Going far beyond rare books, 'the Lilly' houses celluloid treasures

By Susan Williams

The Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington was dedicated in 1960, shortly after Josiah K. Lilly Jr.'s donation of his own massive collection of rare books. Since that time, the Lilly's collections have grown to nearly unmatched quality and variety.

Original news release (photo above) from the Columbia Broadcasting System dated 10 days prior to the broadcast (Oct. 20, 1938) describes the radio show to be produced by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air. The original audio reel was confiscated, but the Lilly Library has a copy (below left) as well as a hardcover copy of H. G. Wells' book, The War of the Worlds(below right).

The Princeton connection
By Jayne Spencer
Aside from the American place names used in the 1938 WOW broadcast, listeners were also jarred by the fictional names of characters, most of which sounded like the slightly garbled versions of live persons.
One of the spot newscasters was a "Professor Richard Pierson of Princeton," a name that sounded far too similar to that of Newton L. Pierce, a real-life assistant in astronomy. Two Princeton geology professors who raced to a spot outside town to investigate a meteor following the broadcast may sound fictional, but they were authentic. (See main story this issue)
One thing for sure: The definitive study of the radio broadcast, a study in the psychology of panic, was written by Princeton sociology professor Hadley Cantril in 1940. An original copy of The Invasion from Mars, is housed at IU's Lilly Library in Bloomington.

Today's holdings go far beyond rare books and include film scripts, archives of television producers, collections of rare cookbooks, one-of-a kind manuscripts, toys and editions of works for children, political artifacts and papers. The list goes on and on.

During the tenure of Bill Cagle, director of the Lilly and Lilly librarian from 1975 to 1997, the collections ventured into film, television and radio. In 1977, Cagle and the Lilly acquired the archives of Orson Welles, documenting his career from its beginnings in the mid-1930s until he left to reside and work in Europe in the 1950s. Among the treasures in that archive were the scripts and production files for Welles' great films, Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.

Acquired from the Welles estate at the time of his death, the collection added screenplays, drafts and production records for his classic films. Materials on unproduced films, including Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, were part of the purchase as were materials on the Mercury Theatre of the Air and the Federal Theatre Project.

The Lilly collections include the papers of John Ford, of Italian film director Federico Fellini, of Peter Bogdanovich, and T.E.B. (Tibby) Clarke, author of the Oscar-nominated adaption of Sons and Lovers.

In 1984, the Lilly received a major gift of film-related materials from a private collector. Included in the more than 2,000 motion picture scripts are those from The African Queen, Casablanca, King Kong, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Stagecoach, A Streetcar Named Desire and A Star is Born.

Among the Lilly's television materials are the entire run of annotated production scripts for Laugh-In and selected scripts for Mission: Impossible, The Addams Family, All in the Family, Gunsmoke, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Perry Mason.

One of the more recent collections added brings us back to the genre of Welles and his Martian invasion. Jeri Taylor, executive producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, gave the Lilly a complete set of scripts for the first six seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and for the first two seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, as well as production notes.


Original news release (photo above) from the Columbia Broadcasting System dated 10 days prior to the broadcast (Oct. 20, 1938) describes the radio show to be produced by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air. The original audio reel was confiscated, but the Lilly Library has a copy (below left) as well as a hardcover copy of H. G. Wells' book, The War of the Worlds(below right).

The Princeton connection By Jayne Spencer Aside from the American place names used in the 1938 WOW broadcast, listeners were also jarred by the fictional names of characters, most of which sounded like the slightly garbled versions of live persons. One of the spot newscasters was a "Professor Richard Pierson of Princeton," a name that sounded far too similar to that of Newton L. Pierce, a real-life assistant in astronomy. Two Princeton geology professors who raced to a spot outside town to investigate a meteor following the broadcast may sound fictional, but they were authentic. (See main story this issue) One thing for sure: The definitive study of the radio broadcast, a study in the psychology of panic, was written by Princeton sociology professor Hadley Cantril in 1940. An original copy of The Invasion from Mars, is housed at IU's Lilly Library in Bloomington.