The year was 1944. The nation was in the throes of the war, Bing Crosby’s “Don’t Fence Me In” was at the top of the charts, and the U’s basketball team – led by coach Vadal Peterson – went to Madison Square Garden to...
In the wake of Thanksgiving and in anticipation of the winter holidays to come, many of us find our thoughts turning to all the wonderful foods of the season. If you're already hungry, visit the Audio-Visual Archive in Special Collections and find a mouthwatering appetizer...
Kansas filmmaker Herk Harvey drove past Saltair only a couple of years after the once extravagant resort closed its doors forever, but the structure was already crumbling. The ghostly sight of the dilapidated pavilion inspired his atmospheric horror film, Carnival of Souls (1962), a cult...
Home movies are one of the most valuable components of the Audio Visual Archives in Special Collections at J. Willard Marriott Library. Whether on 8mm film or VHS or another format, these films give the viewer rare access to unguarded moments in the lives of everyday...
For the past century, the Bonneville Salt Flats west of the Great Salt Lake have been a popular destination for thrill seekers, mechanics, and engineers determined to test the maximum speed of their motor vehicle or even break a land speed record. Formed by the...
A regional archive is a wonderful place to discover new art and explore how local artists interpret and contribute to broader cultural movements. Audio-visual archives like the one at the University of Utah are a treasure trove of works from filmmakers like Jan Andrews, whose...
In the 1950s, the Ford Foundation and the Fund for the Advancement of Education recognized television as “the most powerful medium of communication yet devised by man.” In that decade, the number of home television sets skyrocketed from 50,000 to 50 million, and educators, government...
One of the most unexpected collections in the Audio-Visual Archive is the Blair Dean Utah Natural Bodybuilding Video Collection (A0077), http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv99673/. Featured above are Paula Kid and Ron Lee Kid competing in the 1983 Utah Bodybuilding Championships. Over the course of a long career promoting drug...
Footage from the Audio-Visual Archive in Special Collections is featured prominently in KUED’s new special, “National Parks - Beyond the Crowds,” which airs Tuesday April 26 at 7PM. This documentary, which explores some of Utah’s less visited National Parks and Monuments, places archive footage almost in...
Thirty-five years ago last week, March 21, 1981, the radical environmental activist group Earth First! unrolled a gigantic sheet of black plastic to simulate a crack in the face of Glen Canyon Dam, a controversial hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River at the Utah-Arizona border....