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Author: Helene van Rossum

  • A Midsummer Night’s Screame, 1960

    Top row, second from the left to second from right: Rose “Mother” Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, William Shakespeare, and Anne Hathaway. Front row center: Queen Elizabeth flanked by two Spanish spies (for a cast list see Midsummer Night’s Screame cast.pdf). In Triangle’s pseudo Shakespearean musical, A Midsummer Night’s Screame (1960-1961) Queen Elizabeth I (Geoffrey Smith…

  • President Johnson addresses Vietnam in Princeton, 1966

    President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Princeton University on May 11, 1966 to dedicate the new Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs building and receive an honorary degree. The new building had been made possible by a $35 million gift that was anonymous at the time, but later revealed to be from Charles S.…

  • “Princeton University: Conversations that matter,” 1991

    After the 1960 and 1961 “Princeton newsreels” featured last week, which marked a new stage in Princeton’s public relations efforts, it is interesting to make a 30-year leap to view a film that was produced for the Admissions Office by Andrew Greenspan: “Princeton University: Conversations that Matter” (1991). Focusing on the academic climate and intellectual…

  • Keeping the donor base informed: Princeton newsreels, 1960-1961

    During the $53 Million Campaign (1959-1962) a 13 x 10 foot scale model of the Princeton campus  toured 19 major cities and displayed at meetings of the regional leaders of the fund drive. To keep Princeton alumni further informed about progress and developments on campus, the Alumni Council sponsored two “Princeton Newsreels” in 1960 and…

  • Black alumni looking back, 1996

    Harvard offered its first degree to an African American student in 1870, with Yale following in 1874. At Princeton, however, the first two black students graduated only in 1947 and 1948, after arriving on campus as members of the Navy’s wartime V-12 program. Historically the “Ivy League school for Southern gentlemen,” Princeton was a little…

  • Card carrying members of the ACLU, 1988

    One of the largest and most frequently used Public Policy collections at Mudd Manuscript Library is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) records.  (For a description of the ACLU and its documents, see our previous library blog entry). The ACLU’s Audiovisual Materials Series, however, has been little used, but a few films that were recently…

  • Kicking off the $53 Million Campaign, October 1, 1959

    On October 1, 1959, Trustees and Alumni gathered in Princeton for a significant event. “This cause we serve is a cause of great importance to all Americans and throughout the Free World,” James F. Oates ’21 boomed, before handing over the microphone to Judge Harold R. Medina ’09 and President Bob Goheen ’40. The cause…

  • Combustible Dulles, ca. 1934

    Not many collections in the Public Policy Papers at Mudd Manuscript Library contain audiovisual materials. John Van Antwerp MacMurray’s films of China, which were featured over the past nine weeks, and the American Civil Liberties Union records are an exception. So we were very excited when a preservation survey led to the discovery of an…

  • Rowing in fashion: the 150lb crew team, 1948-1950

    During the Class of 1950’s 60th reunion weekend, Ed Lawrence ’50 donated a DVD to the University Archives that he had made for his former rowing crew teammates from old 8mm movie footage. He gave us permission to put it on Princeton’s YouTube channel, although he doubted that anybody other than his friends would be…

  • Escape to the Diamond Mountains in Korea, 1928

    (This is our ninth and final post about the films of diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray. See the first post for more background.) This is the last post featuring the films that diplomat John Van Antwerp MacMurray made while serving as Minister to China from 1925-1929. The film “The Diamond Mountains, 1928,” which captures a…