The John Cecil Holm Papers illustrate his career as a playwright and writer. From Holm's acting career there are mainly newsclippings of reviews. The collection has been arranged in two series: Personal Papers and Writings by John Cecil Holm.
PERSONAL PAPERS include a file of autobiographical sketches and resumes, contracts for Holm to write or adapt plays and television plays, a small amount of general correspondence, drawings, cartoons, and drawing school lessons, and miscellany. There are numerous newsclippings in the collection. A few concern the Pittenger and Brown families of Centralia, Illinois, 1879-1901, who were relatives of Holm's first wife. The remainder illustrate Holm's career as an actor and playwright. The scrapbook contains reviews, letters, photographs, and other memorabilia about Holm and the run of Three Men on a Horse.
WRITINGS BY JOHN CECIL HOLM include examples of his work in many different genres. There are a few articles and stories, in draft and printed form; reviews of his books; materials for a proposed book about David Burns; an outline for a proposed musical comedy book to be entitled “Girl Shy;” and a complete draft of the apparently never-published work “Love In a Barrel.” The collection also contains lyrics for songs, poems, monologues and speeches, short stories, outlines, and story lines, and a script for a pageant presented for the New York Infirmary, together with notes, a history, an article, and a pamphlet about the Infirmary.
The bulk of the series is comprised of Holm's plays, a few of which were written in collaboration with others. Most of the script materials are in draft or typescript form. Holm annotated most of them, indicating a date and place of production and other information about the version of the script or the background behind it. In addition, there are original dialogue materials and playbills from plays in which Holm performed, and scripts and drafts for radio plays, one-act plays, and television plays. Holm's full-length plays for which there are scripts and drafts, playbills, news clippings of reviews, and other materials include: Banjo Eyes, Best Foot Forward (including a draft script and prompt book from the April 1963 revival at Stage 73, New York, in which Liza Minnelli had her first major stage role), “The Boy Who Saw Tomorrow,” Brighten the Corner, “Charley Woodson and the Three Gumberts,” “The Filly from Flatbush,” “Forever Yesterday,” “Four Cents a Word” (later made into the film Blonde Inspiration), “Golden Harvest,” Gramercy Ghost, “Growing Weather,” “Play That Tune,” The Southwest Corner, Sweethearts, and Three Men on a Horse (for which there are numerous early scripts).
