The papers of Ralph Joseph Block (1889-1974) span the years 1872-1971, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1906-1971. The collection contains correspondence, writings, memoranda, printed matter, photographs, and other material documenting Block's career as an author, reviewer, screenwriter, movie editor and associate producer; as president of the Screen Writers' Guild, and secretary of Hollywood for Roosevelt, 1940; and as a government official with the Office of War Information and the United States Information Agency. The Block Papers are arranged into the following series: Family Papers, Subject File, Speeches and Writings, Miscellany, Oversize, and Classified.

The Family Papers contain correspondence between Block his family, mostly with his parents while he attended the University of Michigan between 1907 and 1911 and with his mother after his father's death in 1914. Also in the series are letters to his wife after his return from India, 1946-1947. Files on the deaths and estates of his father and mother and his brother Julius include correspondence and other documents. This series also includes correspondence of his wife, Mary Greenacre Block, literary manuscripts labeled "MGB MSS" by several authors, and Block family financial records.

The Subject File contains correspondence, clippings, printed matter, and photographs relating to Cherokee, Iowa, Block's boyhood home; his and his wife's alma mater, the University of Michigan, and membership in Michigauma and other student associations; his work with the Screen Writers' Guild, for whom he testified to Congress in opposition to the Neely anti-block booking bill of 1939-1940; and charitable activities in the Motion Picture Relief Fund, for which he received an Oscar in 1939. Block was secretary of Hollywood for Roosevelt in 1940, and his files on this organization include telegrams arranging radio addresses by Claude Rains and others and record financial contributions by such figures as Ernst Lubitsch, Edward G. Robinson, Myron Selznick, and Daryl Francis Zanuck.

During World War II Block served as public affairs officer with the Office of War Information in India, where his duties included psychological warfare operations in Southeast Asia. He received the Medal of Freedom for outstanding service in 1946. Memoranda and clippings from India concern his duties in the Office of War Information and as chief public affairs officer of the American Mission in 1945-46. From 1952 to 1960, his activities as chief of the Bibliographic Division in the United States Information Agency are documented by the book reviews he wrote for that agency. The Speeches and Writings series includes Block's articles on propaganda and the Cold War. After retiring in 1960, Block reviewed books for the Washington Post , participated in seminars, and attempted to resume his writing career.

The Speeches and Writings series includes draft articles, many never published, mostly written by Block for the United States Information Agency and after retirement. Articles written for Rob Wagner's Script and other periodicals and newspapers using his own name and the pseudonym Alfred Count mostly published during the 1920s and 1930s concerned the theater, motion pictures, and current events in Europe. Also in the series are typescripts and drafts of plays Block wrote in the 1930s and 1940s.

Block's years as a freelance screenwriter are represented by typescripts, stories, and outlines for screenplays written in the 1930s. Most of his short stories were never published. Block also wrote numerous poems, some of which were published between 1915 and 1920 and in the 1930s. This series includes notes of speeches and talks; school and college writings, some published in the University of Michigan student publication The Gargoyle and elsewhere; and two radio scripts, 1938-1939. Block wrote as a book and drama reviewer at several stages of his career, as drama editor of the Kansas City Star , 1916-1917, as theater critic for the New York Tribune , 1918-1919, and as a book reviewer for the Washington Post and Louisville Courier-Journal , 1960-1963. Book reviews he wrote for the United States Information Agency are in the Subject File.

The Speeches and Writings series also includes numerous drafts of and notes for three unpublished novels and an unpublished autobiography. The novel, originally titled The Years and the Town , was begun around 1961. Several drafts culminating in the title The Pilgrimage of the Second Best Friend of Essie Kettle were revised throughout the decade. The other major unpublished work of this decade was Block's autobiography, variously titled Search for Identity , My Life in Two Centuries , and The Zoned Quest , which he began around 1960.

The Miscellany series contains general correspondence, including letters from Francis Hackett and John P. Marquand; photographs of Ralph and Mary Block and their daughter Bridget, as well as of the extended families of Block and Chraplewski, his mother's family; a photograph of the Greenacres, Mary Block's family, and of Block family friends and relatives. Some photographs of Ralph, Mary, and Bridget Block, as well as of the extended families of Block and Chraplewski, his mother's family, many of which are not specifically identified; photographs of the Greenacres, Mary Block's family, friends and relatives of both families, and the University of Michigan have been retained in the Miscellany files. Selected photographs of the Blocks, Block and Chraplewski relatives, Greenacre relatives and friends, the University of Michigan, India, family homes, dated circa 1879 through 1938 and undated, as well as albums of Mary Greenacre, 1903, and of Block at the University of Michigan, 1907, have been transferred to the Library's Prints and Photographs Division.

Clippings and scrapbooks document Block's writings and include articles citing his works. Personalized Christmas and greeting cards created by Ralph Block and the Block family over the years (many with photographs), house plans of the family home in Cherokee, Iowa, and diplomas of Ralph and Mary Block are also in the Miscellany series.