At the Late Night, Double-Feature Picture Show... by RKO

Trying to pick a scary movie to watch tonight? How about pulling some inspiration from Rauner's script collection? We have a few great ones from RKO Pictures. For something really classic, take a look at our screenplay for the 1933 King Kong, which is still spawning sequels and spin-offs today.

If you want something a little more off the beaten path, how about one of the films produced by Val Lewton? Lewton was hired by RKO in 1942 to make successful horror movies on shoestring budgets, particularly useful to the faltering studio after the financial failures of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. He would be given a sensational title, a small budget, and the task of making something that could emulate the monstrous successes of Universal Studios. Instead, Lewton tended to make quiet, unsettling psychological pictures with a deeply nihilistic edge. They were successful enough at the time, and some are now considered classics. We have the scripts for two big ones: Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943). The latter, a very loose adaptation of Jane Eyre with the addition of a Haitian Vodou element, has a subtitle reading "Based on Scientific Information from Articles by Inez Wallace." It also bears a handwritten note reading "Mr. Breen." We can't say for sure, but perhaps this copy passed through the hands of Joseph Breen, who enforced the Hays Production Code from the 1930s to 1950s. We'd be curious to hear what he thought of this particular picture, but we suspect it wasn't his thing. 

To take a look at the these spooky screenplays, check out Scripts 2206 (King Kong), Scripts 537 (Cat People), and Scripts 1064 (I Walked With a Zombie).  

 

 

Cinderella, by any other name

Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was a French writer and poet as well as a member of the Académie Française. In 1697, at the end of his illustrious career, Perrault published a collection of eight Contes du temps passé, literally “tales from times past” (Bouchenot-Déchin 2018). These included stories we know today as Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella, and all of them were written in prose. These stories have been told and retold so many times, and in so many ways, that they’ve become ingrained in our cultural imagination.

Searching Rauner’s collection for items using the keywords “(Cinderella OR Cendrillon) AND Perrault” yields 12 results. The earliest of these dates from 1697, the year the Contes was originally published in Paris, but Rauner’s copy is an unauthorized (pirated) edition that was likely printed in Amsterdam by Jacques Desbordes. In fact, the 1697 edition isn’t even attributed to Charles Perrault; its author is listed as “le Fils de Monsieur Perreault [sic] de l’Academie François” (the son of M. Perrault of the Académie Française). This minor literary mystery was resolved in short order, and it wasn’t long before new editions listed Charles Perrault as their author.

Thirty-two years later, in 1729, a British writer and translator named Robert Samber published the first English translation of Perrault’s Contes. Samber seems to have worked from the pirated Dutch edition of the text that we have in Rauner rather than the original Parisian edition, although that would not have made a substantive difference because the content is identical (Bottigheimer 2002, 5).

Samber gave Cinderella her English name (originally “Cinderilla”), and it stuck. I looked at ten English translations of Perrault’s Cendrillon in Rauner’s collection, ranging in date from 1785 to 1963, and every one of them refers to the protagonist as Cinderella/Cinderilla. (Note that this is just a small fraction of Rauner’s fairy tale collection!) Not one of them changes the name Samber gave her. I doubt Samber had any idea how much influence that one decision would have on readers, Disney viewers, and even college basketball.

But Cendrillon isn’t actually the protagonist’s name. It’s a nickname, and we never learn what her parents named her. In fact, it isn’t even the only nickname used for her in the story. According to the original, “Cucendron” was the name commonly used for her in the household, and it was the younger stepsister (described as less mean-spirited than the older one) who called her Cendrillon instead. Cucendron basically translates to “Cinder-butt” and relates to Cinderella’s habit of sitting in the hearth to take a break from her manual labor.

Given how consistent all of these English translations are about calling our protagonist “Cinderella,” it’s remarkable how widely their interpretations of “Cucendron” vary. These ten translations contain seven different versions of the mean-spirited nickname: Cinder-breech, Cinder-wench, Cinder-slut, Cinder-girl, Cindertail, Cinder-scraper, and Cinder-clod. Cinder-breech, which was Samber’s initial translation, appears in just two of these editions, and two of them avoid the matter completely by omitting those lines. Still other translations have turned this nickname into: Cinderpuss, Cinderseat, Cinderbottom, and Cinderbutt.

Why does this matter? Aside from helping readers gauge just how mean those stepsisters are, this detail doesn’t impact the story’s narrative arc at all. But it’s one small way that generation after generation of translators was able to put their own mark on the text–whether they received any credit for their translations or not. (Five of the ten translations I studied do not explicitly name their translators.) With so many aspects of this story locked in place, this seemingly minor nickname gives the translator an opportunity to demonstrate that literary translation is a creative, interpretive process and not a simple matter of carrying meaning across a linguistic barrier. Translators have immense power to shape our understanding of the world, and of each other.

