple University Press, 1994).  Grindon spent time working in the Robert De Niro collection in July on a Robert De Niro Fellowship.  He is preparing an essay, “Filming the Fights in Raging Bull,” for a forthcoming critical anthology on the films of Martin Scorsese edited by Aaron Baker and to be published by Wiley-Blackwell.

The object of my research was 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.

Eric Cartier, a graduate student in the School of Information, works with an audio reel of William Faulkner reading his own short story "The Bear." Photo by Pete Smith

Library Assistant Ancelyn Krivak uses the Digibook scanner to create digital images for a book of poetry. Photo by Pete Smith

'The Journals of Spalding Gray" was edited by Nell Casey.

Writer and actor Spalding Gray (1941–2004), whose archive opens for research today, is best known for his highly personal monologues and for helping to define a new era in theater where public and private life became an indivisible part of each new performance. Gray’s archive was acquired by the Ransom Center in 2010.

Writer Nell Casey had access to the archive before it arrived at the Ransom Center, and her book The Journals of Spalding Gray has been released today. Cultural Compass interviewed Casey about her work in the archive and the surprises she found in Gray’s journals.

In honor of the book’s release, the Ransom Center is giving away two copies of the volume. Email hrcgiveaway@gmail.com with…

Page from Spalding Gray journal, which spans from February to April 1990.

Spalding Gray was an actor, performer, and writer. He appeared on Broadway in various one-man shows and is widely accredited with the invention of the autobiographical monologue.  His archive, recently acquired by the Ransom Center, is composed of more than 100 private journals that span more than 40 years of Gray’s career. Nell Casey, editor of the book The Journals of Spalding Gray, which was released today, distilled the mass of journal entries into a portrait of the man behind the magnetic performer who ended his life in 2004. Cultural Compass spoke with Casey about her interest in Gray, the surprising notes she found in the journals, what she admires…