The papers document Nicholson's career as a successful writer for several different media. They have been arranged in eight series: Subject File, Motion Pictures-Produced, Motion Pictures-Unproduced, Radio, Short Stories and Novels, Television, Theatre-Produced, Theatre-Unproduced.
The SUBJECT FILE is composed of correspondence, financial records, legal records, playbills, reviews and clippings, and scrapbooks. The correspondence contains critiques and comments on Nicholson's writings and miscellaneous fan mail and congratulatory notes. Mention is made of the emergence of the “talkies” and some letters discuss Nicholson's going to Hollywood to write screenplays for Pathé, Universal and MGM studios. The correspondence also reveals efforts to revise the script of “Spanish Omelet,” comments on production problems encountered in Out West of Eighth, and details ways to increase the radio audience of The Cavalcade of America. Among the correspondents are Bernard M. Baruch, S. N. Behrman, David Belasco, Thomas E. Dewey, Walter Huston, H. L. Mencken, Samuel Merwin, George Jean Nathan, Meredith Nicholson, Billy Rose, Dore Schary, and Helen Zenn Smith. A partial index of the correspondents follows the Container List as Appendix 1.
The financial records include box office and royalty statements, and the legal records consist of agreements and copyright registrations. Both relate to several of Nicholson's plays and are arranged alphabetically by production title. The scrapbooks contain clippings, reviews, advertisements, playbills, and occasional correspondence for the productions Babes in the Woods, The Barker, Before You're Twenty-Five, Dance Night, Eva the Fifth, Fly-by-Night, Here's to Your Health, Love Is Like That, Meet the Missus, Sailor, Beware!, Stepdaughters of War, Swing Your Lady, Torch Night, Town Hall Tonight, and Two Weeks Off. Given their fragile condition, the scrapbooks have been microfilmed and the originals destroyed.
The remainder of the series contain synopses, treatments, scenarios, and scripts that relate to the various media for which Nicholson wrote: Motion Pictures, Radio, Short Stories and Novels, Television, and Theatre. The Motion Picture and Theatre series, the two largest files, have been further divided into produced and unproduced works. Arrangement is alphabetical by production title and chronological thereunder. A complete listing of titles can be found in the Container List. Unless noted otherwise, Nicholson is assumed to be the author.
Included in MOTION PICTURES - PRODUCED are scripts for Laughing Sinners, Skyline, and Taxi. Of interest is a treatment for Union Depot, which was heavily annotated by Darryl Zanuck. RADIO contains scripts for several episodes of The Cavalcade of America and The Theatre Guild on the Air. Also included is a study of audience reaction to the former program. A typescript of Fame's Little Day, an untitled fragment of a novel, and several short stories comprise SHORT STORIES AND NOVELS. TELEVISION, the smallest series in the collection, consists of a script for a skit titled “Delegates-at-Large” and a script for “Apple of His Eye,” a Schlitz Playhouse of Stars production. THEATRE-PRODUCED contains scripts for plays such as The Flying Gerardos, Out West of Eighth, and Swing Your Lady!. Also included are scripts for works Nicholson co-authored with S. N. Behrman. Among these are Before You're Twenty-Five and Love Is Like That, and a script for a vaudeville blackout A Lucky Strike. Files of unproduced works are located in the MOTION PICTURES-UNPRODUCED and THEATRE-UNPRODUCED series.
