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Weaver (John D.) collection of Los Angeles ephemera and research
materials
LSC.1393
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Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Title: John Downing Weaver collection of Los Angeles ephemera and research
materials
Creator:
Weaver, John D. (John Downing), 1912-2002.
Identifier/Call Number: LSC.1393
Physical Description:
38.8 Linear Feet
(97 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1960-1985
Abstract: A file composed primarily of newspaper
and magazine clippings, but also containing some letters, notes, public documents and
official reports, collected during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s by the author of, among other
books,
Los Angeles: the Enormous Village (1980) and of the 1974 and 1985
Encyclopaedia Britannica articles on Los Angeles.
Physical Location: Stored off-site. All requests to access
special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on
this page.
Language of Material: English
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in
advance using the request button located on this page.
Property rights to the physical objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All
other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the
responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the
copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not
hold the copyright.
[Identification of item], John Downing Weaver collection of Los Angeles ephemera and
research materials (Collection Number 1393). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E.
Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Gift of John Weaver, 1984.
Orignally processed by Library Special Collections staff. Container listings for boxes
10-97 by Khang Nguyen, 2020.
This file on the quirks and quiddities of Los Angeles was created and maintained for more
than twenty years to serve the needs of a working writer and his civically active wife,
Harriett Sherwood Weaver, both of whom came to the breakfast table each morning with
scissors and staplers at the ready as they opened the
Los Angeles Times (and,
in later years, the
Valley News & Green Sheet which in time resurfaced as
the
Daily News).
We clipped and filed news stories, feature articles, letters and editorials which might
turn out to be useful. We also saved magazine articles, reports from official entities and
letters from public servants and public scolds, along with other material that came our way
in the course of our work as writers and as active members of various Santa Monica Mountain
homeowner associations operating under the umbrella of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon
associations (Cf.
Collection No. 1244 ).
Our files were intended to provide quick, accurate answers to questions which might arise
in the course of a day's work when, for example, one of us set out to write a magazine
article on UCLA's sculpture garden or prepare a report for a City Council committee on the
hazards of so-called "safe and sane fireworks."
Collection 1393 should be used in conjunction with not only the hillside federation's
files, but also those of
Harriett Weaver (Collection No. 1447) ,
who for many years presided over the Mayor's Brush Clearance Advisory Committee. She helped
write the ordinances governing chaparral management in the city's mountainous areas in the
1960s, reformed the enforcement procedures twenty years later and served as a consultant to
county and federal forestry officials dealing with the problems of what the bureaucracy
called the "urban-wildland interface."
Both collections, 1447 and 1393, are eclectic, reflecting the interests and prejudices of
the two collectors who, as I've noted elsewhere, "crossed the plains in a covered Chevrolet
to homestead in the Hollywood hills (circa 1940)."
1 Like so many
other Angelinos, we came to make a better life for ourselves, fleeing a 9-to-5 office world
for which neither of us was properly equipped. We set up shop as free-lance writers and,
then as now, the operative word was "free."
For the first two decades, which included a three-year tour of duty in the pictorial
services of the Army signal corps, I wrote fiction, while Harriett astonished us both by
evolving into a master carpenter, bricklayer and rug-weaver.
2 In
the 1960s, when she launched her attack on the fire-flood landslide problems of the hillside
homeowner, I turned to the writing of nonfiction, which spawned the closet-filled monster
that has evolved into Collection 1393. In the years Harriett and i were using our two files,
they were never as well organized as they are now. In some instances we simply tossed
clippings, letters and assorted documents into discarded canned fruit boxes from a Ralphs
trashbin, planning to sort them out when we "had the time." Finally, in the mid-1980s, we
took the time. On the spring afternoon we delivered the last carton of Collection 1393 to
the loading dock of the University Research Library at UCLA (a banana box filled with
MUSEUMS and HOLLYWOOD), Harriett ordered up an extra tot of gin for all hands and began to
move closes into her liberated closets.
John D. Weaver
Encino
October 1986
----------------------------
1
Los Angeles: The Enormous Village (Capra Press,
1980)
2Cf.
As I Live and Breathe (Rinehart, 1959)
UCLA Catalog Record ID
4233967
Weaver was born in Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 1912; attended Georgetown Univ. (1928-29); AB,
College of William and Mary (1932); AM, George Washington Univ. (1933); worked for various
federal agencies, including the National Recovery Administration (1933-35); reporter,
feature writer, book reviewer, and copy editor,
Kansas City star (1935-40);
started freelance writing (1940); published works include:
Wind before rain
(1942),
Another such victory (1948),
Warren : the man, the court, the
era
(1967),
The Brownsville raid : the story of America's "black Dreyfus
affair"
(1970),
Los Angeles : the enormous village (1980). Weaver
died December 4, 2002.
Harriet Sherwood Weaver was born in Haigler, NE, Oct. 29, 1913; graduated Phi Beta Kappa,
Univ. of Kansas (1934); contributed book reviews and feature articles to the
Kansas
City star
(1936); married John Downing Weaver (1937); moved to Los Angeles ca.
1940; the 1961 Bel-Air fire prompted her crusade for both effective management of native
brush in the Santa Monica Mountains and brush clearance legislation; headed the fire
committee of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns.; served on LA Countywide Citizens
Planning Council (1972-79); died Nov. 23, 1988.
Collection consists primarily of newspaper and magazine clippings related to Los Angeles
during the 1960s-1980s. Also includes letters, notes, public documents, and reports.
Material was collected by John Weaver and Harriett Sherwood Weaver in the course of their
work as writers and active members of various Santa Monica Mountain homeowner assns.
Includes news clippings from the
Los Angeles times and the
Valley news
and green sheet
.
Collection maintains the existing order upon donation to UCLA. It is primarily arranged
alphabetically.
Federation of Hillside and Canyon Associations
Records (Collection 1244).
Available at UCLA Library Special Collections,
Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
Harriet Weaver Collection about Residential
Development and Fire, Flood, and Landslide Management in the Santa Monica Mountains
(Collection 1447).
Available at UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E.
Young Research Library, UCLA.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Ephemera.
Clippings files.
Los Angeles (Calif.) -- History.