Imagine turning on your television and finding Lorne Greene and Eddie Albert starring in an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984? Or the usually comedic Walter Matthau portraying a World War II submarine commander? Or a young William Shatner playing an upstart hospital pathologist?

For regular viewers of Studio One, a live dramatic anthology sponsored by Westinghouse that aired on CBS-TV from 1948 to 1958, these were only a few of the familiar faces that turned up each week and that can now be seen on videotape at the Browne Library, Bowling Green State University.

The Browne Library acquired the original films for 36 episodes of Studio One, as well as some 450 outlines, synopses, and scripts relating to television production and broadcasting from 1949 to 1960, from Bowling Green State University alumni Richard C., Robert N., and John D. Garand in 1989. The brothers inherited the collection from a fourth brother, Father Fred Garand, who had acquired it from a former Westinghouse executive.

Studio One was noted for its experimentation with camera techniques and other innovations employed by producer Worthington Miner. Miner took advantage of the visual impact of television by concerning himself more with what the viewer saw than what the viewer heard.

In its decade on the air, Studio One presented nearly 500 plays. In addition to the actors mentioned above, the series featured the work of actors and actresses such as Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Joanne Woodward, Boris Karloff, and Dennis Hopper; authors such as Rod Serling and Gore Vidal; and then-unknown directors such as George Roy Hill and Sidney Lumet.

Studio One is also remembered for Westinghouse commercials starring an actress named Betty Furness, who went on to become one of the most recognized television spokespersons of the era. The commercials, which aired during the show’s time slot, featured Furness demonstrating a Westinghouse appliance and assuring the audience, “You Can Be Sure If It’s Westinghouse.”

In addition to the Studio One films and related materials, the collection also includes materials relating to Summer Theatre, Westinghouse Summer Theatre, and Studio One Summer Theatre, which aired in Studio One’s place during the summers; The Best of Broadway, a series of classic Broadway plays and musical comedies sponsored by Westinghouse which aired every fourth Wednesday during the 1954-55 television season; and the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, a dramatic anthology hosted by Desi Arnaz, which assumed Studio One’s time slot once that program went off the air.

The Studio One collection is fully cataloged and details regarding specific programs are available through the BGSU Libraries Catalog; videotape copies of the original films are available for on-site research use, as are the program scripts. Although the primary mission of the Browne Library is to support teaching and research, it is also open to the general public. People wishing to visit the Browne Library to view the Studio One videotapes or to read materials from the collection are encouraged to contact the Library in advance.

An internationally-known film scholar and writer, Anthony Slide founded the journal Silent Picture and was resident film historian at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences until 1980. He has been a freelance writer since that time, and has edited several major series and written more than thirty books relating to film, radio, television, and the theater. Slide’s recent books include Before Video: A History of the Non-Theatrical Film (1992), The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville (1994), Early American Cinema (1994), On Actors and Acting: Essays (1998), and The Ultimate Directory of Film Technicians (1999). A detailed inventory of the Anthony Slide Collection is available, and the collection is open for research in the Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University.

The collection includes research materials, notes, and correspondence relating to Slide’s books, essays, reviews, and lectures, as well as original motion picture production materials, such as cast lists, synopses, scripts, and shooting schedules. Printed materials in the collection include press releases and promotional materials from the film industry, theatrical programs and playbills, and numerous periodicals.

Researchers interested in using the Anthony Slide Collection’s rich resources are encouraged to contact the Popular Culture Library in advance.

Have you ever wondered what goes into the creation of newspaper comic strips? How a writer creates characters and storylines? How a comic strip develops over time? How a writer and a cartoonist collaborate on a comic strip?

Researchers have the chance to look behind the scenes of the world of comic strips at Bowling Green State University. The Browne Library has a major collection of original art work, proofsheets, and research files donated by the family of Allen Saunders, the comic strip writer best known for his contributions to the Mary Worth and Steve Roper comic strips. The Saunders Collection also includes notes for story ideas, reader mail, scrapbooks, correspondence, and articles about the strips.

Allen Saunders, who died in 1986, learned to draw by taking a correspondence course and by attending classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He graduated from Wabash College in 1920 and taught French there for seven years. At the same time he freelanced as both a cartoonist for humor publications and as a detective story writer for pulp magazines.

Saunders joined the Toledo News-Bee as a reporter-cartoonist in 1927. Nine years later, he produced a comic strip for the Publishers Syndicate about a hard-blowing medicine man, The Great Gusto. That strip eventually became Big Chief Wahoo, and then Steve Roper. At about the same time, he created a short-lived humor panel, Miserable Moments, which he both wrote and drew.

Then in 1940, the syndicate asked Allen Saunders to take over Apple Mary, which Martha Orr had created in 1932. Saunders worked with cartoonist Dale Connor on the strip, which was retitled Mary Worth’s Family, and was signed “Dale Allen.” In 1942, Ken Ernst took over the drawing while Saunders continued the scripting, and the strip’s name was further shortened to Mary Worth.

