Library of Congress's Blog, page 50

“The Battle of the Century,” Laurel and Hardy’s “Lost” Classic, Enters The National Film Registry

The climatic pie fight from “Battle of the Century,” with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in the middle of the action. Hal Roach Studios.

“The Battle of the Century,” Laurel and Hardy’s 1927 silent short film, famed for its epic pie-in-the-face fight sequence, quickly disappeared after its theatrical release.

The 20-minute, two-reel bit of comic relief in the latter days of the Roaring Twenties got left behind in the rush to talkies, as did most silent films. The last known surviving copy of its famed second reel was considered lost for good by the 1960s. It seemed to be a flickering bit of entertainment lost to time, disintegrating film stock and a too-late appreciation of an outdated art form. Slate magazine once described the missing second reel, containing most of the pie-fight sequence, as “one of the most deeply mourned lost treasures in film history.”

But after a California collector and historian named Jon Mirsalis stumbled across a copy of the second reel in 2015, the near-complete version of “Battle” today enters the gates of cinematic eternity, as a highlight of the 2020 class of the Library’s National Film Registry. That designation, announced by Librarian Carla Hayden this morning, caps one of cinema’s most unlikely fairy-tale endings.

” ‘Battle’ is such a well-made film with top-notch people working on it, many of whom went on to great careers,” says Rob Stone, moving image curator for the Library, talking about the film’s place in history. “It also makes for a good example to talk about how silent films were constructed, the progression of Laurel and Hardy’s work and, besides, it’s a feel-good story about how ‘lost’ films aren’t really lost. Maybe it’ll get people to start looking under their beds for other ‘lost’ things.”

Mirsalis, a toxicologist by profession and film collector by avocation, after he threaded the reel into his home film projector and saw the full pie-fight sequence: “I was watching with my jaw hanging open.”

Other 2020 entrants into the registry include pop-culture classics “The Dark Knight,” “The Blues Brothers,” and “Grease,” as well as 1918’s “Bread,” by director Ida May Park and Wim Wenders’ 1999 documentary about aging Cuban musicians, “Buena Vista Social Club.” Since the creation of the National Film Preservation Act, 800 films have been added to the registry for their contributions to the cultural, historic or aesthetic history of American cinema. The preliminary selections are made by the National Film Preservation Board and a cadre of Library specialists; the Librarian makes the final cut.

Turner Classic Movies is hosting a special Tuesday, Dec. 15, starting at 8 p.m. EST, to screen a selection of this year’s entries. Hayden and TCM host Jacqueline Stewart will introduce six films as part of the mini-marathon.

First up? “The Battle of the Century.”

It’s a fitting pride of place. When Mirsalis announced that he’d found the reel at the Library’s “Mostly Lost” film conference in 2015, the audience gasped. Newspapers and magazines wrote features. Film historian Leonard Maltin had found reel one in the 1970s in a collection at the Museum of Modern Art. He was astonished Mirsalis found its companion four decades later. “It’s been a holy grail of comedy,” he told the New York Times.

Since then, the nearly complete film (missing only a few short bits) has been pieced together from the collections of the Library, MOMA, the University of California at Los Angeles and other sources. It’s for sale on a variety of formats, often as part of larger anthologies.

The film’s storied history started simply enough. In 1927, Hal Roach Studios put together comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the beginning of what would become one of Hollywood’s most famous on-screen pairings. One of their first projects was “Battle.”

The plot: Hardy takes out an insurance policy on Laurel, his partner and a lousy boxer, and tries to engineer an “accident” that will result in a modest injury but a hefty payout. This being sketch comedy, Hardy starts throwing banana peels in Laurel’s path. One of these lands in front of a delivery man exiting a pie shop with a tray of – you guessed it – custard pies. He slips, gets up and soon shoves a pie in Hardy’s face. Hardy retaliates with a thrown pie but misses, instead hitting a passing young woman on the rump. Incensed, she grabs a pie from the delivery truck, flinging it at Hardy but hitting someone else. The fight escalates with each new victim’s throw missing its retaliatory target, instead hitting yet another innocent, who enters the fray with indignant but inaccurate results. It was farce, it was slapstick, it was a gag in which some 3,000 pies were thrown.

