Kids in the Archives!

One of the great parts about working in an archives is that you get to work with not just the academic population but the general public. A few weeks ago we were contacted by a Montessori school about bringing in a small group of kindergartners. They were studying maps and wanted to look at historical maps of Boise. One of the teachers wanted them to learn that maps aren’t always located in an electronic or mobile device.

In our collection, we have historic maps going back to 1890, one year after Idaho became the 43^rd state. That map was hand drawn by Augustus Koch and gives a “birds-eye” view of Boise, including when the Boise River forked into two then merged together, near what is now Julia Davis Park.

The kindergartners were amazed that someone drew that map long before even their grandparents were born. They enjoyed trying to find the streets they lived on and only a couple could find their street back to 1910. They also looked at raised relief maps and had fun examining where the mountain ranges were. As a parting gift, they received a photocopy of a 1938 aerial photo of Boise showing where their house is, though most of the photographs showed only farmland. Overall, teachers, kindergartners, and archivists all had a good time! 

Cheryl Oestreicher,

Head, Special Collections and Archives/Assistant Professor

Women in Horror

Are you interested in horror? What about gender studies in regard to horror film? This might just be the month for you! February is Women in Horror Month (WiHM). It is the brainchild of Hannah Forman, who writes under the pen name Hannah Neurotica. Since 2009, the event has increased in popularity, and rightly so. Horror has been a male driven genre, for the most part, and seeing women rise in the ranks is refreshing.

Jennifer Lynch, the Soska Sisters, and others have brought their horrific visions to life on screen and have been successful in their endeavors. Here is the mission statement from the WiHM website:

Women in Horror Recognition Month (WiHM) assists underrepresented female genre artists in gaining opportunities, exposure, and education through altruistic events, printed material, articles, interviews, and online support.

WiHM seeks to expose and break down social constructs and miscommunication between female professionals while simultaneously educating the public about discrimination and how they can assist the female gender in reaching equality.

Check out their website for more information http://www.womeninhorrormonth.com/#!about. Will you be the next Women in Horror Month ambassador? Might we suggest some interesting reading in the meantime?

Film and Literary Criticism
The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film
The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis
When There's No More Room in Hell: The Sociology of the Living Dead

Fiction by women
Frankenstein
Wrong Things
Women of Darkness

Lizzy Walker,

ScholarWorks

A Boise Construction Company’s Connection to Paint Your Wagon, a 1969 Musical Starring Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin.

Do not adjust your computer monitor. Clint Eastwood was in a musical.

In 1969, the Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon, written by Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe of My Fair Lady fame, was brought to the silver screen by Paramount.  Its trailer invited moviegoers to: "Come along with Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, and Jane Seberg as they bring the free living, free loving, California gold rush days to life  ...a lusty group of people who one day looked civilization in the eye - and spit!" Both the grizzled Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood have singing roles.

While one of Lee Marvin's gravelly numbers was a surprise hit in Britain, Clint Eastwood's "I Talk to the Trees," which was sung over a light bossa nova beat and augmented by a lonesome cowboy harmonica and lush string arrangement, was not a chart-topper.  With its poor reviews, long running time (two and a half hours), peculiar casting decisions, bloated 18 million dollar budget, and appearance at a time when the era of the Hollywood musical was drawing to a close, the film was probably destined for problems and did not become the blockbuster success that Paramount had hoped for.

An M-K-owned crane places a 75-foot tree on the set of Paint Your Wagon.  The water wheel is visible in the foreground.  The Em-Kayan, August 1968, pg. 13

Concerning the movie sets, Howard Hugh's book "Aim for the Heart" states that, "the camp looked splendid, incorporating sluices and a huge waterwheel, at a cost of 2.4 million." The sets for Paint Your Wagon were designed by Boise's own Morrison-Knudsen Company.  The Morrison-Knudsen Company (M-K) was founded in Boise in 1912 by Harry Morrison and Morris Knudsen. Some projects in the company’s long history include the Hoover Dam and Alaska’s Trans-Atlantic Pipeline.

During Paint Your Wagon, M-K improved 18 miles of roadless wilderness in order to bring almost 30 pieces of heavy construction equipment to the remote filming location.  The set design also needed to accommodate a dramatic implosion of Biblical proportions, about which the August 1968 edition of M-K’s newsletter, The Em-Kayan, says: "Paramount is putting up 102 frame buildings to create No-Name City, more than half of which are rigged to collapse during the movie's rousing but best-unrevealed finale."

A scale model of No-Name City is inspected by Production Designer John Truscott, Director Joshua Logan and Producer Alan Jay Lerner. The Em-Kayan, August 1968, pg. 12

Boise State University's Albertsons Library has a complete run of the Em-Kayan, Morrison-Knudsen's company newsletter (1942-1988).  The library’s Special Collections and Archives also holds the Morrison-Knudsen Records (including labor files), the papers of M-K Vice President of International Operations Lyman Wilbur, the papers of M-K Executive Vice President James McClary, the papers of Ann Morrison, first wife of co-founder Harry Morrison and namesake of Ann Morrison Park, Boise Redevelopment Agency documents,  and most M-K Company Reports. 

"Aim for the Heart: the Films of Clint Eastwood," by Howard Hughes (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2010.), is also available to the BSU community as an eBook download.

Kent Randell,
Special Collections/Archives