The title character began as a middle-aged woman who had been reduced to selling apples on the street corners during the Depression. When Saunders took over the strip, Mary was given a new surname, as well as a less shabby, more dignified persona. Today, the strip is populated with artists, actresses, promising executives and other glamorous types to whom Mary dispenses motherly advice with dead-pan impartiality.

Although Saunders is best known for his work on Mary Worth and Steve Roper, he contributed to other comic strips as well, including Kerry Drake, for which he ghosted scripts. According to The World Encyclopedia of Comics, Saunders was considered to be one of the most dramatically gifted comic strip writers, consistently producing sophisticated scripts with literate dialogue.

Saunders turned the writing chores for Steve Roper and for Mary Worth over to his son, John, during the mid-1950s and the late-1970s, respectively. The elder Saunders retired in the Toledo area in 1978. John
Saunders, a former Toledo television newscaster, continues to script the strips today. Both strips are currently syndicated by the North America Syndicate, with Mary Worth appearing in about 300 newspapers, and Steve Roper appearing in about 90 newspapers.

Although the primary mission of the Browne Library is to support teaching and research, it is also open to the general public. Researchers wishing to visit the Browne Library and use the Allen and John Saunders Collection are encouraged to contact the Library in advance.

Are you searching for a copy of Outlaws of Amerika, a collection of communiques from the Weather Underground? Or how about Acid Temple Ball by Mary Sativa? Or A Vietnamese View of Human Nature, a 36-page booklet authored by Tom Hayden?

These are only three of more than 3,000 books dealing with the counterculture of the United States in the 1950s to 1970s which are housed in the Browne Library at Bowling Green State University.

The Browne Library acquired the collection from the estate of William F. Ringle in 1988. The collection covers such topics as radical social history and politics, ethnopharmacology and the drug culture, mysticism and spiritual life, communal living, and the underground press.

In addition to the books, it includes 1,000 serials; subject files, research and fieldwork notes, unpublished bibliographies, papers, and reports; and other research materials, including rare small press monographs, broadsides, flyers, and pamphlets.

The Ringle Collection has significantly enhanced the Browne Library’s holdings of research materials relating to the social and cultural history of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. This is especially true for the 1960s, an increasingly important topic for teaching and scholarly research. Of particular interest are the notes, bibliographies, papers, published items, and ephemeral materials compiled by Ringle for his research projects, which provide insight into the emergence of youth subcultures and protest movements in the 1960s, and their history and development throughout the next decade. The special strength of this collection is Ringle’s research material on the hippie and psychedelic drug subcultures of the era.

William F. Ringle (1933-1984) was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. During the 1950s, he studied geological engineering at the University of Oklahoma, and worked for various mining companies throughout the southwest. Ringle received a B.S. in anthropology in 1963 from Arizona State University and did graduate
work there and at the University of Illinois, where he taught from 1964-68. Ringle spent seven years teaching anthropology at Iowa State University. Ringle left Iowa in 1975 and began working for the Chicago Northwestern Railway as a brakeman and conductor, and also worked as a private contractor. He established the Bluff Creek Theoretical Institute, what he hoped would become a subsistence commune of working scholars and artists, in Boone, Iowa, where he lived until his death.

The Browne Library staff has compiled an itemized inventory of the serials in the Ringle Collections, and has completed a detailed register of the manuscript materials. The books and other monographs are fully cataloged and are accessible through the BGSU Libraries Catalog. We also have a research guide for this collection on our web site.

Although the primary mission of the Browne Library is to support teaching and research, it is also open to the general public. None of the materials at the Browne Library circulate, but photocopies may be available through interlibrary loan. People wishing to visit the Browne Library and use the Ringle Collection are encouraged to contact the Library in advance.

The Browne Popular Culture Library is honored to have received a substantial gift of more than 10,000 volumes from the personal mystery collection of Arthur and Phyllis Rieser. This collection includes first editions, early printings and trade editions of mystery and suspense novels, including true crime and fictional crime from about 1880 to the present. The collection also contains many of their personal favorites, including such authors as Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, John Dickinson Carr, Rex Stout, Robert Crais, and Ed McBain.

After residing in Manhattan for most of their lives, the Riesers recently retired and moved to Florida. Arthur attended MIT and Columbia Business School and has spent his entire career in the securities industry. Phyllis started as an art major, but later switched her field to psychology. She received her doctorate at Fordham University and had a private practice in New York until her retirement.

This collection, reflecting the Riesers’ lifelong interest in the mystery genre, is a significant addition to the Library’s extensive collection of mystery and suspense fiction.

Additional Information

“It’s no mystery – Phyllis and Arthur Rieser are true ‘friends of the library‘”, BGSU Monitor, November 20, 2006

Vast collection of mysteries given to college 11,000 titles off to Bowling Green, The News-Press, February 3, 2007