During the course of its 43 year run, “Stampede” became the largest weekly syndicated cartoon feature in the agriculture sector of both the United States and Canada, reaching a weekly audience of more than 2 million readers. You can explore a selection of some of Jerry Palen’s best comics.
“Which One is Dotty?” Jerry Palen papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
This exhibit offers a variety of images taken by professional and snapshot photographers during the Vietnam War provide an interesting visual portrait of America’s involvement in Vietnam. This exhibit includes images from renowned war correspondent Richard Tregaskis as well as from the personal collection of war veteran Craig Tiernan.
Soldiers on Ground Patrol, 1962-1963. Photograph by Richard Tregaskis. American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Richard Tregaskis papers.
The story of the pronghorn in Wyoming is a story of abundance. This exhibit shows some of the many ways that people and the pronghorn have interacted and highlights the important role the pronghorn maintains in this state as well as around the world.
The University of Wyoming was opened in Laramie, WY in 1886. A university built on a land grant, it has come a long way from its debut to present day. While many of the original buildings still stand, the infrastructure of the University continues to grow.
The holidays starting with Halloween through the Chinese New Year in January have traditionally been a time of celebrations, parties, and gatherings with co-workers, friends, family, and loved ones. With the continued spread of COVID-19 globally, the CDC and Department of Health recommendations for preventing transmitting COVID-19 include limiting in-person interactions, especially with people outside of your residence. The AHC wants to know how you adapted your traditions, celebrations, and normal routine to stay connected with your nearest and dearest through this uncertain time in Wyoming. We’ll preserve your stories for current and future generations.
Participating in this project is easy. The AHC wants our community members to express their observations and feelings about the pandemic in a manner that is best suited for them. We encourage our contributors to take photographs, write stories, create artwork, interview friends and family, participate in the AHC survey, and submit essays that tell us what you see, feel, hear and what has changed over the last few months.
How did you celebrate Thanksgiving? Did you trying cooking your first turkey? Did you create menus with friends and family to share the experience via Zoom?
Al Hovey carving the Thanksgiving turkey at Willow Glen, which was the Nichols family home near Encampment, Wyoming, November 24, 1955. Box 15, Photo #15845, Collection No. 1005, Lora Webb Nichols Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
Will you host a virtual new year’s party? Will it have a theme? Will you play virtual background bingo? Will you be hosting a Netflix party to watch a holiday classic film?
Group of young people at Christmas or New Year’s Party, 1922. Box 4, Negative #9065a, Collection No. 167, Ludwig & Svenson Studio Photographs, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
Will you drive around town to look at the holiday lights? Did you participate in your town’s holiday decoration contest?
Christmas lights at the Albany County Courthouse, Laramie, Wyoming, December 1934. Box 20, Negative #21894, Collection No. 167, Ludwig & Svenson Studio Photographs, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
Did you send holiday cards? Did you send handwritten family letters?
Photograph of children for Christmas cards at the Children’s Home in Stockton California, January 1946. Box 13, Photo #13400, Collection No. 1005, Lora Webb Nichols Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
Did you finally try making popcorn and cranberry garland? Did you catch your grandpa snooping under the tree at the presents?
Christmas tree, 1900. Box 91, Negative #D3-3084 & B-31532, Collection No. 400044, Samuel H. Knight Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
The AHC encourages you to be creative and express how this pandemic has impacted your life professionally and personally. Gathering these stories now for long-term preservation ensures an accurate and more complete narrative about your experiences.
While the links to the AHC COVID-19 Collection Project and survey have been taken down, the AHC, in partnership with the Wyoming State Archives, Wyoming State Museum, and Wyoming Historical Societies, have created a joint online platform to display the submissions we received. Your stories are now available for others to interact with and may provide a sense of understanding and comfort.
This blog was updated in 2024.
Happy Holidays! #COVID19WY #alwaysarchiving
Union Pacific Christmas trees and decorations at the old stone roundhouse, Laramie, Wyoming, December 1928. When this roundhouse was no longer being used for the railroad’s operation, it was converted into a community center where holiday parties and other events often were held. Box 12, Negative #15387, Collection No. 167, Ludwig & Svenson Studio Photographs, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
December 7 is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, marking a time in which Pearl Harbor Survivors, veterans, and others honor and remember the 2,403 service members and civilians who were killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. A further 1,178 people were injured in the attack, which permanently sank two U.S. Navy battleships (the USS Arizona and the USS Utah) and destroyed 188 aircraft.
