Television and the NYPL Picture Collection



From the Annual Report of the NYPL Picture Collection, July 1948 thru June 30, 1949

"The gamut of subjects asked for at the Picture Collection is astounding, particularly as neither idle curiosity, nor hobby spurred the requests. Pictures on widely separate subjects were necessary for a Television broadcast to materialize, for men's ties to be manufactured, for an architect to landscape a cemetery, for a surgeon to give a paper on stumps."

...

"Television with its requirements for rapidly organized productions began to use this collection heavily. Several hundred changes of costume are prepared weekly, research must be done quickly and since there is no other source from which pictures on the whole history of fashion may be borrowed, these files became indispensable."

Excerpt From: Anthony T. Troncale. Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library's Picture Collection.


Television programs - CBS Toast of the Town with (front row, l to r) Rex Reed, Audrey Hepburn and Ed Sullivan. 1953. The Wallach Picture Collection, New York Public Library


NBC - Philco Television Playhouse. ca. 1950. 
The Wallach Picture Collection, New York Public Library



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