Arranging, Describing, and Creating Access to the Paddy Chayefsky Collection

FAIN: PA-50609-04

New York Public Library (New York, NY 10016-0109)
Karen Nickeson (Project Director: July 2003 to October 2006)

The arrangement and description of the papers of the playwright and screen writer Paddy Chayefsky (1923-1981), as well as the creation of an EAD finding aid that will be mounted on the New York Public Library Web site.

The Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts seeks $147,566 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a two-year project to arrange, describe, preserve, and make available to the public the papers of playwright/scenarist Paddy Chayefsky. The papers, measuring 200 linear feet, fully document the career of three-time Academy Award winner, Sidney “Paddy” Chayefsky. The archive of this seminal figure in the literature of post-war American stage, film, radio, and television chronicles the career of an artist and social historian who kept careful records of his creative process, and includes scripts, correspondence, photographs, programs, posters, window cards, and television kinescopes.