The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. USS Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor. The ship is resting on the harbor bottom. Public domain image.
Over the years, various interpretations of events leading up to the attack have been laid out and argued over. Academic scholar Harry Elmer Barnes held decidedly different views from those in the mainstream.
Until the 1950s Barnes was a highly regarded cultural historian and sociologist. Especially through his book The New History and the Social Studies (1925), he became a leading advocate of the New History, which sought a deeper understanding of the origin and development of Western culture through the integration and cross-fertilization of history and the social sciences. Another of his significant contributions was History of Historical Writing (1937), which was widely recognized as a monument of learning, universally praised in the United States and abroad as an indispensable source for all advanced students of history.
So, what happened to change Harry Barnes’ reputation?
Barnes had already proved himself a controversial figure with his views that the U.S. had fought on the wrong side in World War I. Although initially a strong supporter of the American war effort, interviews he conducted with German soldiers and leaders after the war led him to believe that Germany bore no responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914 and had been instead the victim of Allied aggression. But it was his World War II perspectives that led to even greater controversy.
A strong ego steered Barnes into unyielding beliefs, including those about the U.S. entry into the Second World War. In the years following the war, he argued that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had deliberately provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor in order to promote his own political ambitions and to promulgate a deceitful foreign policy. Barnes devoted much of the remainder of his life creating a whole body of revisionist scholarship about Pearl Harbor and the origins of the war.
Notes by Harry Elmer Barnes on a statement by Admiral Husband E. Kimmel made in 1958 on a radio broadcast. Kimmel was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during the Pearl Harbor attack. Box 135, Harry Elmer Barnes papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
A colleague, Commander Charles C. Hiles, assisted Barnes in these efforts. Hiles was a career naval officer serving from 1914 to 1947 and was stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941. Hiles believed that Admiral Husband Kimmel, who served as commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during the Pearl Harbor attack, had been scapegoated for the attack by those Hiles believed were really at fault – Kimmel’s superiors in Washington.
Notes shared between Harry Elmer Barnes and C. C. Hiles regarding “The Kita Message,” a reference to Nagao Kita who was a Japanese Consul stationed in Hawaii. Instructions Kita received in March and September 1941 from the Japanese government regarding the American fleet in Hawaii were intercepted by U.S. Intelligence but did not raise alarms. Box 135, Harry Elmer Barnes papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
Barnes last word on the topic was his book Pearl Harbor After a Quarter Century which was completed just before his death in 1968. Barnes never stopped believing that the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was the fault of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the book, Barnes concludes “Roosevelt’s success in producing a surprise attack was an immensely, even uniquely, adroit achievement in piloting an overwhelmingly pacifically-inclined country into the most extensive and destructive war of history without any threat to our safety through aggressive action from abroad.”
You can learn more about these views of the Pearl Harbor attack in the papers of Harry Elmer Barnes and Charles C. Hiles at the American Heritage Center. Additionally, the AHC houses the papers of Husband E. Kimmel.
Post contributed by AHC’s Simpson Archivist Leslie Waggener.
After World War II, superhero comics, which had been a welcome diversion for American servicemen, stalwart champions of War Bonds, and other support for the home front during the conflict, largely lost their audience and were gradually replaced by comics with horror, romance, science fiction, war, and western themes. Following the setbacks to the industry by the establishment of the Comics Code Authority in 1954, superhero comics all but vanished with only Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman continuing to be regularly published. It wasn’t until 1956 that the genre revived when DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz, published issue #4 of “Showcase” which featured a reimagining of the Golden Age character, “The Flash”.