In 1927, people liked it fine but that was about it. Silent films of the era were routinely melted down to their chemical basics after their theatrical runs. The practice was so pervasive that 75 percent of all silent films are now believed to have been lost forever, according to a 2013 study by the Library.

But “Battle” wasn’t so quickly forgotten. As Laurel and Hardy’s fame grew and the decades passed, “Battle” became an outsized myth – that huge pie fight that everyone remembered but so few had actually seen.

In 1958, film historian Robert Youngson obtained a print of  the second reel of “Battle” from the film studio as part of his research for putting together an anthology called “The Golden Age of Comedy.” He included a few clips from that reel in the final cut of his film. For decades, those clips were the only thing anyone saw of “Battle.”

Shortly thereafter, the studio’s nitrate negatives of “Battle,” by then more than thirty years old, completely decomposed. It was presumed that the film, like so many of its peers, was gone forever.

However, while it was well-known in the small world of film collectors that Youngson had made prints of his clips from the second reel – they were bought and sold – no one knew about that complete copy of the second reel he had obtained from the studio, all 400 feet of it. At the time, Mirsalis points out, no one was particularly looking for it, either. Definitive histories of Laurel and Hardy’s work had not been published, so no one knew how rare it was, including Youngson.

When Youngson died in 1974, his huge collection was bought by three other collectors: William K. Everson, Herb Graff and Gordon Berkow.  Berkow ended up with most of the silent film. By then, it had been established that “Battle” appeared to be lost to history and there was a clamor to find it. But if Berkow ever saw the small, round film canister labeled as “BATTLE OF THE CENTURY R2” among the hundreds of others in the collection, it apparently never registered.

Berkow died in 2004 with the treasure still buried among the other 2,300 films in his collection. After the collection spent a decade in storage in New Jersey, his heirs shipped it out to Mirsalis’ California home for him to liquidate.

The films, collectively, weighed several tons. They almost completely covered the floor of his small home theater. The stacks were waist high.

“You could barely walk through the room,” he remembers.

The work was difficult, in part because the written inventory of the collection was in such disarray. It included more than 350 films that weren’t listed and missing some 200 that were. Given that, Mirsalis had no choice but to spend months threading up each roll of film and projecting it to make sure of what he had in front of him.

When he finally saw the canister labeled “Battle…R2” he assumed it was just a copy of the long-ago clips that Youngson had made. That was no big deal.

Still, he threaded up the film, turned on the projector … and made one of the great discoveries in film history.

“Your brain is going,’ he remembers of that moment, being the first person to see the missing reel in decades, ‘This can’t be real.’ ”

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Dolly Parton: “The Library That Dolly Built”

Dolly Parton reads to children in the Library’s Great Hall in 2018. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Dolly Parton’s documentary about her world-class book giveaway program for young children debuted on Facebook this week, highlighting her Imagination Library’s 25-year history and its ties to the Library.

“The Library that Dolly Built” chronicles how Parton, the child of impoverished parents (her father was illiterate) in rural Tennessee, built an international program that has given away more than 150 million books to young children since its 1995 inception. The program is simple: Participating children receive one free book by mail each month from birth until age five, regardless of income.

The program began in Parton’s native Sevier County, in the Smoky Mountains in east Tennessee, with a first order of 1,760 books.  By 2001, it was operating with 27 affiliates in 11 states. The organization gave away its one millionth book in 2006; a decade later, it was mailing that many books each month. It’s now working across the United States and in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and Ireland.

Parton is a frequent guest at the Library — the Imagination Library was a 2014 recipient of the Library’s Literacy Awards — and stopped in for a day’s worth of programs in 2018, donating the program’s 100 millionth book to the Library’s collection. She took the stage with Librarian Carla Hayden for a talk about the program for the occasion.

