Scope and Content Note
The papers of Lawrence Edmund Spivak (1900-1994) span the years 1917-1994, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1945-1983. The collection reflects a career that involved magazine publishing and the production of radio and television programs. Included are correspondence, radio and television transcripts, articles, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, printed ephemera, and memoranda. The papers are divided into the following series: Personal File, Speech File, Writings File, American Mercury, Inc., File, "Meet the Press" File, Special Programs File, Miscellany, Scrapbooks, Addition, and Oversize.
The Personal File contains biographical summaries chronicling Spivak's career from 1946 to 1990 as well as appointment calendars mostly kept in the 1990s. Included also are financial papers, newspaper and oral history interviews, correspondence with family members, and a subject file of his various interests.
The Speech File contains Spivak's addresses along with engagements where he acted as a moderator. In the Writings File are memoranda containing recollections of Spivak's career, the American Mercury, "Meet the Press," paperback books, and famous persons and events written for his anticipated memoir. Spivak's newspaper columns and editorial comments also appear.
The American Mercury, Inc., File includes index cards, correspondence, business records, and a subject file. The index cards list authors, titles, dates, and fees paid for the years 1924-1950. Editorial correspondence consists of letters to and from H. L. Mencken, Charles Angoff, and Spivak and portrays the relationship between editor and author. Typescripts and galley proofs for some of the articles also exist, including Zora Neale Hurston's "You Don't Know Us Negroes." The corporation papers, financial records, and legal file relate to American Mercury, Inc., which owned the American Mercury magazine. In the legal file, the case of Office Workers' Union v. American Mercury, Inc., resulted from an employee strike in 1935 for which Spivak received criticism as an unfair boss. Further items relating to this incident are in the subject file. The subject file also contains information on paperback book publishing and a scrapbook of photocopied newspaper clippings regarding Mencken's arrest for selling an issue of the American Mercury on the Boston Common containing the allegedly obscene short story "Hatrack." Represented in this series are Fred Allen, J. Frank Dobie, William O. Douglas, Bergen Evans, William Best Hesseltine, Granville Hicks, Stuart Holbrook, Sidney Hook, J. Edgar Hoover, Victor Lasky, Eugene Lyons, Christopher Morley, John Courtney Murray, Channing Pollock, Carl Sandburg, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, William Saroyan, Francis Spellman, Dorothy Thompson, Peter Viereck, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Philip Wylie.
The "Meet the Press" File encompasses the bulk of the collection. The largest subseries are Audience Mail, General Correspondence, and Program Transcripts and Related Material. Audience Mail consists of letters, mostly handwritten, typifying audience reaction to various broadcasts from 1945 to 1983. The correspondence usually contains the viewers' opinions of the panels, guests, questions, and sometimes of Spivak. Many letters imply that "Meet the Press" was biased toward the left and did not offer fair representation to conservatives. Responses came mostly from the states of California, Florida, Ohio, and New York, and often from the elderly. Shows receiving the most reaction featured Linus Pauling, Anastas I. Mikoyan, Fidel Castro, Robert Welch, Fred Schwarz, George C. Wallace, Martin Luther King, Jr., and civil rights issues. General Correspondence is comprised of incoming and outgoing letters with prospective and past interviewees; memoranda on people, their conversations with Spivak, and his assessment of their interview potential; correspondence with the National Broadcasting Company; office memoranda; and Spivak's correspondence with associates, including after his retirement in 1975. In addition, this subseries contains correspondence relating to shows and guests. Letters to Spivak and others suggesting the replacement in 1949 of Martha Rountree with a male moderator are located in the correspondence of the American Mercury, Inc., File. Program Transcripts and Related Material records the opinions of American and foreign figures who appeared on the radio shows from 1945 to 1950 and the television shows from 1949 to 1983. Especially noteworthy are transcripts of programs with Theodore G. Bilbo, Anastas I. Mikoyan, Joseph McCarthy, and Adlai E. Stevenson. Included with the transcripts are production notes, correspondence, memoranda, and newspaper clippings. The indices to the shows list the date and time of broadcast, guests, panel members, moderators, and sponsors. More information on the broadcasts is in the program log in the Subject File subseries of the “Meet the Press” File and in the Card File of the Special Programs File. Also of interest in the Subject File are congratulatory letters for anniversaries, articles written about Spivak and the show, guest categories, surveys, and a history of "Meet the Press." Corporation File, Financial Records, and Legal File subseries mostly relate to Press Productions, Inc., which owned "Meet the Press" from 1947 until it was sold to the National Broadcasting Company by Spivak in 1955.
The Special Programs File contains documents relating to Spivak television productions such as the feature presentations "Keep Posted," which later became "The Big Issue;" "Nation's Press Conference;" two NBC News special reports; and the Southern Center for International Studies (SCIS). Card files list the guests, moderators, panelists, and shows for "Keep Posted," "The Big Issue," and "Nation's Press Conference." For the NBC News specials and SCIS, there are only question cards. These feature presentations contain audience mail, transcripts, and correspondence related to the individual shows. By far the largest audience response resulted from the first broadcast of "The Big Issue" featuring four United States Senators debating the merits of the 1957 Civil Rights Bill. Spivak and his associates set up production corporations to administer these shows such as Teleproductions, Inc., which handled "Keep Posted" and "The Big Issue," and Televentions, Inc., which owned "Nation's Press Conference. SCIS was its own entity, and Spivak worked with Julia White of that institution to produce shows for the Public Broadcasting System. His NBC News special report, "June 30, 1971: A Day for History--The Supreme Court and the Pentagon Papers," won a television Emmy Award.
The Scrapbooks series, consisting of newspaper clippings, articles, printed ephemera, memorabilia, and correspondence, covers Spivak's personal career, the American Mercury magazine, "Meet the Press," and special programs. The Miscellany series contains background material collected for proposed magazines.
The Addition consists of card files relating to the "Meet the Press" File and the Special Programs File.