Lin-Manuel Miranda and his production team researched Jonathan Larson's papers at the Library for the new musical, "tick...tick...Boom!" Here's how they did it.
Poet Maya Angelou’s debut memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” is her most famous work. The coming-of-age story has influenced writers and touched millions of people. Yet its title is not original to Angelou: She borrowed it from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar that he composed, at least in part, in response …
Filmmaker Rocky Lang talks about how he recently teamed up with film historian Barbara Hall to publish “Letters from Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking,” drawn on correspondence from several collections, including from the Library of Congress.
Giuliana Muscio teaches film studies at the University of Padova in Italy. She's using the Library to research her next book about Robert G. Vignola, an Italian immigrant who directed and acted in silent movies.
For the past three decades or so, Thomas Doherty has taught and written about films, television and Hollywood — a lot. An American studies professor at Brandeis University with a special interest in classical Hollywood, he has written seven books touching on topics including teen movies, censorship, Hitler and McCarthyism. His latest book, “Show Trial: …
This post is republished from the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The entire issue is available online. In his classic novel “Native Son,” Richard Wright tells the story of a poverty-stricken young black man who takes a job as a chauffeur to a white family in Chicago, accidentally kills the daughter …
At any other theater, they would be the world’s most annoying moviegoers — the last people with whom you’d want to spend a few hours in a confined space. They talk endlessly among themselves as the film plays. They shout to acquaintances across the theater. They talk back to the screen. They forever check their …
This is a guest post by Mike Mashon, head of the Moving Image Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. He writes about the first of many films based on Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein,” published 200 years ago this year. The post is republished from the division’s blog, “Now See Hear!” Rarely …