Title: William Hawkins Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1939-1968

Creator:

• Hawkins, William

Call Number: U.S. Mss 133AN; Micro 921

Quantity: 0.6 c.f. (2 archives boxes) and 5 reels of microfilm (35mm)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society Archives / Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
Contact Information

Archival Locations:

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

Abstract:

Writings and social correspondence of a New York drama critic and fiction writer. The bulk of this collection consists of clippings of Hawkins' World-Telegram newspaper articles (1946-1956) and notes and drafts of his published and unpublished books and plays, as well as two published works, The Big Red Pocketbook and Tell the Mischief. There are also letters from dozens of theater performers and producers; most are notes which thank Hawkins for a pleasant interview or a good review, and the rest are friendly, often chatty letters which deal with the writer's immediate social and professional activities. A number of business letters as well as clippings about, and photographs of, Hawkins are included in the collection.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-us0133an

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William Waller Hawkins, a New York drama critic and later a writer of fiction, was born in New York City on June 17, 1912. The second son of William Waller Hawkins, Sr., a prominent early twentieth-century journalist and longtime Chairman of the Board of Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Hawkins attended Phillips Exeter Academy and received Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law degrees from Washington and Lee University in 1933 and 1935. During the second half of the 1930s Hawkins served as New York story editor for Samuel Goldwyn and Columbia Pictures, and in 1940 he became the restaurant and nightclub columnist for the New York World-Telegram. World War II interrupted Hawkins' newspaper career however, and from 1942 to 1945 he served on active duty with the U.S. Naval Reserve. Eager to resume writing, Hawkins returned to the World-Telegram as a drama critic in 1946 and for the next ten years reviewed every Manhattan theater premiere and interviewed hundreds of theater personalities. Hawkins also wrote occasional reviews of books, movies, opera, and the like; and for two years he had a weekly theater column in the Rome (Italy) Daily American. But as time passed Hawkins lost interest in his work--he later described the interviews he did as “light and superficial” and complained of boredom--so in 1954 he took a leave of absence from the World-Telegram staff. He nonetheless continued to write for the paper, though on a reduced scale. In 1956 Hawkins resigned his position with the World-Telegram altogether and devoted his time to a literary career. Hawkins' first novel, The Big Red Pocketbook, was published in 1963 and his next work, Tell the Mischief, appeared the following year. Hawkins continued to write during the 1960s, but none of his other works have seen print. In 1970 Hawkins was living at his home in Bedford Hills, New York.

This collection is primarily comprised of correspondence that Hawkins received and clippings of newspaper articles and drafts of books and plays that Hawkins wrote. It documents and preserves Hawkins' work and writings as a drama critic and fiction writer. The collection contains no materials, however, concerning Hawkins' earlier work as New York story editor for Samuel Goldwyn and Columbia Pictures or as restaurant and nightclub columnist for the New York World-Telegram, nor does it include any personal correspondence or private papers. For reasons of preservation the entire collection, with the exception of two hardcover books, has been microfilmed and most of the original documents discarded. The only microfilmed materials that have been retained are the letters that Hawkins received from various theater performers and producers. After microfilming, these were grouped together in one alphabetical file called the Autograph Collection. The photographs of Hawkins and others were transferred to the Wisconsin Historical Society's Visual Materials collection.

In the microfilm of this collection the papers are arranged in six different series: Business Papers and Correspondence, General Correspondence, writings in the categories Newspaper Articles, Magazine Articles, and Books and Plays, and Photographs, Clippings, and Printed Materials relating to Hawkins and to miscellaneous subjects.

The original copies of all of Hawkins' incoming correspondence are preserved in the AUTOGRAPH COLLECTION. Once all of Hawkins' papers had been microfilmed the manuscripts of all incoming notes and letters were gathered together and arranged alphabetically into this one series. Hawkins' correspondence is therefore accessible to the researcher in two different ways--by name of correspondent in the Autograph Collection and by subject or date as Hawkins himself arranged it and as it appears on the microfilm.

