Within the 900+ boxes that contain Lawrence Schiller’s archives, housed at the Briscoe Center for American History in Austin, TX. are one-of-a-kind objects that bring clarity to the past where there may have been uncertainty. While in the center of the news-making events that produced these original items, Schiller understood the importance of preserving these pieces of history. He recognized that the knowledge of the past prepares us for the future.

Besides original documents and ephemera available for research there are 2,800+ hours of audio tapes, video interviews, documentary, and narrative films. In addition the archives contain 15,000"+ database records, documented with images and relevant metadata. From Schiller’s own lens and acquired archives there are over 200,000+ photographs.

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVES

Reel-to-reel tapes from Lenny Bruce performances culminating in his various arrests.

O.J. Simpson’s recording to the public prior to his arrest and his handwritten letter read to the press by Robert Kardashian.

200+ pages of KGB files on Lee Harvey Oswald with translations.

Controversial backyard photo of Oswald holding the assassination gun and Schiller’s recreation of the image.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Department (first work print, with its darkroom date stamp)

Original design for Marilyn/Mailer Time cover, wiht the final magazine.

Rare vintage print of Tom Kelly’s nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe against red velvet background from the 1950s.

The last photos of Gary Gilmore before his execution in Draper, Utah

Manuscript of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song and The Castle in the Forest with Mailer’s handwritten changes and notes recently donated to Wilkes University.

THE LIFE BEHIND ONE MAN’S DEATH

Lenny Bruce’s obscenity trials made headlines, but Schiller’s real interest in the story developed after news broke that the comedian had died of an overdose. Within weeks, Schiller was absorbed in Bruce’s life, interviewing his family and friends, the judges and lawyers of his trials, the doctors and police officers concerned with his habit, the women who staffed his office and his bed, and the person who knew Bruce better than anyone on earth, his wife Honey.

After producing Why Did Lenny Bruce Die?, a spoken word documentary for Capital Records, Schiller collaborated with Albert Goldman on the bestselling book Ladies and Gentleman, Lenny Bruce!!!, which became the basis for the film Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffman.

KEY BRUCE ARTIFACTS

• 9 reel-to-reel tapes of Bruce’s performances at the time of his arrests

• Schiller’s recorded interviews of Honey Bruce, Sally Marr, John Judnick, Marty Garbus, Marvin Worth, and others involved in the life of Lenny Bruce.

• Bruce’s correspondence with friends, attorney’s and others.

• Transcripts of trials in various jurisdictions and courts in which Bruce asserted his First Amendment rights as a defense to obscenity and other charges.

• 100+ vintage photographs from Bruce’s personal archives, many never before seen.

• Ephemera related to the production of Capitol Records’ spoken-word documentary Why Did Lenny Bruce Die? and the research and writing of Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!! by Albert Goldman from the Journalism of Lawrence Schiller

SHOT IN THE HEART

Gary Gilmore made headlines when he refused to appeal his death sentence in spite of a national moratorium on executions, and chose to be shot by a firing squad on the date and time the court had set. Gilmore didn’t care that his execution would jeopardize the lives of thousands of prisoners on death row-many of them of color-who had escaped their executions due to the moratorium.

After traveling to Provo, Utah, and securing access to Gilmore, Schiller soon discovered the story was deeper than what had been reported. His tape-recorded interviews of Gilmore on death row came first. After being the sole journalist to witness the execution, Schiller spent more than a year conducting additional research and interviews with members of Gilmore’s family and others in his life.

5 DAYS A WEEK, 32 WEEKS

In the end, 150+ people were interviewed in 300+ meetings, many in excess of four hours. The transcripts of these interviews alone come to thousands of pages. In May of 1977, Norman Mailer began to write The Executioner’s Song in collaboration with Schiller. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and was the basis for the Emmy Award-winning film of the same name produced and directed by Schiller.

The Executioner’s Song could never

have come into existence without Larry.

I did the writing, but he did the spade work.

I even learned how to do some interviews

because of him, how to go at things.

NORMAN MAILER

KEY ARTIFACTS

• 721 hours of tape-recorded interviews with 150+ people and 100+ photographs of Gilmore by Schiller in prison, and up to hours before the execution.

• 200+ pages of Gilmore’s handwritten correspondence with his girlfriend Nicole Baker and Schiller, and 150+ personal photographs of Gilmore, Baker, and third parties.

• Contemporary newspaper and magazine articles and recordings of radio and television broadcasts, relating to the events as they transpired including transcripts of court proceeding and appeals.

• Norman Mailer’s manuscript for The Executioner’s Song, with handwritten edits.

• Business files, reviews, and articles related to the book.

• Screenplay, casting tapes, location photos, production schedules, and other materials relating to the filming and broadcasting of the motion picture adaptation.

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Five hours after news broke that President Kennedy had been shot, Schiller arrived at the Dallas Police Department in time to photograph Oswald just after his arrest. When Jack Ruby gunned down Oswald two days later, Schiller, recognizing the importance of the moment, immediately purchased reproduction rights to Robert Jackson’s historic picture.