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She also spoke with the Library’s Gayle Osterberg for a charming 10-minute segment about the program’s origins, including its ties to one of her signature songs, “Coat of Many Colors.”

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On the Passing of Sen. Paul Sarbanes

Sen. Paul Sarbanes, right, with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden (then-executive director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library)

I am deeply saddened by the passing of Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland.

In addition to his distinguished Congressional career, Sen. Sarbanes served with his wife Christine on the Enoch Pratt Free Library board in Baltimore and was a staunch supporter of literacy, an advocate for libraries, and a champion of lifelong learning. As Executive Director of the Pratt Library, I have enjoyed a long friendship with Sen. Sarbanes and his family and will remain immeasurably grateful for his support on my appointment as Librarian of Congress in 2016.

On behalf of the Library of Congress, we want to offer our deepest condolences and prayers to our congressional colleague, Rep. John Sarbanes, and to all of Sen. Sarbanes’ family.

Jason Reynolds: Grab The Mic, December Edition

This will be a short newsletter.

One thing I don’t recall ever being told by any adult in my life when I was a kid, was to rest. Other than the forced nap time in nursery school and kindergarten, rest always just seemed like something I crashed into after expending every ounce of energy. It was the thing that happened when the sugar wore off. But there was never a moment when someone sat me down and explained why rest is important. And because it was never taught to me in the same way the importance of vegetables and kindness were, here I stand older than I’ve ever been with absolutely no clue how to do it.

But I’m going to learn. And to start, I’m taking a month off from writing this newsletter. So there won’t be one in January because I’ll be … resting.

What I’d love is for some of you to try it with me, this resting thing. Maybe once a day, turn off your phones and computers, close the books I know you’re reading and just sit still. Let’s all try to do it for five minutes a day. Just let your mind and body do nothing for a moment. I’m, of course, going for the gold and going to try to do this for a few hours each day, but knowing all of you are shutting down for five minutes will make me feel less anxious, like we’re all in this thing together. A communal rest, stretching across cities and states. It’s a beautiful thing to imagine, all of us who are normally connected by movement and activity, by voice and touch, by computers and cell phones, now connected through calm.

Because we can be. Because we have to be. Because now that I’m older than I’ve ever been, I realize giving your mind and body a moment of ease is just as important — as healthy — as vegetables. As important as kindness. Or maybe the most important kindness — the kindness of self.

And if an adult has never told you this, if you’ve never known that the brain needs breathing time to continue to do brain stuff, or the body needs moments to heal itself from your constantly bumping it into everything around you, if you’ve never thought of resting as an important choice for you to make, well, that’s what you’ve got me for. I’m pretty much your restie bestie. Yep … that’s my new title: Jason Reynolds, the Inaugural National Restie Bestie, here to encourage you to learn to calm your own fire so you don’t burn up everything around you or burn out everything inside you.

This is what love sounds like.

Until February, Happy Holidays and rest easy.

Jason

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Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” – “Wait for Nod”

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The first page of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” in pencil. Music Division. 

At some point during the hectic composition of “Rhapsody in Blue,” one of George Gershwin’s masterpieces of 20th-century American music, the maestro got impatient with the process. The piece, which was to debut in just a few short weeks, would eventually run to 22,000 notes over 500 measures, after all.

In Gershwin’s handwritten score of “Rhapsody,” he sketched out the notation for his piano solo but left a small section blank in the second draft, as by then copyists were helping notate each change that he was making as the piece came together. That solo section stayed blank in the third and final score arranged by Ferde Grofé, with only a note to conductor Paul Whiteman to “wait for nod” when Gershwin launched into his solo.

The “wait for nod” note marking Gershwin’s solo. Photo: Shawn Miller.

It’s a charming moment. Gershwin, 25, performing his first major concert piece, would wing it for a few measures, then give a tilt of the chin to Whiteman, the most famous conductor of the era, to bring in the rest of the band back in.

“It’s sort of like Babe Ruth calling his home run,” says Ray White, a music specialist in the Performing Arts Division, looking over “Rhapsody” manuscripts on a recent afternoon.

