Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

Housed in the Wisconsin Historical Society
816 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
608-264-6466
http://wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/
askmovies[at]wisconsinhistory.org

The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR) holds one of the oldest and most extensive collections of print, audio/visual, and graphic materials relating to film, theater, radio and television in the United States. Their holdings focus on US entertainment-based media, though they also have smaller collections in social action documentary and non-US film, notably Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Soviet cinema. WCFTR collections are richest in records of the American film industry between 1930 and 1960, theater of the 1940s and 1950s, and television from the 1950s through the 1970s. They include over three hundred manuscript collections from outstanding playwrights, television and film writers, producers, actors, designers, directors and production companies. In addition to the paper records, materials preserved include fifteen thousand films, television shows and videotapes, two million photographs and promotional graphics, and several thousand sound recordings.

WCFTR believes that one of the most important gateways into understanding American culture is the original records of its creators, particularly in the field of drama and audio-visual media. Each year, scholars from around the world, as well as creative artists and the interested public, consult our archives and produce important works that draw on the information and visual materials contained in our collections. Materials in the collections (including manuscripts, photographs, films, and videos) can be accessed free of charge in the Wisconsin Historical Society Reading Room. The Center also supports the UW Cinematheque, a vital part of Madison culture that provides free screenings of films from around the world.



The Center’s flat graphics collection includes publicity and personal photographs, clipping files and personal ephemera on more than 14,000 individual motion picture, television, and theater performers. In this photograph from the Cary Grant name file, Grant and Western star Randolph Scott show off the gorgeous living room of their Malibu beach house bachelor pad.


The Center’s flat graphics collection also contains scene stills and promotional graphics from over 40,000 domestic and foreign motion picture titles from the 1890s to the present. This production still captures Orson Welles directing Citizen Kane with a broken ankle—the result, it is rumored, of an accident during the famous staircase scene.


In 1967, Edith Head donated her papers to the Center. The Edith Head collection holds costume sketches for more than 55 films, including this design for Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief.


The Center’s theater collections document the full scale of American theater, from the 1860s to the present, from local repertories to Broadway. Though they are pictured here in their New York flat, theatrical power couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne also set down roots at the famous Ten Chimneys estate, outside Lunt’s native Milwaukee.

Images courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.

Entry compiled by Heather Heckman