Four years later, Schiller secured the rights to Jack Ruby’s final interview in Dallas, which was first made known in The Controversy, a spoken word documentary album for Capitol Records.

Soon, Oswald’s mother Marguerite found herself on the other side of Schiller’s tape recorder, and thereafter, Marina Oswald was cooperating with Schiller as well. “You need to understand,” he told her, “that you owe it to history. And I mean all that happened.

OSWALD’S TALE

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Schiller and Norman Mailer traveled to Russia and Belarus to research a book on Oswald’s years there titled Oswald’s Tale.

After returning from Russia with scores of original interviews and over 200 pages of the KGB files, Schiller and Mailer interviewed Marina Oswald in a Dallas hotel for five consecutive days. Years later, President Yeltsin of Russia would gift President Clinton a copy of the KGB files on Oswald. Within a month the Secret Service was knocking on Schiller’s door to compare his set with those the U.S. government had received from Russia. He was never informed if the pages matched.

KEY ARTIFACTS

• 200+ hours of tape-recorded interviews (including transcripts) with Marina Oswald and those who knew, worked with and shadowed Oswald while he was in the Soviet Union.

• 700+ photographs by Schiller from November 22-26, 1963, including the Dallas Police Station the moment Oswald is brought in after his arrest; Jack Ruby in jail after killing Oswald, and various locations and people being investigated by the FBI and Secret Service.

• Recreation of the controversial photograph of Oswald holding the assassination rifle. The difference of a 90-degree vertical nose shadow and a 120-degree body shadow shown in the photo questioned the authenticity of the image. Schiller’s Polaroid photos taken at the same location four years later (when the solar system was in the same orbit), confirmed the validity of the original photograph.

CONTINUED

• Various ephemera related to the production of Capitol Records’ spoken-word documentary, The Controversy.

• 200+ pages of portions of the KGB files on Lee Harvey Oswald.

• Administrative files of Mailer and Schiller in Moscow and Minsk.

• Manuscript pages for Oswald’s Tale with Norman Mailer’s handwritten edits.

• Marina Oswald’s letters to Schiller

• ABC telefilm, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald

• Curation and exhibition files from the JFK Centennial and exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum produced by Schiller; opening night hosted by Caroline Kennedy.

• Production files for JFK Centennial book, JFK: A Vision for America, edited by Stephen Kennedy Smith and Douglas Brinkley.

IF HE DID IT

In 1994, worried and confused, Robert Kardashian, turned to Schiller for advise and help when his close friend O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murder of his former wife Nicole and Ron Goldman. Schiller had photographed the football star in 1967, when he scored the 64-yard winning touchdown against UCLA, and had been his neighbor years earlier.

Now, Simpson needed an influx of cash to finance his defense, and Schiller had the answer: respond to the thousands of letters arriving at his jail cell, in the form or a book. Schiller secretly interviewed Simpson in jail on eleven occasions (36 hours) as he awaited trial. The resulting book, I Want to Tell You, published before the jury was sworn in, earned Simpson $1.4 million and Schiller exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the Defense team and the right to publish his own book after a verdict was returned.

Being a motion picture director, the Defense asked Schiller to make ready the damning tapes of Detective Mark Fuhrman that would be played for the jury. With access to Simpson’s attorneys and confidants, the resulting interviews and research materials became the basis of Schiller’s own book, American Tragedy: The Uncensored Story of the Simpson Defense, a critically acclaimed New York Times No. 1 bestseller. A film for television soon followed.

“Many times,” Norman Mailer had written 15 years earlier, “Schiller was ready to cry out in his sleep that he was a writer without hands.” This book marked his transition to author. Jason Epstein, Editorial Director of Random House, noted in an interview years later that, “Schiller learned to write during the course of doing American Tragedy, the final draft is all his.”

KEY ARTIFACTS

• Simpson’s handwritten letter to the public, dated June 15, 1994, read to the press by Kardashian.

• 10-minute recording by Simpson on June 17, 1994, acknowledging his involvement in Nicole’s death; the tape was found in Kardashian’s home after the trial.

• 50+ hours of interviews with O.J. Simpson.

• 90+ hours of interviews with Kardashian.

• 600+ hours of interviews with Simpson’s legal team, family, and friends.

• Original legal pads and case notes from selected Simpson attorneys, including the investigative files of the Defense and the Prosecution and court transcripts and attorney legal files including official crime scene photos and reports.

• Entire discovery files supplied to Simpson’s Defense team by the Prosecution (50 boxes) including the investigative files .

CONTINUED

• 50+ Simpson family photographs

• Interview tapes of Detective Mark Furhman introduced as evidence in the trial, which confirmed his racist attitudes toward Black people, providing a critical turning point in the case.

• 1,000+ exclusive photographs of Simpson’s homecoming after the verdict and the two weeks that followed.

• Copies of major stories published in newspapers and magazines during and after the criminal trial and verdict.

• Published print, radio, and television interviews of Lawrence Schiller.

• Manuscripts, screenplay drafts, and other material from the writing and production of American Tragedy, the book and the film.