“Double Indemnity” is one of Hollywood’s classic films, the standard-bearer for noir cinema and a career highlight for stars Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. The Library has a fascinating exchange of letters between the “Double” stars and novelist James M. Cain, whose book was the basis for the film. The letters give us a glimpse into Hollywood history, how scandalous the movie was at the time and at the manners of a bygone era. It’s almost impossible to imagine this exchange taking place today.
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.
"The Battle of the Century," a Laurel and Hardy silent film thought to be lost forever, was found a few years ago and today was entered into the Library's National Film Registry.
Cary O'Dell at the Library's National Recording Registry is the maestro of our ever-popular Mystery Photo Contest. He's back with another round, featuring some of Hollywood's not-so-famous faces.
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.