Mort Weisinger (1915-1978) began writing for pulp magazines while in college and, along with his good friend Julius Schwartz, founded the first literary agency to specialize in the related genres of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Weisinger joined National Periodicals (later DC Comics) in 1941 and, much like his contemporary, Stan Lee over at competitor Marvel Comics, he was very much a part of the comics community throughout both the Golden and Silver Ages of Comics. In addition to editing “Batman” and creating such characters as “Aquaman”, and “Green Arrow, Weisinger was also the editor of the Superman comic books from 1945-1970 and the story editor of “The Adventures of Superman” television show which ran from 1952-1957.
Weisinger’s tenure on Superman was marked with a number of new concepts, story ideas, and supporting characters which became standards in the Superman mythos, which are recognizable today by millions of people who aren’t otherwise familiar with the character. These include the introduction of Supergirl, Krypto the Superdog, the Phantom Zone, the bottle city of Kandor, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and a variety of types of kryptonite. It was also under Weisinger that the rationalization that Superman’s powers stemmed from his being from another planet and living under Earth’s yellow sun (instead of Krypton’s red sun) was first used to explain the character’s abilities.
Advertisement for a talk by Mort Weisinger at the University of Kansas, 1974. Box 1, Mort Weisinger papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
The Mort Weisinger collection at the American Heritage Center contains materials relating to Weisinger’s work as a writer and editor from 1928-1978. The collection includes correspondence (1932-1978) mostly regarding his work as a writer and editor for “This Week” and other magazines and with companies who were included in “1001 Valuable Things”; the galleys and manuscripts for “The Contest,” “The Complete Alibi Handbook” and “1001 Valuable Things”; the manuscript for an unpublished novel about a U.S. President (ca. 1975); legal agreements between Weisinger and “This Week” and Bantam Books (1954-1978); and photographs of Weisinger, the Weisinger family and various celebrities. The collection also includes newspaper clippings on Weisinger and Superman (1928-1978); a script for the motion picture version of “The Contest” (1971); 2 16 mm films from “The Adventures of Superman” television show (1957); 5 scrapbooks; comic books; miscellaneous art work for the Superman comic book; and the board game “Movie Millions,” which was developed by Weisinger.
Anyone interested in the history and inner workings of the comics industry in the United States is invited to explore both the Mort Weisinger and Stan Lee collections at the American Heritage Center to learn more about this fascinating aspect of American popular culture.
Post contributed by AHC Collections Manager Bill Hopkins.
In my preparations to become a backpacker seeking adventures in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, my research led me to take the footsteps of a man from the golden age of American mountaineering, whose chronicles and photographs bade me to these mountains with a romantic charm.
Finis Mitchell drew on decades of experience in the Wind Rivers, describing the trails, routes, wildlife, glaciers, lakes, and streams in Wyoming’s fabulous two-and-a-quarter million acre Wind River Range, published into a guidebook called Wind River Trails.
Over the course of his life, Mitchell climbed 244 of the 300 peaks in the range, with four ascents of Gannett Peak, the highest mountain in the state.
Front and back of a postcard illustrating a view of the Cirque of the Towers taken by Finis Mitchell from Mitchell Peak in the Wind River Range. Finis Mitchell papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
As a vigorous wilderness advocate, he put together breathtaking slide presentations showing people their own public lands. Mitchell would pour out his philosophy at the public meetings with amazing attention to detail.
Of the 105,345 pictures he took as a hobby, 8,884 have been digitized for your viewing pleasure. For more of Mitchell’s stunning Wind River photography, explore our Virmuze exhibit “Finis Mitchell, Lord of The Winds,” which features additional images from his collection. To learn more about Mitchell, see the Finis Mitchell papers at the American Heritage Center.
Post contributed by AHC staff member Matthew Troyanek.
Being a land-grant university, the University of Wyoming is no stranger to military service. Currently home to the Army ROTC Cowboy Battalion and the Air Force ROTC 940th Cadet Wing, military service at UW stretches back to the university’s early days including a School of Military Science and Tactics established in 1891 and the establishment of ROTC on campus in 1916.
As early as the Spanish-American War, students from UW served their country in war. With the onset of both World War I and World War II, military training that occurred on campus changed to deal with the necessities of war time. The campus reflected this change as more of those that walked campus made their way overseas.
UW, proud of the men and women that represented the brown and gold, recognized those that had served their country through pamphlets released on campus.
The pamphlets created for both World Wars included brief histories of the conflicts.