The Library’s vast collection of papers documenting “Rhapsody’s” birth has been a boon to researchers, academics and fans for decades. But the Library, which has prominent pieces of the George and Ira Gershwin Collection on long-term display, has now digitized George Gershwin’s original manuscript copy. It’s in pencil, with his neat, all capital block lettering spelling out “RHAPSODY IN BLUE – FOR JAZZ BAND AND PIANO” across the top of the first page. It’s dated Jan. 7, 1924, a few days after Gershwin reluctantly agreed to compose a piece for an upcoming concert by Whiteman’s band.

The Library also has the papers of Grofé, who not provided the score not only for the debut, but also for the 1942 lush, orchestral version of “Rhapsody” that quickly became the standard rendition.

Taken together, the two collections give the Library all three manuscripts of “Rhapsody” leading up to its historic debut on the afternoon of Feb. 12, 1924, at Aeolian Hall, before a packed crowd of 1,100 that included musical luminaries such as Igor Stravinsky, Leopold Stokowski, Fritz Kreisler, John Philips Sousa and jazz pianist Willie Smith.

No recording exists of that performance, but you can listen to Whiteman’s orchestra playing a shortened version of this arrangement on the Library’s National Jukebox. Recording limitations of the day required the piece be truncated; be sure to listen to the second part as well.

George Gershwin, 1937. Photo: Carl Van Vechten.

The story of how such a grand piece came together in just five or six weeks has been the subject of any number of books, musical studies and pop-culture folklore. The central debate turns on how much the young Gershwin wrote and how much the veteran Grofé completed.

“The harmonies, the melodies the rhythms — those are all Gershwin,” said Ryan Raul Bañagale, author of “Arranging Gershwin: ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and the Creation of an American Icon,” and director of Performing Arts at Colorado College. He researched the Library’s “Rhapsody” holdings as part of his doctoral research at Harvard University. “But Grofé selected almost every instrumental assignment outside of the piano.”

Part of this was because “Rhapsody” was something of a rush job. None of them had any idea they were creating an epic. It was just a piece for a rather didactic concert of two dozen musical pieces that Whiteman was billing as “An Experiment in Modern Music.” The idea was to show that American jazz, the vibrant new music of the young country, could be just as smart and sophisticated as classical music.

At the time, Gershwin was a hot young star of the Broadway musical set. His “Swanee,” covered by Al Jolson, sold more than a million copies of sheet music. He was working on another musical, “Sweet Little Devil,” in late 1923 and initially turned down Whiteman’s request for a piece to include in his show.

He changed his mind after Whiteman leaked an article to the press saying that Gershwin would indeed perform – there was no way a youngster like him could publicly turn down Whiteman, then the biggest name in dance music.

Gershwin, as he recounted many times later, began composing the piece on a train trip to Boston. He put “Jan. 7” on a piece of sheet music and sketched out a bravura opening – a long, trilling glissando for a clarinet. Then he was off and running, working through several different themes that highlighted different aspects of American music.

But there were only five weeks until the performance and he had his musical to get ready, besides. So he sketched out a 56-page, two-piano short score for a 26-piece orchestra. This was a great start, but there was still work to do. He had a “marked and jazzy” section, for example, that he soon cut.

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This passage was struck from the final, but Gershwin notes it was to be “Marked & Jazzy.”

So in a cleaned-up, updated version – this time part of it in ink, part in pencil, with much of it filled in by different copyists – he filled out more of the score, but with assignments for only 13 instruments.

He quickly turned this second, cleaner version over to Grofé, the brilliant and innovative composer for Whiteman’s band. Grofé was a key figure in the early days of big band dance music, scoring complicated arrangements between the bass and reed sections that drove the music forward. Classically trained, his tone poem “The Grand Canyon Suite” is still well-regarded, and he went on to have a high-profile career leading his own orchestra and composing music for Hollywood films. (Fun footnote: Parts of  his “Grand Canyon” were used in the holiday classic film, “A Christmas Story.”)

