1970s Ontario Historical Studies Series Arts Interviews

[awagner]

24 oral history Ontario Historical Studies Series Arts Interviews from the mid-1970s can be accessed at the Archives of Ontario. 
The interviews were a resource for the essay contributors to Later Stages: Essays in Ontario Theatre from the First World War to the 1970s. Ann Saddlemyer and Richard Plant, eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

The 24 interviews are with Robert Christie, John Colicos, Robertson Davies, Donald Davis, Arthur Gelber, Earle Grey, Amelia Hall, Don Harron, Lois Reynolds Kerr, Paul Kligman, Ben and Syvia Lennick, Alan and Blanche Lund, George Luscombe, Jane Mallet, Dora Mavor Moore, Mavor Moore, Violet Murray, Len Peterson, Ernest Rawley, Oscar and Toby Ryan, Lister Sinclair, Bernard and Jill Foster Slade, Herman Voaden and Herbert Whittaker.

The earliest interview in this collection with Dora Mavor Moore is dated 1964. Most interviews date from the mid-1970s, with the latest recorded in 1980. 18 of the interviews have been transcribed. Each interview has its own descriptive file listing number of audio tapes, pages of transcripts, and restrictions, if any. 

Barb Taylor (416-327 1551) who is responsible for these audio materials provided me with the following website listings to access these holding descriptions via the internet.

The Archives of Ontario website is
www.archives.gov.on.ca/english/index.html
Click on "Search the Collections"
Click on "Archives Descriptive Database"
Click on "Files and Items"
At "Archival Reference Code" enter RG 47-27-2 and click.

Don Rubin, who conducted most of the interviews, has provided the following additional information:

"The contact for me--and the person who commissioned it all--was Peter Oliver in the York Department of History. He was a member of the OHSS Board of Directors. I was asked to prepare a list of 15 or 20 possible people to be interviewed. That list was approved (in fact, it wound up at about 30 or so and originally included people such as William Shatner and Chris Plummer) and I was commissioned to do the research and the interviews in groups of about six. That is, I would do six and then they would approve funds for another six. It took about two or three years to complete 20 or so somewhere between about 1974 and 1976.

Most of the interviews were done in people's homes in and around Ontario. The last group involved people who had moved to the United States and OHSS paid for one trip to Los Angeles for me. I had a student researcher in all cases. For the early interviews it was Forster Freed.For the later interviews it was Therese Beaupre, both York theatre students. I do not remember doing the interview with Dora Mavor Moore. I do believe all the others are mine although I am a bit hazy on Robert Christie and Violet Murray. Probably if I read them again I would recognise them."


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://artsservices.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/candrama/attachments/20040304/0c6c45f7/attachment.html>