Description
Collection of John Bartlett Goodman, III, motion picture art director, bibliophile, author, and collector of Western Americana.
Materials include manuscripts, correspondence, movie research materials, artwork and sketches, family memorabilia, ephemera,
photographs, postcards, newspaper clippings and historical manuscripts associated with Goodman's interest and research on
the American West. The collection is arranged in ten series: 1) GOODMAN COLLECTION CATALOG, 2) WRITINGS, 3) MOVIE RESEARCH,
4) ARTWORK AND SKETCHES, 5) MATERIALS LAID IN BOOKS, 6) CORRESPONDENCE, 7) GOODMAN FAMILY MATERIALS, 8) EPHEMERA, 9) NEWSPAPER
CLIPPINGS, and 10) PHOTOGRAPHS.
Background
John Bartlett Goodman, III, (1901-1991) was born in Denver, Colorado and moved to California by the age of three, first to
San Diego and then to Los Angeles in 1916. After high school he worked in an architect's office, but left in 1920 after a
short time to join the art department of the Famous Players Lasky Company, an early motion-picture company. Goodman's forty-seven
year professional career in the motion-picture industry included work on 252 movies. He spent seventeen years with Paramount
Studios, worked for Warner Brothers Studios, and served as supervising art director (1942-1945) for Universal Studio, after
which, he pursued a freelance career as an independent art director. Goodman won an Oscar for his color art direction of
the "Phantom of the Opera" in 1943. He was the art director for the films "The Mountain" (1955) and "Rawhide" (1959) and
the weekly television series "Rawhide" (1961-1965). Goodman retired from film work in 1967.