Ferde Grofé, Photo: Bain News Service.

So, in the first few weeks of 1924, he didn’t hesitate to use the young composer’s score as a blueprint rather than a Bible. He made changes. He added four violins and two French horns and cut out other instruments.

The result? A piece that would go on to become of the nation’s most cherished musical scores and a long-lasting debate about how much credit Grofé should receive for his contributions. Gershwin, who died of brain cancer at age 38 in 1937, was always clear that he had done the heavy lifting.

“Mr. Grofé made a very fine orchestration from my completed sketch,” he wrote to a music business executive in 1928, “but he certainly had no hand in the composing.”

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The Library’s leather -bound cover of Gershwin’s manuscript.

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Jason Reynolds: On the (Virtual) School Tour

Jason Reynolds. Photo: Adedeyo Kosokoto.

This is a guest post by Guy Lamolinara, a communications officer in Literary Initiatives. 

Kids in 11 schools across the country will soon get a special treat: A visit from Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

This being no ordinary time, Jason will visit virtually, but his presence will be no less deeply felt. Jason has a rare gift for connecting with young people and getting them excited about books and reading. This special two-week tour will reach middle and high school students in underserved communities and will complement Jason’s current digital offerings, a prompt-based video series titled “Write. Right. Rite.” and a monthly newsletter all available on Jason’s Library of Congress Resource Guide.

Jason’s National Ambassador platform is called “GRAB THE MIC: Tell Your Story.” He launched this platform because he wants students to embrace and share their stories. Ultimately, Jason sees sharing as a type of empowerment that helps kids become their own ambassadors.

During the first half of December, Jason will meet students from:

W. Eater Junior High School, Rantoul, Illinois
Leland Middle School and Leland High School, Leland, Mississippi
Live Oak Middle School, Denham Springs, Louisiana
Red Cloud Schools, Pine Ridge, South Dakota
Sage Valley Junior High School and Twin Spruce Junior High School, Gillette, Wyoming
Stratton Elementary School and Park Middle School, Beckley, West Virginia
Swansea High Freshman Academy and Swansea High School, Swansea, South Carolina

In each virtual event, Jason will discuss his role and will talk to two “student ambassadors”—each student will ask questions of Jason, and will be asked questions by Jason in return. All participating students will receive a free copy of Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks and schools across the country may download an educator guide, both courtesy of Simon & Schuster. Each winning school was selected from almost 200 proposals submitted earlier this year.

Jason Reynolds’s goal for his ambassadorship is to visit communities that do not often have the opportunity to host authors for meaningful discussions with young people. Although he must now connect with schools virtually, his goal remains unchanged: “Though we’re living in unprecedented times, times that cause us to pivot and rethink our plans, I’m still just as excited to engage with our young people around stories,” says Reynolds. “If anything, what we’ve learned over the last eight months is that we need each other, and my desire is for that need to be partially satiated with the exchanging of our narratives, even if through a screen. I feel encouraged and am looking forward to ‘hitting the road.’”

Proposals for 2021 GRAB THE MIC tour with Jason Reynolds—currently planned for Spring 2021—are now being accepted via Library of Congress partner, Every Child a Reader.

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Mystery Photo Contest: Thanksgiving Edition

Cary O’Dell at the Library’s National Recording Registry runs our Mystery Photo Contest. He recently wrote about readers solving several photos from a September set of pictures. He’s back with another round.

Nothing beats a good Mystery Photo Contest for the holidays and we’re here for you!

After a fantastic round of photo-solving by readers this fall, we were able to identify eight of our final unidentified stars of yesteryear. From the original cache of more than 800 unidentified celebrities in a collection of entertainment industry stills donated to the Library a few years ago, we are now down to 34. Amazing, no?

So here we go again! You know the drill: Guesses and suggestions in the comments, but please check the captions to make sure that we haven’t already ruled it out.

