Collections

This collection consists of card photographs of various sizes and formats, as well as unmounted photographic prints, circa 1851-1965. The collection documents a broad range of commercial photography between 1860 and 1910, mainly created by regional operators and traveling photographers. The collection also includes examples by renowned photographers, such as Frank Jay Haynes, William Henry Jackson, Alexander Martin, Isaiah West Taber, and Carleton E. Watkins.

This is a collection of photographs and realia spanning the history of Western Connecticut State University. The collection includes images and objects that document the growth, evolution and public profile of the institution.

The Western Film Collection consists of press kits, pressbooks, posters, photographs, souvenir programs and other materials that were distributed by film producers to movie theater operators to promote their films. The Western films represented in this collection are Western genre films, films set in the trans-Mississippi West, and/or films with Western characters. Press kits typically include advertisements prepared for submission to newspapers and magazines; black-and-white photographs of scenes from the films with credit information; printed booklets called pressbooks containing information about the film, actors, and other personnel; and posters for lobby display. Early press kits were called "campaign kits." While the majority of press kits included in the collection consist of foldered printed material, there are several examples of electronic press kits on compact disc. The Buddy Holly Story pressbook contains a "flexi disc" recording bound in.

The collection consists primarily of lobby cards, posters, and promotional fliers, relating to western films made from 1916 to the 1980s. There are also some pressbooks and photographs in the collection. Represented within the collection are works by notable directors, such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Allan Dwan, Henry King, Billy Wilder, Roman Polanski, William S. Hart, Sergio Leone, André de Toth, Nicholas Ray, Raoul Walsh, Anthony Mann, and Sam Peckinpah. Also represented are works featuring notable western stars, such as William S. Hart, William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Buck Jones, and Harry Carey, among others. Highlights include original posters for Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford, and the original poster for the Italian release of Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More) (1965).

The Western Filmscript Collection consists of over two thousand filmscripts dating from 1918 to 2008, for motion pictures set in the trans-Mississippi West. The collection includes continuity, cutting, dialogue, and shooting scripts in a range of drafts from initial to final, and in some cases revised versions of the same draft. Scripts for produced, as well as unproduced, films are represented. Highlights include: fifteen Tom Mix silent scenarios from 1919 through 1927; four scripts by Zane Grey, including Riders of the Purple Sage (1931); eleven scripts directed by John Ford, including My Darling Clementine (1946), Stagecoach (1938), and Fort Apache (1947); five films featuring Gary Cooper, including The Virginian (1929), High Noon (1952), and Springfield Rifle (1952); eleven featuring Clint Eastwood, including For a Few Dollars More (1966), Dirty Harry (1970), and Pale Rider (1985). Scripts set in the twentieth-century West include American Graffiti (1972), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Heaven's Gate (1979), The Long Goodbye (1972), and Terms of Endearment (1981). In addition to scripts written for theatrical release, there are scripts for episodes of television series including Rawhide, Death Valley Days, Dallas, and others.

The collection consists of printed material relating to political conditions in Western Sahara.

Collection consists of 105 items (86 lobby cards and 19 printed fliers) promoting sixty-eight films, mostly silent westerns, from the 1910's and 1920's. Lobby cards and fliers include both photographic and artistic renderings of scenes and characters from the publicized film.

Collection contains 193 scripts for three popular network television shows: Bat Masterson, Gunsmoke, and Little House on the Prairie. There are 138 Bat Masterson scripts, 17 Gunsmoke scripts, and 38 Little House on the Prairie scripts. Many of the scripts have been heavily annotated; more than a dozen of the Bat Masterson episodes are represented by multiple drafts.