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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is pleased to announce a donation to the Margaret Herrick Library and the Academy Film Archive from George Stevens, Jr., the award-winning filmmaker and founder of the American Film Institute.\u00a0 The acquisition of papers and films documenting his creative career and public service extends the coverage of the Stevens Family collection, which now spans five generations and is one of the most comprehensive family collections in the Academy\u2019s holdings.<\/p>\n
The Margaret Herrick Library\u2019s latest acquisition from Stevens Jr., who received an Honorary Award (an Oscar\u00ae statuette) from the Academy in 2012 in recognition of his exceptional contribution to the motion picture arts, includes papers, photographs, letters and scripts from his early career as an assistant to his father on \u201cShane\u201d and \u201cGiant\u201d; his service as head of motion pictures at the United States Information Agency (USIA) during the Kennedy years; his role as founding director of the American Film Institute (1967-1980); as creator and co-producer of the Kennedy Center Honors (1978-2014); and as a writer, producer, director and playwright.\u00a0 Among his motion pictures received by the Academy Film Archive are the documentary \u201cJohn F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums\u201d (1964) and \u201cGeorge Stevens: A Filmmaker\u2019s Journey\u201d (1984), his film on the life and career of his two-time Oscar-winning father.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe donation of the George Stevens collection in 1980 was an important catalyst for the Academy\u2019s Margaret Herrick Library evolving into the internationally recognized motion picture research resource it has become,\u201d said Randy Haberkamp, the Academy\u2019s Managing Director of Preservation and Foundation Programs. \u00a0\u201cWe are grateful to George Stevens, Jr. for his continued support over these many years and honored to preserve the legacy of such a multi-faceted family of film artists.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Margaret Herrick Library and the Academy Film Archive stand at the forefront of expertly curated and accessible motion picture history,\u201d said Stevens, Jr.\u00a0 \u201cAs an Academy member since 1959 and the son of a past Academy president, I am thankful that the history of the Stevens family will reside at this great institution.\u201d<\/p>\n
This gift joins Stevens Jr.\u2019s earlier donations beginning with his gift of the George Stevens collection to the Margaret Herrick Library in 1980.\u00a0 This collection provides a comprehensive record of his father\u2019s long and distinguished career, beginning as a cameraman on Laurel and Hardy shorts and continuing with his direction of such classic films as \u201cSwing Time,\u201d \u201cGunga Din,\u201d \u201cWoman of the Year,\u201d \u201cA Place in the Sun,\u201d \u201cShane\u201d and \u201cGiant.\u201d\u00a0 The library\u2019s collection contains scripts, production files, correspondence, scrapbooks and photographs, including extensive documentation of the elder Stevens\u2019s activities as head of a combat photography unit of the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II.\u00a0 The Academy Film Archive\u2019s Stevens collection currently contains about 600 items, including unique behind-the-scenes home movies.<\/p>\n
George Stevens, Jr. is also donating papers, films, photographs, playscripts and scrapbooks from the other four generations of his family.\u00a0 The Academy will receive the papers and films of his late son Michael Stevens, an award-winning writer-producer-director of feature films and television, as a gift from Michael\u2019s wife, Alexandra Stevens.<\/p>\n
The earlier generations represented by material in the Stevens Family collection include Stevens Jr.\u2019s great-grandmother, Georgia Woodthorpe, who earned fame on the San Francisco stage in the late 1800s.\u00a0 One of her distinctions was playing Ophelia to the great tragedian Edwin Booth\u2019s Hamlet.<\/p>\n
Stevens Jr.\u2019s paternal grandparents, Landers Stevens and Georgia Cooper Stevens (known professionally as Georgie Cooper) were matinee idols in San Francisco in the early 1900s.\u00a0 Landers was an actor-manager who played more than 500 roles, many opposite his wife Georgie, and they each appeared in more than 50 films.\u00a0 Also represented in the collection is Landers\u2019s brother Ashton Stevens, who wrote for the Hearst newspapers for 50 years, earning him a reputation as the dean of American drama critics.\u00a0 He was a mentor to Orson Welles in Chicago, and Welles used him as a model for the character Jed Leland (played by Joseph Cotten) in \u201cCitizen Kane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stevens Jr.\u2019s maternal grandmother, Alice Howell, went from vaudeville in New York to work with Mack Sennett in 1913, appearing in some of Charlie Chaplin\u2019s earliest films.\u00a0 She went on to appear in more than 100 silent films and is the subject of the recent book \u201cShe Could Be Chaplin! The Comedic Brilliance of Alice Howell\u201d by Anthony Slide.\u00a0 Her daughter Yvonne appeared in film comedies as Yvonne Howell in the 1920s, retiring when she married George Stevens.<\/p>\n
Stevens, Jr. has spent a lifetime celebrating and preserving the heritage of motion pictures.\u00a0 After several years at the United States Information Agency, where he championed the work of young documentary filmmakers and was Oscar-nominated for producing the documentary short subject \u201cThe Five Cities of June,\u201d Stevens Jr. went on to become the founding director of the American Film Institute in 1967.\u00a0 Under his leadership, the AFI created the AFI Film Collection that now numbers 35,000 motion pictures at the Library of Congress; established the Center for Advanced Film Studies; created the AFI Life Achievement Award; and embarked on a host of educational initiatives.\u00a0 In 1977, Stevens Jr. co-founded the Kennedy Center Honors, which he produced until 2014.\u00a0 His distinguished career in television has earned him 17 Emmys, a Humanitas Award and two Peabody Awards. \u00a0He was executive producer of \u201cThe Thin Red Line,\u201d which received seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture.\u00a0 He served eight years under President Obama as chairman of the President\u2019s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.<\/p>\n
In celebration of Stevens Jr.\u2019s donation, the Academy will screen the 1935 Oscar-nominated classic \u201cAlice Adams<\/a>,\u201d directed by George Stevens and starring Katharine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray, on Monday, June 4, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.\u00a0 The 19th in the George Stevens Lecture series, the evening will feature an introduction by writer-director Robin Swicord and an exhibition of items from the Stevens Family collection.<\/p>\n To see highlights from Stevens Family collection, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Stevens Family collection has been preserved and cataloged, and may be accessed by filmmakers, historians, journalists, students and the public at the Margaret Herrick Library, located in the Academy\u2019s Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in Beverly Hills, as well as the Academy Film Archive, located in the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood.\u00a0 For more information about the Academy\u2019s holdings, visit oscars.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is pleased to announce a donation to the Margaret Herrick Library and the Academy Film Archive from George Stevens, Jr., the award-winning filmmaker and founder of the American Film Institute.\u00a0 The acquisition of papers and films documenting his creative career and public service extends the coverage of… Continue reading The Academy Announces Major Collections Gift From George Stevens, Jr.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-6723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academy","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}