View Series V. Writings: Articles, Lectures, Prefaces, Introductions, and Book Reviews

Series VI. Writings: Plays, Screenplays, Short Fiction, and Poems

These files of typescripts, manuscripts, notes, and clippings represent one of the least-known aspects of Mumford's multifaceted career. As a young man, Mumford had great aspirations as a playwright and writer of fiction, and his lack of success in these areas was a source of frustration to him throughout his career. A few of his poems were published in The New Yorker and The Saturday Review of Literature, but for the most part, his literary output diminished to an occasional birthday poem in his later years. Screenplays have been filed with plays written for the stage, because Mumford worked on both during the same period in his life and brought the same concerns and motivations to both. His work for documentary films belongs to later phases of his development.

While still in his teens, Mumford and his friend Beryl Morse collaborated in writing screenplays for silent films. In this collection, Morse's contributions can sometimes be detected through Mumford's notes or by her handwriting, but such clarity in identification is rare. Unfortunately, the only film script that was produced no longer exists on paper, and the film itself has not survived. The Bells, based on Poe's work of the same name, was produced by the Edison Studios in 1913 but undoubtedly met the same fate as many other silent films.