Collection Guide
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Goff (Ivan) Collection of Television Scripts
0004
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Table of contents
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
Pepperdine University. Special Collections and University Archives.
Title: Ivan Goff Collection of Television Scripts
Identifier/Call Number: 0004
Physical Description:
27.5 Linear Feet
(22 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1964-1981
Abstract: Ivan Goff was an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who authored a number of successful movies from 1949-1960 with his writing partner,
Ben Roberts. Goff and Roberts also wrote and produced several successful series for television in the 1960s and 1970s. The
collection contains scripts and production notes from three television series in which Goff was involved as a writer or producer:
Mannix,
Nero Wolfe and
The Rogues.
Physical Location: Pepperdine University. Special Collections and University Archives.
Language of Material: Materials are in English.
Advance notice required for access.
Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository and the copyright holder.
Cast books may not be photocopied.
[Box/folder# or item name], Ivan Goff Collection of Television Scripts, Collection no. 0004, Special Collections and University
Archives, University Libraries, Pepperdine University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The collection was received from Ivan Goff in a number of installments beginning April 7, 1976.
Ivan Goff was born in Perth, Australia, on April 17, 1910. He began his career as a journalist for a local newspaper, but
came to dislike the relative isolation of the country from the rest of the world. He eventually made his way to England where
he worked several jobs while trying to break into journalism.
In 1936, Goff became the Hollywood Correspondent for the
London Daily Mirror. Goff decided to settle in Hollywood, where he worked as a staff writer at Republic Studios and then Warner Brothers.
At the start of World War II, Goff joined the Army Signal Corps, and made propaganda shorts in New York. During this time,
Goff met a fellow writer named Ben Roberts and started a writing partnership with him that lasted 39 years.
Goff and Roberts' first work was the play
Portrait in Black, which had runs in London and Broadway and was developed into a movie in 1960. The duo also wrote several movies for Warner
Brothers, including
White Heat (1949), and
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), for which they received an Oscar nomination. From 1954-55 Goff served as the President of the Screen Writer Guild.
In the 1960s, Goff and Roberts shifted to working in television, writing and producing a number of series, including
The Rogues (1964),
Mannix (1967-75), and
Charlie's Angels (1976-81).
Goff married actress Natalie Draper in 1948, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1964. They had three sons, Kevin, Trevor,
and Brian. Goff died at the age of 89 in Santa Monica, CA, on September 23, 1999.
The collection consists of episode scripts for the television series
Mannix,
Nero Wolfe, and
The Rogues, along with documents created by staff during the production of an episode. These include production reports, call sheets,
script supervisor reports, program practices notes, cast sheets, research reports, and outlines and drafts of episode scripts.
Miscellaneous items include a script for an episode of a police show, student papers about the film
Citizen Kane, and a book about multicultural education.
The materials in the collection were arranged by television series, and then alphabetically by episode title. This arrangement
scheme was imposed during processing in the absence of a usable original order. The collection is arranged in four series:
Series 1. Mannix; Series 2. Nero Wolfe; Series 3. The Rogues; and Series 4. Miscellaneous.
The collection was processed by Jessica Geiser and Jamie Henricks in January, 2012. The finding aid was updated by Katie Richardson
and Jon King in July, 2013.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Mannix (Television program) The Rogues (Television program)Television scripts
Nero Wolfe (Television program)
Roberts, Ben
Goff, Ivan