Hugo Ballin papers, 1890-1956

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Summary

Creators:
Ballin, Hugo
Abstract:
Hugo Ballin (1879-1956) was born in New York City. He began his Hollywood career creating motion picture sets for Samuel Goldwyn and later worked as a director and producer. He ultimately gave up his film career to focus on art and writing. The collection consists of original paintings and drawings by Ballin, correspondence, literary manuscripts, books, clippings, and photographs.
Extent:
13.0 Linear Feet (27 document boxes and 6 oversize boxes)
Language:
Materials are in English.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Hugo Ballin Papers (Collection 407). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Background

Scope and content:

Collection consists of correspondence, literary manuscripts, books, scrapbooks, and photographs of Hugo and Mabel Ballin and their family, friends, and residence. Also contains original paintings and drawings, including sketches and watercolors by Ballin. Correspondents include Walter Winchell, Louis B. Mayer, Booker T. Washington, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Jordan-Smith, Oscar Straus, Gloria Swanson, Louis Untermeyer, Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Walter Damrosch, Samuel Goldwyn, Helen Keller, David O. Selznick, Darryl F. Zanuck, Erich W. Korngold, Howard Pyle, Walt Disney, Royal Cortissoz, John C. Austin, William Goetz, Harry Rapf, William Wendt, Robert Brackman, George Elmer Browne, Lydia Field Emmet, Edmund Tarbell, Ernest Lawson, Albert Sterner, William J. Baer, Fredrick Dana Marsh, Howard Giles, Frederick Ballard Williams, Ivan Olinsky, Hobart Nichols, DeWitt Lockman, Daniel Garber, John Fabian Carlson, Charles Rosen, Jonas Lie, Guy Wiggins, Frederick Waugh, Barry Faulkner, Cecilia Beaux, Maxfield Parrish, Harry Watrous, Edward Hopper, Edward Bruce, Umberto Romano, Clarence H. Carter, Ernest L. Blumenschein, Jerome Myers, Dean Cornwell, Leon Kroll, Arthur Hopkins, Abraham Lehr, and Arthur Stringer.

Biographical / historical:

Hugo Ballin was born March 7, 1879 in New York City. He attended the Art Students League in New York, spent several years traveling and studying in Italy, and became a portrait painter. In 1917, he began working as an art director for Goldwyn Pictures and subsequently moved to California in 1921. In the 1920s, he began writing, producing, and directing films, and formed his own production company, Hugo Ballin Productions, Inc. Ballin's wife, actress Mabel Croft Ballin, was featured in his silent film adaptations of literary classics, such as Jane Eyre (1921) and Vanity Fair (1923). With the advent of talking pictures, Ballin retired from film to focus on painting and writing. As a noted muralist, he completed a number of significant commissioned works across the country during the course of his career, including murals at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. He designed a seventeen-foot medallion of Pallas Athena which hung over the entrance to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. He also published several novels, including The Woman at the Door (1925), Stigma (1928), and Dolce Far Niente (1933). Ballin was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design. He lived in Pacific Palisades until he died in 1956.

Processing information:

Processed by Simone Fujita with assistance from Kelley Wolfe Bachli in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT), 2010. Prior processing partially completed by Yvonne Schroeder.

The processing of this collection was generously supported by Arcadia funds.

Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.

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Arrangement:

Arranged in the following series:

  1. Literary manuscripts (Boxes 1-13).
  2. Artwork by Hugo Ballin (Boxes 14, 26, 31-33).
  3. Photographs (Boxes 15-20, 26-28, 31).
  4. Ephemera (Boxes 21-23, 25, 29-30).
  5. Correspondence (Boxes 24-25).

Physical / technical requirements:

PORTIONS OF THIS COLLECTION HAVE BEEN DIGITIZED. See the Existence and Location of Copies note for the link to the digitized materials.

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.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Terms of access:

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.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Hugo Ballin Papers (Collection 407). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Location of this collection:
A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
Contact:
(310) 825-4988
AskLSC@library.ucla.edu
Website