June 7, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: John Pavlik - (310) 247-3000

Beverly Hills, CA - One of the most comprehensive collections of material relating to American movie theaters ever compiled was recently received by the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from the estate of Preston Kaufmann, along with a monetary contribution of more than $140,000 to process and preserve the collection, Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis announced today.

Uptown Theatre, Kansas City, Missouri, summer of 1943.

"This is an extraordinary contribution to the Herrick Library," said Davis. "The collection itself was a wonderful and unexpected addition to our holdings. But the augmentation of the gift with funds that allow us to expedite the processing of the materials places it among the most unusual gifts the library has ever received."

Accumulated by Tom B'hend from the 1940s onward, the collection had been expanded and largely maintained since 1972 by Kaufmann, who made arrangements for its transfer to the Academy prior to his death in July 1998. B'hend died in 1994.

"The B'hend and Kaufmann Collection is first and foremost a visual archive," said Library Director Linda Mehr. It contains thousands of photographs, postcards, sketches, blueprints and newspaper ads documenting the history and development of motion picture exhibition in the United States, with a particular concentration on the urban 'movie palaces' which had their heyday from the 1920s through the 1940s.

"In sheer volume, this single collection far surpasses the library's previous entire collection of motion picture theater materials," Mehr said. "Overnight we've become a major repository of this kind of material."

Although the collection is most comprehensive in its coverage of major metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, there is at least some material from every state. For some major theaters, the collection holds visual documentation from birth to death - blueprints or related design sketches; photographs of the theater under construction; shots depicting the interior and exterior of the theater during its operation and finally, photos of the building's demolition or its restoration and renovation. In many cases, a theater's history is further covered by additional documents such as heralds, newspaper ads and film booking records.

"While the richness of the collection is due to B'hend's and Kaufmann's obvious love for the 'movie house' in all its manifestations, it's important to note that this is not just a massive accumulation of 'stuff,'" said Acquisitions Archivist Howard Prouty. "Although he had no formal training in the field, Mr. Kaufmann was a born archivist; most of the collection is very well organized, and he invested a good deal of time and money in placing the bulk of the items (particularly the photographs) in proper archival sleeves and envelopes. Not only is this a wonderful collection, but it also comes to us virtually 'pre-catalogued.' As a result, we will be able to make it available to researchers sooner than is typical with our special collections."

This is the second major gift relating to exhibition given to the Margaret Herrick Library. In 1990, the Dorothy and Sherrill C. Corwin Foundation gave $100,000 to the Academy Foundation to create the Sherrill C. Corwin Endowment, which is used to preserve, maintain and expand the collections of materials relating to theater exhibition in the library.