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

Series VII. Writings: Film and Television Documentaries

With two major exceptions, Mumford never used the media of film or television to communicate his philosophy to a larger public unfamiliar with his books and articles. In 1939, he was asked to write the narrative for The City (1939), a film produced under the aegis of the American Institute of Planners and shown at the 1939 World's Fair. Loosely inspired by The Culture of Cities, the film was directed by Willard Van Dyke and Ralph Steiner, and the score was written by Aaron Copeland. The City has achieved classic status among architects and planners. Lewis Mumford on the City (1963) was a six-part television series produced by the National Film Board of Canada and based on The City in History . The script for the series was primarily written by Mumford, who also appeared as the on-camera narrator.

Materials in this box include typescripts, brochures, and clippings. While the collection contains substantial script material for The City, there is no working material for Lewis Mumford on the City beyond what is contained in the National Film Board of Canada correspondence file.

Although Mumford was interviewed for television at various times, the collection includes only some edited interview transcripts, which were published as magazine articles and are, therefore, filed accordingly. There is one brief proposal for a television series which was never produced, but it lacks explanatory notes. The collection contains no audiovisual materials, but Mumford gave the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts a set of the Lewis Mumford on the City series. This can be found in the Fine Arts Library.