#1. That IS conductor Frederik Prausnitz on the left but we don’t know the man on the right. The photographer tells us that he worked out of out of Camillus, N.Y., and that Prausnitz was associated with the nearby Syracuse Symphony. Those might be clues that help us finally identify mystery man on the right wearing a trench coat and carrying what appears to be a briefcase. (The photo came to us with those editing markings already on it. We certainly wouldn’t be so rude as to X out Mr. Prausnitz.)

#2.  Of all of mystery photos we’ve sorted through over the years, this is the one that might actually be a stock shot from an ad agency. You know, the  generic “happy girl dancing” image that might appear in an advertisement. Then again, our mystery lady might be a budding recording star and this is a back-of-the-album photo. From previous guesses, we can rule out former 1980s pop stars Brenda K. Starr and Perri “Pebbles” Reid.

#3. This is NOT Pan Am founder Juan Trippe, although that is an excellent guess. Though this picture was found in a cache of show biz stills, this unknown gentleman might be connected to travel or shipping in some way considering the map and the photo of ships behind him. A newscaster, maybe?

#4.  UPDATE:  Alert reader Collin Larsen correctly identified this as former actress Marta Brennan. She appeared as a young actress in “Centennial,” a star-studded 1978 mini-series that featured Raymond Burr, Robert Conrad, Barbara Carrera, Lynn Redgrave and so on. That’s her only credit on the Internet Movie Database. She now edits a film production newsletter and confirmed for us that this publicity photo is indeed her. Thanks, Collin! This one has proved to be very frustrating, as it has generated so many different guesses. Maybe it’s because that cheerful girl-next-door look resembles so many actresses? Bangs notwithstanding, we know that she is NOT: Karen Valentine, Judy Strangis, Joyce McKinney, Sheila White, Glory Annen, Janet Munro, Jody Fair, Janice Nicholls, Barbara Flynn, Lalla Ward, Suzy Mandel or Helen Worth. By the way, as an identifying feature, I’ve always been struck by the small gap between this lady’s two front teeth.

#5.  This is, we assume, a silent film actress. Is it Edwina Booth, she of the tragic filming “Trader Horn” in east Africa? Booth was sick when she left the United States, then had a terrible shoot on location, including contracting malaria, suffering from a sunstroke and other ailments. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1931, but she sued the studio, spent six years recovering her health and never returned to prominence.  Or perhaps it’s Jeanette Loff, who, after her silent film career, died of ammonia poisoning in 1942 under mysterious circumstances? She was just at 35.

#6. This is NOT Maria Montez, the “Queen of Technicolor” in B movies in the early 1940s. Nor is it from the film “Sinbad the Sailor.” In fact, it might not be from a film at all—note that our heroine seems to be lying on a stage with its curtain visible in the background.

#7. This pictures smacks of being shot at the local mall (sorry, just calling balls and strikes here) so we probably aren’t looking for a national name. I always figured he must be a musician with a local orchestra or something similar — or, of course, not.  He might be a Hollywood or New York name with a long list of behind-the-scenes credits. But who is he?

#8. This one is torturous!  This duo is hard to identify as they look like every punk/new wave duo that ever plugged in an amp or bought a can of hairspray. In fact, we haven’t even been able to reach an agreement if—in a binary sense–this is two men, two women or one of each. We do know that it is NOT:  Wendy & Lisa, T-Rex, Heart, Suicide, The Throbs, The Slits, Scarlet Fantastic, Sparks, Tik and Tok, Alannah Myles, The Motels, the New York Dolls, Christian Death, Love and Rockets, the Jacobites, Sisters of Mercy or Haysi Fantayzee.

#9.  This pin-up is NOT Kitten Navidad, though many readers who have apparently seen her in those kitschy Russ Myer movies thought so. She could be an actress, singer, a model or all of the above; she’s got the glamour smile and the dimples for show biz.

#10.  We go back to an earlier era and different style of mystery guest here. The framing of the shot is straightforward; her posture is the same. There’s no vamp or vixen vibe; it’s a woman nicely dressed wearing white stockings and what might even be sensible shoes. The sepia tone, dress and hairstyle all suggests the 1920s or thereabouts. Could this be vaudeville star Stella Mayhew? Maybe Lillian Shaw, who specialized in risqué vaudeville routines, a la Sophie Tucker?