Pages from a UW pamphlet regarding American entry into World War II and subsequent UW reaction, University of Wyoming War Activities Council Records, Accession #300002, Box 27, Folder 10.1, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
Pages from a UW pamphlet regarding American entry into World War II and subsequent UW reaction, University of Wyoming War Activities Council Records, Accession #300002, Box 27, Folder 10.2, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
The pamphlets also included a listing of every student, professors, and alum that had served in any capacity with special recognition for those that paid the ultimate price.
While these pamphlets serve as reminders of those that served their country with ties to UW, on Veteran’s Day we celebrate those from across the country that have donned the uniform in the name of the United States Armed Forces.
– Originally submitted in 2017 by Katey Myers, American Heritage Center student aide.
The topic of “packing” the U.S. Supreme Court has become a hot button issue in the 2020 presidential campaign. But this isn’t the first time members of the federal government and the public have debated the matter.
The Judicial Act of 1869 established that the Supreme Court would consist of a chief justice and eight associate justices. Justices were, and are, slated to serve lifetime appointments. This court structure reinforced the idea that the judicial branch was apolitical and one of three co-equal branches of American government.
However, beginning in 1935, the Supreme Court struck down several pieces of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation for being unconstitutional. Roosevelt’s frustration with the court grew.
Soon a controversial plan was formed. FDR proposed adding as many as 6 additional judges to the court, thus “packing” it in favor of his policies. He intended to neutralize the justices who disagreed with him.
Roosevelt selected the morning of February 5th, 1937, for the announcement of his bombshell, first to a group of congressional leaders and then at a press conference. His Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 was to put restrictions on the court when it came to age. Out with the old, and in with new more progressive judges.
FDR’s plan met instant opposition in Congress and with the public.
A surprising opponent was Wyoming’s senior U.S Senator Joseph O’Mahoney, a typically loyal FDR lieutenant. A Cheyenne newspaper editor and later attorney, O’Mahoney had risen through the Democratic ranks beginning as an aide to U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick before becoming a stalwart in the national party as a committeeman and campaign organizer. When his mentor Kendrick died in 1933, O’Mahoney was appointed to fill his Senate seat. During his early tenure in the Senate, O’Mahoney supported most of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, with the notable exception of the “court-packing plan.”
Joseph O’Mahoney, ca. 1940. Joseph O’Mahoney papers, Box 390, Folder 45, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
O’Mahoney’s resistance to the plan was not without anguish. He was acutely aware of the political adage that nothing is more rewarded than loyalty, nor more punished than disloyalty. He choice was to surrender to political expediency or heed his reverence for checks and balances and for the Supreme Court as an institution. Adding to his angst was his strong desire for a Supreme Court seat. Long after the Court fight, newspapers mentioned O’Mahoney’s name whenever a vacancy occurred on the Court. A succinct summary of his procedural objections to FDR’s plan can be found in the transcript of a radio address from May 6, 1937, with the unconfusing title “The Judiciary Bill Should Not Pass.” The transcript can be found in the O’Mahoney papers at the American Heritage Center.
The Wyoming Senator tried a tack with FDR of proposing an amendment that would limit the terms of all federal judges to fifteen years, make their salaries subject to the income tax, and provide for compulsory retirement at the age of seventy-five. All were substantive measures, O’Mahoney argued, that Roosevelt wanted. The President didn’t budge.
O’Mahoney pushed his amendment adamantly in the halls of Congress but gained little traction. At last, in the middle of April 1937, he concluded that the amendment tactic was doomed. That he had clung to the amendment approach as a practicable compromise for so long provides eloquent testimony to his extreme reluctance to break with Roosevelt. But break he did.
Eventually President Roosevelt got his way by packing the Court the old-fashioned way, through attrition, naming nine members.
Post submitted by AHC Simpson Archivist Leslie Waggener. She thanks AHC Archives on the Air writer Kathryn Billington for her contributions. Also contributing to the post is text from Dr. Gene M. Gressley’s article “Joseph O’Mahoney, FDR, and the Supreme Court” published in the Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 40, No. 2 (May 1971), pp. 183-202.
