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Overview

Researchers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research may study more than a century of cinema, radio, television, and theater through moving images, visual materials, and manuscripts. Collections donated by some of Hollywood's most renowned directors, producers, screenwriters, and actors, often augmented by viewing copies of their most significant works, provide complementary documentation for both the art and business of Hollywood's Golden Age, as well as more modern independent and experimental filmmaking. The Center's television collections are especially rich for the pre-videotape era when programs were either broadcast live and copied onto kinescope or produced and broadcast using film. The history of the Broadway stage and important regional theaters can be traced through the manuscripts, photographs, and other visual materials.

A full listing of our collections is offered here to provide an overview of our holdings and allow for browsing and sorting within the supplied Collections Categories. For searching within the collections, please refer to the Archive Search page for links to the UW Madison Libraries Catalog and the UW Digital Collections Finding Aid Database. For reference or collections assistance, please contact us directly at askmovies@wisconsinhistory.org.

Hold control or command and left click to select multiple categories.
Authorsort descending Title Size Summary Category Catalog Link
Cartoons, 1931-1957 597 films 300 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons from 1926 to 1949 film collection Link
Columbia Pictures 74 films 1928-1992. 74 titles in mostly 16mm format, but also 35mm and video film collection, studio era
David Shepard Collection 185 16mm film prints A collection of 16mm shorts and features collected by film preservationist David Shepard. film collection
Film Title File Photo Collection contain stills, clippings, lobby cards, pressbooks, posters, and other promotional graphics from over 40,000 domestic and foreign motion picture titles dating from the 1890s to the present. All major U.S. studios are represented, with particularly comprehensive coverage of publicity for the films released by United Artists, MGM, Warner Brothers, Universal and Monogram studios from the 1920s to the 1950s. photo collection
General script collection, 1906-1999. 4.0 c.f. (10 archives boxes); plus additions of 7.5 c.f. scripts, manuscript collection Link
Home Movie Collections Various collections of home movies, ranging from films shot locally in Wisconsin to the movies of famous names from film and television. film collection
Madison Public Library Collection 176 film prints Titles from the former circulating film collection of the Madison Public Library. Includes educational films and some classic and foreign features. film
MGM Films, 1927-1983 81 films 1927-1983; 81 titles in mostly 16mm format, but also 35mm and video film collection, studio era
Monogram Films, 1931-1946 377 film reels Feature films produced by Monogram Pictures Corporation film collection, studio era Link
Name File Photo Collection The Personal Name collections are made up of publicity and personal photographs,clipping files, and other personal ephemera related to more than 14,000 individual motion picture, television, and theater performers, as well as a limited number of producers, directors, writers, and studio executives. photo collection
New Yorker Films Collection 68 16mm film prints A collection of features distributed by New Yorker Films. film collection
Paramount Pictures Films, 1927-1974 60 films 1927-1974; 60 titles in mostly 16mm format, but also 35mm and video film collection, studio era
Poster Collection Movie poster advertisements from all genres and eras of filmmaking. poster collection
RKO Films, 1929-1955 1627 film reels Feature films produced by RKO film collection, studio era Link
Rzhevsky Collection of Soviet Films, 1925-1982. 270 films The bulk of the collection is made up of feature-length narrative films from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and also contains about 100 non-fiction titles, ranging from newsreels and travelogues to full-length documentaries. film collection
Shutkin playbill collection. 4.0 c.f. Collection of playbills, 1890-1980's, mostly from New York productions but including a few from Chicago and Milwaukee. There is also one playbill from England dating about 1898. theater, manuscript collection Link
TECO Collection of Taiwanese Films, 1971-1995 260 film reels 121 Taiwanese feature films on 16mm from 1971-1995 in Mandarin, all with English & Cantonese subtitles film collection Link
Theater Title File Collection The Theater Title collections are home to a wealth of pictorial documentation (includingpublicity photographs, playbills, posters and clippings) of the American stage from the 1860s to the present. More than 2,888 plays are represented in productions of all scales, from the local repertory stage to Broadway. photo collection
Trailers Movie trailers from various collections within the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research's holdings. See archivist for a list of titles, which is forthcoming as an electronic finding aid film collection Link
TV Title File Collection stills and other ephemera for more than 1,700 American television productions. The bulk of the collection documents programming from the pre-videotape era, which spanned the first two decades of television production from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. photo collection

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