Scope and Content Note
The Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986) Papers span the years 1880 to 1997 with the bulk of the materials dating from 1943 to 1986. While the collection is not a comprehensive record of Lerner's career, it covers the latter portion extensively, particularly with regard to the show Lolita, My Love. There is no other significant collection of Lerner's materials at any other institution.
The Scripts series is the largest in the collection. Scripts are organized alphabetically by show title regardless of whether they were written for stage or film; and arranged mostly chronologically within shows. In most instances, Lerner was the author of both the libretto or screenplay and the lyrics for shows. Several shows were originally written for the stage and then made into films, often with additional songs, and in the case of Paint Your Wagon, with a different collaborating composer. In addition, there are scripts for some shows that were never produced.
The second largest series, Music, is organized alphabetically by show title, and alphabetically therein by song title. Most of the scores are photoreproductions of copyist’s and arranger's manuscripts, and published sheet music. There are also a handful of music manuscripts and sketches in the hands of most of Lerner’s collaborating composers. The collection does not contain copies of every song that Lerner wrote, and it lacks music for some of the shows. Camelot, My Fair Lady, and Paint Your Wagon are the only shows for which there are published piano-vocal scores for all the songs. There are also piano-vocal scores for the individual songs from The Little Prince. The collection includes some unused and cut songs from various projects, but not all those known to exist. Some of these unused or cut songs exist elsewhere in the Library’s collections, such as the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue materials in the Leonard Bernstein Collection, and various shows in the Frederick Loewe Collection.
The following series round out the collection: Correspondence, Family and Personal Papers, Non-Show Writings, Collected Lyrics, Souvenir Programs, Photographs, and Miscellaneous Materials. A significant portion of the Correspondence consists of carbons and copies of letters from Lerner. The production shots for Camelot and Coco in the Photographs series are particularly distinctive. An inventory of the small amount of audiovisual recordings that have been transferred to the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound Division can be supplied upon request.