For Halloween 2018 and 2019, we brought you blog posts on The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster, two low-budget horror movies financed by Texas radio pioneer Gordon McLendon. This year, we shine a spotlight on the career of film director William Beaudine (1892-1970).
Beaudine, who began his career in the film industry in 1909, directed silent films (including shorts known as “one-reelers”), sound films and, beginning in the early 1950s, episodes of TV series, including The Mickey Mouse Club, Naked City, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The Green Hornet, and Lassie.
What is his connection to the horror genre? His filmography includes The Ape Man (1943), Voodoo Man (1944), and Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), all of which starred Bela Lugosi. Additionally, Beaudine’s last two feature films were the notorious Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966), each part of the outré horror-western genre. Billy the Kid co-starred two veterans of John Ford’s westerns, John Carradine and Olive Carey. It is also worth noting that in that film, the vampire is never called “Dracula” and his opponent has virtually nothing in common with the historical Billy the Kid. Presumably, the film’s producers decided that the title Billy the Kid Versus Dracula had more “oomph” than “Cowboy Versus Vampire.”
Double feature poster from box 119 of the Forrest J. Ackerman papers at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
The American Heritage Center has a small collection devoted to Beaudine. The collection, which was donated by Lucille Warden, Beaudine’s daughter, and Wendy Marshall, author of William Beaudine: From Silents to Television (2004), contains scripts and story outlines, as well as movie posters for one-reelers, including these films released in 1913: The Stolen Bride (Beaudine was an assistant on the film and also appeared in it, along with Lillian Gish), The Sheriff’s Baby (Beaudine, along with Lionel Barrymore, Harry Carey, and Donald Crisp, appeared in the film, which was directed by D.W. Griffith), Brothers (Beaudine, along with Harry Carey and Mabel Normand, appeared in the film, which was directed by Griffith), and The Lady in Black (Beaudine was an assistant on the film, which was written by Anita Loos).
Beaudine’s career as a director of horror films is also represented in the papers of Forrest J. Ackerman, the editor of the fanzine Famous Monsters of Filmland. That collection includes a still from The Ape Man and a poster for a double feature of the Billy the Kid and Jesse James movies.
Publicity still from The Ape Man, Box 105, Forrest J. Ackerman papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
Brigham Young is best known as a religious leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints. In his capacity as president of the church, he was also the force behind an intriguing educational reform. In the early 1850s, in his second term as Utah Territorial Governor, he announced that he would like a new phonetic alphabet, called Deseret, taught in the schools.
Regents of the university in Salt Lake City, including George D. Watt, W.W. Phelps, Parley P. Pratt, and Heber C. Kimball, developed the new system of orthography. It was still English, but just a different written form of it that President Young believed would make more sense, as well as take up less space and, therefore, save paper. Also, the early days of the Church, pioneers came to Utah Territory from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England, Scotland, and other countries. Once in Utah, they found it hard to understand each other. And English, with its many inconsistencies, was difficult to learn, especially in its written form.
The original Deseret alphabet had 40 letters; a copy of it was reproduced in an 1861 book in the AHC’s Toppan Rare Books Library by Jules Remy called Journey to Great Salt Lake City. After slight revision to some of the letters, a 38-letter alphabet was used in three primers. The Toppan Library has copies of all three of these. The first and second primers were published in 1868; the third, published in 1869, was the first book of Nephi (usually referred to as First Nephi or 1 Nephi) from the Book of Mormon.
Deseret First Book and key to Deseret alphabet. The key was found on a page located at the beginning of each primer. Lloyd Taggart Collection, Toppan Rare Books Library, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
The new system was slow to catch on, however. This was partly due to cost. Early on, in 1859, it had already been estimated that the cost of supplying all Utah Territory schoolchildren with suitable textbooks would be more than $5,000,000. By 1870, the effort was largely abandoned.
In July 1877, Young tried one more time at a spelling reform, ordering lead type designed for the orthography of Benn Pitman with the intention of printing an edition of the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants using it. Most of the type had arrived by August, but with Young’s death on the 29th of that month, the translation was never undertaken and the type never used. His death marked the end of Mormon experimentation with English spelling reforms.
