Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Correspondence, manuscripts, playscripts, screenplays, diaries, documents, contracts, financial records, photographs, phonograph records, motion pictures, playbills, posters, sheet music, cartoons, art work, memorabilia, scrapbooks, and printed materials. . The collection consists chiefly of correspondence and production files relating to the creation, production, and performance of their works for stage, screen, radio, and television, such as Leave It To Me and Kiss Me Kate (with music by Cole Porter), Boy Meets Girl, and My Three Angels. Correspondence (with twentieth century authors, playwrights, musicians, political figures, and actors) includes: George Abbott, Jean Arthur, Bennett Cerf, Katharine Cornell, Jo Davidson, George and Ira Gershwin, Alec Guinness, W. Averell Harriman, Lilli Lehmann, Mary Martin, Laurence Olivier, Mary Pickford, Cole Porter, Regina Resnick, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert E. Sherwood, Lincoln Steffens, Kurt Weill, Rebecca West, and Thornton Wilder. There is also correspondence concerning Bella Spewack's work with the New York Girls' Scholarship, UNRA, and the Sports Center of Israel. In addition to the production files, there are manuscripts and typescript drafts for novels, short stories, and articles by the Spewacks.

The reports and correspondence relating to UNRRA were arranged according to the nine administrative divisions of that organization that generated the documents: Bureau of Administration (26 reels); Office of the Diplomatic Adviser (4 reels); Office of the Director General (20 reels); Office of the Economic Adviser (4 reels); Office of Far Eastern Affairs (9 reels); Office of the General Counsel (19 reels); Office of the Historian (16 reels); Office of Public Information (1 reel); and Secretariat Executive Office (3 reels). Within each division, subsidiary bodies are typically separated into subject and country files.