Scope and Content Note
The Tony Schwartz Collection consists of multiple formats of material containing the products of his work as a media consultant, audio documentarian, author, radio producer, media theorist, and educator, as well as the research, consultation, preparation and editing, testing, and revision that led to his published textual and media-based works. Also included are published writings and videos about Schwartz, correspondence with colleagues and clients, and extensive files about people, organizations, and topics that interested Schwartz during his long and productive career.
The Biographical and Personal Materials series contains folders of material on Schwartz's early life, although these materials are not extensive. There are also photographs, biographical materials, and artifacts relating to colleagues and members of his family; publications and documentation relating to his health; family and other personal correspondence; awards and honorary degrees; publications and publicity materials concerned with Schwartz; and extensive documentation on the collection itself created by Schwartz and various interns and employees. Extremely useful, these collection lists, catalogs, and databases describe much but not all of the collection.
Series 2, Business and Professional Materials, forms the core of the Tony Schwartz Collection. There are boxes of general business materials such as address and appointment books; contact and client lists; business correspondence; documents relating to his company, New Sounds, Inc.; and some of the actual equipment he used, such as a timer, a teleprompter, and two patch bays with VU meters. His collaborations with other media consultants and advertising experts, notably Joseph Napolitan, are included as well.
Scripts, photographs, correspondence, and research materials that document work for specific people and organizations are divided into three client groups: political, public service, and commercial. Political candidates who hired Schwartz to work on their campaigns (at the local, state, and national levels) included Phil Bredesen, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis, Tom Foley, Mike Gravel, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, Robert and Edward Kennedy, George McGovern, Ed Mezvinsky, Walter Mondale, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Claiborne Pell, Harry Reid, Abraham Ribicoff, Jay Rockefeller, Warren Rudman, Alex Seith, Isaac Newton Skelton, Ed Vrdolyak, Andrew Young, and many more.
Schwartz produced public service announcements for a wide variety of organizations, anti-smoking groups in particular (for example, the American Cancer Society, Patrick Reynolds Foundation for a Smokefree America, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association, People for a Smoke-Free Indoors, and Doctors Ought to Care). Other issues represented in his public service work were AIDS awareness (AIDS Medical Foundation, Families Concerned about AIDS), public health (Minnesota Moms for Healthy Babies, New York City Department of Health), education (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Action Committee for Higher Education), crime prevention (Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, Crimestoppers), fire safety (New York City Fire Department), handgun control (Handgun Control, Inc., Center to Prevent Handgun Violence), the environment (Florence and John Schumann Foundation, Forum for Environmental Stewardship), organized labor (Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 5, International Association of Firefighters, Local 22 ), civil rights (NAACP, Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith), and local concerns (Coalition to Save Naumburg Bandshell, Arson on W. 56th Street).
Commercial/for-profit clients and products for which Schwartz produced ads included Apple computers, Excedrin, Bamberger's Department Store, Fortunoff Department Stores, General Electric, Hoffman-LaRoche, Inc., Kavanagh's Furniture Store, various radio and television networks and stations, Merck, Mobil Corporation, Pepsi-Cola, St. Lukes/Roosevelt Medical Center, Upjohn Rogaine, and Zenith.
The remainder of the Business and Professional series is concerned with Schwartz's broadcasting and recorded work (such as a press release and program guide relating to his long-running WNYC radio program); program proposals and courses he taught at Harvard University School of Public Health, Fordham University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and elsewhere; speaking and media appearances (such as his appearances on the David Frost and Phil Donahue TV shows, and his talks at New York bistro Chez Beauvais); and various exhibitions.
Works and publications by Tony Schwartz are the focus of series 3. Included are production materials, scripts, correspondence, publicity materials, and reviews of published sound recordings such as his Folkways and Columbia Records releases (New York 19, Nueva York, Children at Play, and more). There are also materials documenting the development and release of Schwartz video recordings produced by David Hoffman and his company, Varied Directions, including Guerrilla Media, If You Know Someone Who Smokes, and Secrets of Effective Radio Advertising.
Materials on Schwartz’s published books, The Responsive Chord (1973) and Media, the Second God (1981, 1983), his many Media Industry Newsletter columns (1967-2004), and various other published articles and unpublished drafts and outlines may be found in the Writings grouping in series 3.
Series 4 consists of files on people, organizations, and topics of interest to Schwartz. Two subjects are documented extensively: Schwartz's transcribed interviews with Marshall McLuhan and published materials about smoking.
Several thousand sound recordings and hundreds of films and videocassettes, most of them relating to topics documented in the paper and graphic materials, are being digitally preserved by the Library of Congress for future public access. These audio and moving image materials will form series 5 and 6 in the collection and will be described in more detail in an upcoming version of this finding aid. For details on recordings that are available for research purposes, contact the Recorded Sound Research Center.