For more detailed information on this subject, see the article by Stanley S. Ivins “The Deseret Alphabet,” in the Utah Humanities Review (1, 1947: pp.223-239), the entry with that title in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism (Vol.1, 1992: pp.373-374), and another one with the same title by Sam Weller and Ken Reid in True West (Sept./Oct., 1958: pp.14- 16). The latter article has an illustration of the front page of the Salt Lake City newspaper, Deseret News, in 1859, showing use of this alphabet.
Brooklyn-born Albert Maltz grew up in affluence. His Russian immigrant Jewish parents had made good in their new American home. Maltz’s education credentials were those of an elite. He studied philosophy at Columbia University, graduating in 1928. He then attended the Yale School of Drama, where he earned a master’s degree in the craft of playwriting.
Despite his well-to-do beginnings, the plight of those less fortunate tugged at him. His own father had begun as a grocer’s boy before becoming a successful contractor and builder. Maltz was also influenced by fellow Yale student George Sklar, whose radical politics ignited his own budding leftist leanings.
Albert Maltz, ca. 1930. Box 60, Albert Maltz papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
Adding to the mix, Maltz read the works of political philosopher Karl Marx and later told journalist Victor Navasky, “I still think it to be the noblest set of ideals ever penned by man…. Where else in political literature do you find thinkers saying that we were going to end all forms of human exploitation? Wage exploitation, exploitation of women by men, the exploitation of people of colour by white peoples, the exploitation of colonial countries by imperialist countries. And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read.”
As a young playwright in the New York theater community, Maltz became known for staging pointed dramas acted by progressive companies such as the Theatre Union and the Group Theatre. By 1935, Maltz had joined the American Communist Party. Professional people, journalists, teachers, writers, artists and working people on factories and farms had come to respect the Communist Party for their words and deeds over the past decade in support of the working man. Maltz channeled his political views into his writing. His short story “The Happiest Man on Earth,” about unemployment during the Depression, won the 1938 O. Henry Award.
Soon, in 1941, Maltz moved to Los Angeles to take a job with Warner Brothers. His first screenwriting credit was for the gritty noir film This Gun for Hire (1942). For his script for Pride of the Marines (1945), Maltz was nominated for an Academy Award. He received an Academy Award for his 1942 work on The Defeat of German Armies Near Moscow and in 1945 for The House I Live In, a 10-minute film with singer-actor Frank Sinatra opposing anti-Semitism through the use of a staged incident of young bullies chasing a Jewish boy, prompting Sinatra to speak and sing about why such behavior is wrong.
Meanwhile Maltz had not abandoned his career as a writer of published fiction and stage drama. In 1944 he published the novel The Cross and the Arrow chronicling German resistance to the Nazi regime. It was distributed in a special Armed Services Edition to more than 150,000 American fighting men during World War II.
Despite his contribution to the war effort, Maltz was subpoenaed in 1947 to testify at hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was created to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having Fascist or Communist ties. While refusing to answer questions on First Amendment grounds, Maltz was able to get a statement on the record: “I am an American, and I believe there is no more proud word in the vocabulary of man.” Nevertheless, he was tried and convicted of contempt of Congress.
Mug shot of Albert Maltz taken at Mill Point Federal Prison in West Virginia on July 17, 1950. Albert Maltz papers, Box 1, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
Before he was sent to the federal lockup in Ashland, Ky. — the same facility that housed Adrian Scott, a fellow member of the Hollywood Ten — Maltz recruited his friend screenwriter Michael Blankfort to front for him on a screenplay for the film Broken Arrow starring James Stewart. The sympathetic treatment of Native Americans in the Western earned Blankfort (in actuality Maltz) an Oscar nomination for adapted screenplay.
After prison, Maltz moved to Mexico City, where he wrote novels and uncredited screenplays for The Robe (1953) and other films. By 1970, producers agreed to give Maltz credit for writing Two Mules for Sister Sara, a Western starring Clint Eastwood.
His papers at the American Heritage Center include material pertaining to the Hollywood Ten and Maltz’s blacklisting from Hollywood, including photos, correspondence, court documents, advertisements, and pamphlets. Reel-to-reel audio tapes of his testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947 is also included.