Hawkins' correspondence consists of letters and notes from theater performers and producers and a smaller number of business letters that Hawkins sent or received. BUSINESS PAPERS AND CORRESPONDENCE highlight various aspects of Hawkins' newspaper career and contain the only appreciable number of letters within the collection that were written by Hawkins himself. Included are a few letters in which Hawkins complains about the improper editing of some of his articles; correspondence relative to Hawkins' leave of absence from the World-Telegram and about his columns in the Rome Daily American; and a pair of “trial” articles Hawkins wrote in 1940 when applying for a position with the World-Telegram. The remaining letters and papers in this series deal with disparate subjects that are in themselves sometimes even trivial, but which taken together give some idea of the range of activities in which Hawkins was involved and the course that his newspaper career followed.

GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE contains about half of the letters Hawkins received from theater personalities; the rest are filed under Newspaper Articles. All of these letters are purely social, and either thank Hawkins for a good notice or else inform him of his correspondents' activities as well as where they are performing. These communications range from simple and polite “thank-you's” to a series of friendly, often chatty letters which are revealing of the writer's immediate social and professional activities. Rarely, however, are there more than two or three letters from a particular individual. Hawkins' correspondents included nearly all performers prominent in American theater in the 1940s and 1950s. Letters pertaining to specific reviews and interviews are filed with those articles in Newspaper Articles. The few readers' letters that Hawkins kept are also appended to the newspaper clipping to which they refer. Under General Correspondence are filed thank-you letters which pertain to unidentified articles as well as the rest of Hawkins' “social” correspondence.

Clippings of nearly all of Hawkins' writings as a drama critic are arranged by type and subject or date in NEWSPAPER ARTICLES. These clippings are divided into four groups: Reviews (almost all of theater openings); Interviews, which includes topical stories as well as interviews with theater personalities; the General File (thought pieces on various theatrical subjects); and Rome (Italy) Daily American Articles, a weekly series of columns Hawkins wrote in 1955 and 1956. Many of the articles in the first three groups have letters appended to them. Reviews and Interviews are organized alphabetically and the General File and Rome Daily American Articles chronologically. The user should be aware that the number of clippings on a particular subject or topic and their sizes and shapes have on occasion prevented strict adherence to alphabetical and chronological order during the preparation of these clippings for filming. In a few cases clippings are therefore one frame ahead of or behind their proper location. Enclosures, especially two sided ones, are for similar reasons not always adjacent to the clippings to which they refer, but instead usually follow on the next frame. Hawkins kept corrected typewritten drafts as well as interview and performance notes for a number of the articles he wrote. These are filed at the end of each group of articles to which they pertain. A few of these drafts are to columns that were not published or to articles for which clippings were not found. In the case of the Rome Daily American articles only three clippings of these columns were located, but approximately thirty-five carbon copy drafts of these articles, some of them fragmentary, were retained. It is possible that not all of these drafts were actually sent to Italy.

MAGAZINE ARTICLES is comprised of two articles Hawkins wrote in the early 1960s.

The largest group of materials in this collection, BOOKS AND PLAYS, contains notes for and drafts of Hawkins' six major literary efforts as well as hardcover copies of the two works that were eventually published (the latter were not microfilmed). Hawkins' notes generally include notebooks which record outlines and sketches of plot, story, characters, continuity, and chronology; loose papers detailing additional information about characters, plot and story, and needed revisions; research notes; and other persons' critiques of Hawkins' drafts. Hawkins wrote and revised several drafts for most of his novels and plays, but only those drafts that differed significantly from his published works and those that represented the most finished versions of his unpublished works have been microfilmed. All the drafts are typewritten and corrected or revised in pencil. Hawkins' six works are arranged in the order of creation.

