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.
