by CATHY WHITLOCK
The following is an excerpt from Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction, Cathy Whitlock ©2010 HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted with permission.
The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin has selected Lois Kim to lead its comprehensive development program aimed at advancing the Center’s strategic initiatives. [Read more…] about Lois Kim Appointed Chief Development Officer for the Harry Ransom Center
by HANNAH NEUHAUSER
In the 1980s, the Harry Ransom Center received a scrapbook from John and Vera Hills along with an extraordinary unpublished account of their survival of the Knickerbocker Theatre roof collapse in Washington, D.C. on January 28, 1922. The scrapbook and testimony are available for research in the Ransom Center’s Reading and Viewing Room. Graduate assistant Hannah Neuhauser offers these insights on the material.
We started out for an hour’s walk that was to last seven months and almost an eternity…
—FROM JOHN HILLS’S TESTIMONY
Vera Kreger Hills did not wish to go out on the evening of January 28, 1922. It was cold, brutally cold, and a whirring blizzard encased Washington D.C in over two feet of snow.
The weather did not deter her husband, Captain John Huntington Hills, however. He thought it “would be fun to take a stroll through the heavy snow.” After a few blocks, they passed by the Knickerbocker Theatre on 18th Street and Columbia Road. That night the theater was featuring a silent comedy, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, that heralded good reviews.
Vera Kreger Hills preferred to finish their walk rather than go to the theatre, but consented to her husband’s idea. They had not been in the theatre for over a year. They bought their tickets for 25 cents and took their familiar seats under the balcony in the second row. Unbeknownst to the couple at the time, their seating arrangement would save their lives.
Exhibition organized by Harry Ransom Center graduate research assistants sheds light on black creators from the collections whose work exemplifies the spirit and history of jazz.
The music of saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, photographs of jazz and swing singer Billie Holiday and saxophonist Dexter Gordon, a jazz-inspired essay by Langston Hughes, and a novel by writer Claude McKay are some of the works spotlighted in a display organized for Black History Month 2023.
[Read more…] about On the Record: Black Creators and the Jazz Age
What Monte Monreal will remember most about his time at the Harry Ransom Center isn’t so much the complexities of the Gutenberg Bible or Anne Sexton’s drafts for “Flee on Your Donkey,” although those items are two of his favorites in the collection. Instead, it’s the people.
“Broadly, any time I was connecting with the volunteers, whether it was long-standing ones or bringing a new class in—when you interact with individuals willing to give themselves so generously, it has a snowball effect where you want to contribute to your community,” he said.
[Read more…] about Ransom Center experience leads to new challenge
Many Hollywood classics are featured in the Ransom Center’s Drawing the Motion Picture: Production Art and Storyboards exhibition. Produced by Robert De Niro Curator of Film Steve Wilson, the exhibition reveals behind-the-scenes stories of some of the biggest films in more than 100 years of cinema history through the artworks and designs that shaped their final form. This is a list of films represented in the exhibition on view through July 16, 2023. [Read more…] about Films represented in the Drawing the Motion Picture exhibition
Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.
Our monthly newsletter highlights news, exhibitions, and programs.
Copyright © 2024 Harry Ransom Center