About one half of the items in PHOTOGRAPHS, CLIPPINGS AND PRINTED MATERIALS relate to Hawkins; these include photographs of stars posing with Hawkins at various social occasions and newspaper and magazine clippings that mention, talk about, or quote Hawkins. The rest of this series consists of a miscellaneous collection of photographs, printed literature, newspaper clippings, theatrical resumes, and playbills that Hawkins chose to keep, most of which relate to the 1953 opening of the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespearean Festival.

The correspondence files of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research contain additional letters from Hawkins in which he discusses his career as a drama critic and his activities during the sixties and comments on the content and character of his papers.

Acquisition Information

Presented by William Hawkins, Bedford Hills, New York, 1969. Accession Number: MCHC69-55, MCHC69-151

Processing Information

Processed by Peter J. Lysy and Joanne Hohler, May 1982.

U.S. Mss 133AN	Series: Autograph Collection
Box   1 Folder   1-7	A-Z, unidentified
Reel   1 Frame   1-99 Micro 921	Series: Business Papers and Correspondence, 1940, 1945-(1952-1956)-1967	⇧
	Series: General Correspondence	⇧
Reel   1 Frame   100-262	1946-1968
Reel   1 Frame   263-388	Undated
	Series: Newspaper Articles	⇧
Reel   1 Frame   390-439	Daily Schedule of Articles to Appear in World-Telegram, 1949-1955
Reel   1 Frame   441-end	Reviews
	Theater, 1946-1956
	Books, 1949
	Dance and Ballet, 1948-1956, undated
	Ice Shows, 1947-1951
	Mime and Rodeos, 1947, 1955, undated
	Movies, 1945-1953, undated
	Opera, 1946, 1954
	Television, 1948
	Vaudeville, 1949-1953, undated
Reel   2 Frame   1-184	Drafts and Notes
	Interviews
Reel   2 Frame   186-end	1941, 1945-1956, undated
Reel   3 Frame   7-712	Drafts and Notes
	General File
Reel   3 Frame   714-end	1941, 1945-1956
Reel   4 Frame   1-4	Drafts and Notes
	Rome (Italy) Daily American Articles
Reel   4 Frame   6-9	1955
Reel   4 Frame   10-115	Drafts, 1955-1956
	Series: Magazine Articles	⇧
Reel   4 Frame   117-124	“Memo from a Critic,” Equity, May 1960
Reel   4 Frame   125-129	“Marian Anderson Says Farewell,” Musical America, September, 1964
	Series: Books and Plays	⇧
	The Big Red Pocketbook
Reel   4 Frame   132-262	Notes
Reel   4 Frame   263-569	, 1959 Version
Reel   4 Frame   570-576	Instructions to the Printer
U.S. Mss 133AN Box   2 Folder   1	Published Edition, 1963
Micro 921	Tell the Mischief
Reel   4 Frame   578-643	Notes
U.S. Mss 133AN Box   2 Folder   2	Published Edition, 1964
Micro 921	“Happy Ending”
Reel   4 Frame   644-851	Notes
	Last Draft, 1965
Reel   4 Frame   852-976	pp. 1-122
Reel   5 Frame   1-90	pp. 123-207
	“Peachie Pie”
Reel   5 Frame   91-195	Notes
Reel   5 Frame   196-392	Last Version, 1966
	“You Be the Mommy, I'll Be the Poppy,”
Reel   5 Frame   393-407	Notes
Reel   5 Frame   408-636	Draft, 1966
	“Arrow Blood”
Reel   5 Frame   637-645	Notes
Reel   5 Frame   646-828	Draft, 1967
	Series: Photographs, Clippings and Printed Materials	⇧
	Relating to Hawkins
Reel   5 Frame   830-923	1939-1941, 1945-1959, 1965
Reel   5 Frame   924-955	Undated
Reel   5 Frame   956-1060	Relating to the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespearean Festival, 1953-1954
Reel   5 Frame   1061-1104	Miscellany