#11.  The artist’s signature on this painting is “Kepler.” It’s not the artist Fred Kepler, we checked that out. But what is his/her first name? And is this work featured in a film or TV show?

 

#12. These two guys have us stumped. The man on the right is NOT Richard Chamberlain and the two are NOT Chas & Dave or the Alan Parsons Project or Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager of Studio 54 fame.  And, yep, that is a Donald Duck pin on the man’s lapel.

#13. Yes, the only woman at the table is a young Gloria Stuart, the actress who memorably played the late-in-life Rose character in “Titanic,” with Kate Winslet starring as the younger Rose. But, since our hearts must go on: Does anyone recognize any of the men around her?

#14. Hey kids, it’s a Hawaiian luau! But who are the two women and the man enjoying it? This looks too dressy to actually be on the beach, so maybe it’s a p.r. launch for a film, theater production or stage show?

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A “Thanksgiving Hymn” for Lincoln

“The President’s Hymn,” William Augustus Muhlenberg. 1864. 

This is a guest post by Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

On October 3, 1863, following the hard-fought Union victory at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln asked the nation to commemorate the event in a spirit of gratitude by celebrating November 26, 1863, as an official day of Thanksgiving.

Secretary of State William Seward penned the address for Lincoln.  In it, the nation was called upon to set aside the fourth Thursday of November in the years to come as a national holiday. This was in part a gesture back to 17th- and 18th-century America, when days of humility and thanksgiving were announced as a means to unite the population in a moment of gratitude and prayer.

George Washington called for a day of “Public Thanksgiving and Prayer,” when he stepped into his first term as the nation’s first president. The practice fell to the side after Thomas Jefferson took office, as he rejected the overt religious tones of such a proclamation. No further official Thanksgiving announcements were made until Lincoln called upon the nation in 1863.

The Rev. William Augustus Muhlenberg, a prominent Episcopal clergyman, educator, and the founder of St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City, was so taken by Lincoln’s proclamation that he wrote the lyrics for a hymn, “Give Thanks All Ye People” (music by Joseph W. Turner) as a celebration of the moment.  The hymn was a metrical version of the President’s address.

In a letter to the editor of the New York Times on November 17, 1863, Henry W. Bellows, an American clergyman and president of the United States Sanitary Commission, revealed the impetus behind Muhlenberg’s hymn: The President’s proclamation “made our ‘Harvest Home’ a National Festival; a significant and blessed augury of that ‘more perfect Union,’ in which, with God’s blessing, the war shall leave us as a people.”

It was only fitting, Bellows suggested, that the hymn be called “The President’s Hymn.”

He wrote: “Solicitous to have the highest authority given to the use of this National Hymn, I obtained the reluctant consent of its writer (author also of the music to which it is set) to ask our Chief Magistrate’s permission to style it ‘The President’s Hymn.’  The Secretary of State, through whom the application was made, telegraphed me a few hours afterwards the President’s leave — in the decisive style which has now become so familiar to our people – ‘Let it be so called.’  May we not hope that millions of our people will, on Nov. 26, be found uniting in this National Psalm of Thanksgiving, and that ‘The President’s Hymn’ will be the household and the Temple song of that solemn and joyful day?  It will help to join our hearts as citizens thus to blend our voices as worshippers; and the blessings of Union, Liberty and Peace will sooner descend on a people that can thus unite in its praise and hosannahs.”

“Give thanks, all ye people, give thanks to the Lord,

Alleluias of freedom, with joyful accord,

Let the east and the west, north and south roll along,

Sea, mountain and prairie, one thanksgiving song.”

The hymn did not take hold in the American mind, but Congress officially made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1870, although the fourth Thursday in November date was not designated. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved up the date by a week late in the Depression in an attempt to lengthen the Christmas shopping season, but it proved extremely unpopular. Congress passed a bill that officially designated the last Thursday in November as the date in October 1941, and Roosevelt signed it that December. It has been observed on that date ever since.

