November 30, 2011, Filed Under: Film, Research + TeachingScreenwriter Paul Schrader’s papers open for research 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… read more
November 29, 2011, Filed Under: Exhibitions + EventsIn the Galleries: Ogden Nash’s padlocked collection of poetry “All of these books are worse than opium… I would rather have a child of mine use opium than read these books,” declared Senator Reed Smoot of Utah in March 1930, speaking from behind a desk towering with “smutty” books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Robert Burns’s poetry. In 1929,… read more
November 22, 2011, Filed Under: Exhibitions + EventsIn the Galleries: Censorship of "The Sex Side of Life" In 1919 Mary Ware Dennett (1872–1947) published The Sex Side of Life, a sex-education pamphlet for young people that she originally wrote for her sons. The U.S. Post Office declared the pamphlet obscene in April 1922, and Dennett struggled on her own to get the ruling reversed, all the while… read more
