Although the Merrill Mueller Papers document almost the full extent of his long and distinguished career in broadcast journalism, the overall coverage of the papers is quite fragmentary with the bulk of the collection concerning his World War II reporting for INS, NBC, and Newsweek. The material pertaining to the World War II period was received in a highly deteriorated condition. In order to preserve their intellectual content, in 1987 these files were microfilmed and the originals destroyed.
The collection consists of promotional and biographical material, correspondence, and broadcast scripts, news stories, articles, speeches, book drafts, and other writings and miscellany. In addition, the collection includes a few recordings of news stories and some miscellaneous photographs.
BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL AND PUBLICITY contains general background information on Mueller, including career summaries, resumes, clippings, photographs, and promotional material about him and some of the programs with which he was associated. Photographs and ephemera include portraits of Mueller, images of him working in broadcasting, and press identification cards.
CORRESPONDENCE is comprised primarily of information on professional and business operations, especially at INS and NBC. There is little of a personal nature, although there are a few World War II letters written to his family. Overall, the coverage of the correspondence is quite fragmentary and rather disappointing, especially because his unpublished book on World War II hints at the existence of long, detailed letters (and actually quotes a few items) written to his family about his experiences for a projected history of the war. The World War II diaries are similarly missing from the collection.
The correspondence is divided by type (letters sent, letters received, letters about Mueller, inter-office memos, and telegrams) and then filed chronologically. Prominent correspondents within the letters received section include Mark Clark, Dwight Eisenhower, Julian Goodman, Ray Henle, Elmer Lower, and William R. McAndrew. One letter from Eisenhower in 1947 contains some interesting comments on politics, a career which Mueller was apparently considering. Later letters concern Eisenhower's own political ambitions. There is also some brief correspondence on Mueller's award-winning coverage of the takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948.
Largely absent from the letters received section are responses from listeners or viewers. The primary exception to this is a small group of letters, mostly negative, written in response to a Mueller broadcast on News of the World (1960) dealing with the South's reluctant steps toward desegregation. Letters about Mueller include items mentioning, but not directly addressed to Mueller. These include letters on personnel matters and complimentary letters from NBC executives about Mueller. There is also a letter from General Eisenhower to Mueller's mother about her son's wartime activities. Inter-office memos primarily deal with INS and NBC operations. Included are reviews of meetings and conferences and program suggestions from Mueller. Of note here is an inquiry from Eisenhower concerning employment of Mueller in a public relations capacity. The file of telegrams contains cables relating to general reportorial duties, including two from Eisenhower and one from Winston Churchill.
WRITINGS in the collection include broadcast scripts and news stories, speeches, book drafts, and other miscellaneous items. Broadcast scripts and news stories, many of them extensively annotated, constitute perhaps the most important section of the collection. A few of the files contain supplementary background material. The bulk of the scripts and news stories cover reporting during World War II, with only a relatively small portion relating to his post-war work. Some of these later news scripts, however, as well as supplementary correspondence and memoranda, may be found in the records of the National Broadcasting Company and in the papers of Ray Henle and John MacVane and other NBC journalists held by the Historical Society.
Well represented in the scripts and news stories for the World War II period are cabled stories from the Allied African Headquarters for Newsweek (1942-1943) and radio scripts written for NBC and as the World Press Pool representative at Eisenhower's headquarters (1944-1945). Other broadcasts concern the Palestine crisis (1947), the Korean War (1951), Vatican City (1958, 1963), the NASA space program (1961-circa 1974), and the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller (1963-1964) and George McGovern (1972).
The section of speeches is comprised of lectures on various topics, including post-war Japanese recovery, Anglo-American relations, and Mueller's perceptions of the threat of Communism.
Book drafts include an annotated carbon (circa 1975) of his FEA history, The Continuing Crisis; a proposal for “Full Cycle,” a book that was to deal with contemporary politics and history from the 1930s through the 1970s; and several drafts of “The Great Crusade,” his unpublished, autobiographical account of Eisenhower's career from D-Day to V-E Day.
Other writings in the papers include a seven-part newspaper series on the progress of the war (1941), an award-winning newspaper piece on the invasion of Czechoslovakia (1948), his booklet Escape from Belgium (1940), and a file of INS articles of uncertain authorship but presumably by Mueller. Recordings of several broadcasts also are present.
MISCELLANY contains two of his reporters' notebooks, one covering August to November 1943 (which includes the Patton slapping incident) and the second outlining the period from Roosevelt's New Deal to the early 1960s possibly for his “Full Cycle” volume. Also included are excerpts from Melville Shavelson's screenplay for the television miniseries Ike: The War Years (1977), annotated by Mueller.