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College Students: Apply Now to be a Library Junior Fellow!

The 2020 class of Junior Fellows.

This is a guest post by the Junior Fellows Program team.

College students! If you’re looking for an excellent, one-of-a-kind virtual internship next summer, you’ll want to apply for the Library’s Junior Fellows Summer Internship Program 2021. But hurry — the applications window closes on midnight on Monday, November 30.

You can check out our 2020 Fellows and what they did last year to get an idea of how your online summer job might work.

What’s this look like? It’s a 10-week paid internship, running from  May 24 – July 30, 2021. It’s open to undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning and conducting research at the largest library in the world. For the second year in a row, the internship will be conducted virtually. When you apply, please be sure to list your top three choices.

This year the program will offer 23 projects across many of the Library’s divisions, such as Manuscripts, Preservation Research and Testing, Digital Strategy, the Law Library and many of the regional divisions of world study. During the summer you might work on a project that explores new ways to support digital scholars, develop new preservation techniques or make our collections more accessible. Twice weekly you will have the opportunity to explore a broad spectrum of our operations by participating in professional development opportunities, including virtual tours, lectures and forums.

Your work will be guided by a project mentor (a Library curator or specialist) in your host division. You’ll have the opportunity to explore digital initiatives and increase access to the institution’s unparalleled collections, programs and resources.

Sound interesting? Please fill out the online application right away. If you’ve got questions, please email juniorFellows@loc.gov rather than post them in the comments.

Hope to see you this summer!

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Poet Laureate Joy Harjo Gets a Third Term; Launches “Living Nations, Living Words”

This is a guest post by Rob Casper and Anne Holmes of the Library’s Literary Initiatives office.

U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as the U.S. Poet Laureate, will serve a third term in the office, the Librarian of Congress announced today, making her only the second person in the position’s 77-year history to do so. Harjo will start that third year next September. We’re hoping that health conditions in the country will by then allow her to return to traveling across the nation to read her work and champion poetry.

Today also marks the launch of Harjo’s signature project, “Living Nations, Living Words,” which features 47 contemporary Native poets through a new story map and online audio collection.

“Throughout the pandemic, Joy Harjo has shown how poetry can help steady us and nurture us. I am thankful she is willing to continue this work on behalf of the country,” said Librarian Carla Hayden. “A third term will give Joy the opportunity to develop and extend her signature project.”

When Harjo first accepted the position in April 2019, she talked about wanting to create an online map of living Native poets. She soon met with staff in the Geography and Maps Division, who introduced her to the perfect platform: ArcGIS StoryMaps, an online app geared toward storytelling that the Library uses as an immersive learning tool.

As Joy explored the platform and talked about the possibilities for her project, it became clear that she not only wanted to feature a number of Native poets, but wanted to hear from them, too, reading and discussing their work. She felt strongly that these poets should choose their own poems, while keeping in mind the theme of place and displacement, and the following touchpoints: visibility, persistence, resistance and acknowledgment.

Joy had also spent time the previous summer exploring collections in the Library’s American Folklife Center. When we started discussing the possibility of building a new collection featuring the poems and voices of Native poets, AFC seemed like the perfect home. This new collection was a first for us, and we’re delighted that it features poets such as Louise Erdrich, Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui and Layli Long Soldier. The accompanying commentary by the participating poets added ethnographic value to their recordings—a key component of AFC collections.

Map of Native American poets, part of Harjo’s project.

In the months that followed, we worked and dreamed with Harjo and our colleagues in these two divisions to bring “Living Nations, Living Words” to life. In June, we began inviting poets to contribute their poems and voices to the project. In October, we began building the map.

Today, we invite you to dive in and explore all that “Living Nations, Living Words” has to offer. As Harjo writes in the introduction, “There are connections between all of the poets in ‘Living Nations, Living Words’—and connecting influences between these poets and many, many other Native poets who do not appear here, and many, many American and world poets from the present and generations before. As you explore, you too will be connected.”

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