The University is making available a wide-reaching collection from Oscar winner Orson Welles. Recently obtained through donation and purchase from private collections, the archive contains original scripts and screenplays, business records, correspondence, photographs, treatments, reviews, unfinished television and film projects, and film footage in various formats.

“This is an opportunity to have material for original research,” says Peggy Daub, head of the Special Collections Library. “It is the cornerstone of collections from visionaries of stage, screen and radio.”

The Welles archive joins other collections in the library, such as those from Hal Cooper, writer/director of TV series,including “All in the Family,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Maude,” and “Gilligan’s Island,” and the collection of Ellen Van Volkenberg and Maurice Browne, co-founders of the Chicago Little Theater.

“Students used to reading biographies will find this raw material an eye-opener,” Daub says. “They’ll be able to make their own analyses of the material and the people involved.”

About a fourth of the Welles material at U-M has been funded for processing and now is available for use by the public. Daub says it will take about a year to process, organize and catalog the entire collection once funding is obtained.