To see the 1697 pirated edition of Perrault's tales, come to Rauner and ask to see Rare PQ1877 .C513 1697. The various translations are as follows: Sine Illus R53fait ("Cindertail"); Sine Illus A66per ("cinder-girl"); Sine Illus D86sle ("Cinder-slut"); and Chapbook 50.5 ("Cinder-wench").

This post was written by Rachel Starr, Research & Learning Specialist at Dartmouth Libraries.

Not Noah's Dictionary

October 16th was "Dictionary Day," so named because it is Noah Webster's birthday. Sure, we have lots of editions of Webster's dictionary, from his initial 1806 attempt to catalog American English to the final beast of a book published in 1828. But, while those are cool and all, they are not exactly hep to the times, so today we feature our suite of Cab Calloway lexicological lessons including the 1944 Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary: the Language of Jive. Like Webster, Calloway was looking to define a specific form of English.

It is hard to tell if Calloway was trying to be a serious lexicographer when he started to write these or if he has just trying to cash in on the craze for the Harlem scene, but when the New York Public Library adopted his book as their official dictionary of Harlem slang, it was suddenly very legit. There is no question that he is taking it seriously by the 1944 edition. It is still very playful and super fun to read, but you can tell he is working hard to document a form of English he loved and helped to propagate. So hit that jive, Jack, and truck on in. It'll blow your wig!

Ask for Rare ML102 .J3P76 1939.

 

The Hammer of Witches

We've got an evil one this week, both in terms of a book's subject matter and its impact in the world. Back in the fifteenth century, European Christians were developing a new understanding of how Satan worked on Earth: that he could bestow demonic powers onto humans so that they could commit harm through magic and undermine faith in God. This, among other factors, prompted the prosecution of those accused of practicing this diabolic witchcraft and the onset of the European witch hunts. Lasting from approximately 1420 to 1780 but concentrated most heavily in the period of 1560 to 1640, the trials led to the execution of somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 individuals. 

One influence on these witch hunts was the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches. We have a first edition, published in 1486 or 1487 in Speyer, Germany. Its authorship is somewhat contested but generally attributed to Henricus Institorius and Jacobus Sprenger, two Dominican friars. Institorius is the one who had practical experience persecuting the accused -- at one point in his life he claimed to have had 48 women executed. In terms of influence, it seems that the Malleus did a lot to formalize and disseminate the newer theories of diabolic witchcraft and structures for dealing with witches: its three sections are focused on 1) proving that witchcraft is real, 2) explaining how witchcraft operates and how it can be counteracted, and 3) how practitioners should be prosecuted. It also focused on witchcraft as something practiced by the lower classes and by women more frequently than men, which was certainly consistent with trends in who was prosecuted in most countries during the witch hunts.  

Our copy is pretty tidy, save for some staining on the initial pages and a few handwritten notes in the second section. The marginalia is intriguing -- we think we can pick out the words "exorcismus" and "rebaptismus." Certainly it seems like the reader was considering proposed treatments for the accused or their victims.  Whether or not they bought in, it's hard to say.

To look at the Malleus Maleficarum yourself, request Incunabula 170.  

Bloodletting for a Dim Future

When people think of the invention of moveable type and the start of commercial printing in the West, their minds usually go to monumental works like the Gutenberg Bible or the Nuremberg Chronicle, but the bread and butter for printers was in the production of more ephemeral documents. Single sheet broadsides far outnumbered weighty tomes, they just aren't the things that survived. One of the more common printing jobs was almanacs--handy guides that you could pin up on wall and then toss out at the end of the year. But these almanacs were not for farmers planning when to bring in the crops, they were usually more focused on a harvest of blood.

You see, medical bloodletting was an art directly tied to the astrological calendar and the movement of the planets. You couldn't just bleed someone any old time you felt like it--the stars had to align! This German almanac from 1484 gives you all the details. Just the top fourth of the page was a calendar. The rest prescribed the best times to let blood.

While the bleeding might help you keep healthy this year, things didn't look so good in the long run. Saturn and Jupiter were in an unusual alignment, an omen for sixty years of pestilence, wars and even the birth of a false prophet. Actually, thinking about that era, it was probably a pretty safe bet...

To see it, come to Rauner and ask for Incunabula 171.

Exhibit: "From Vision to Reality: The Appalachian Trail from Then to Now"

One hundred years ago, the first Appalachian Trail Conference was convened by the Federated Societies on Planning and Parks in Washington DC. According to the proceedings, the goal was to organize a "body of workers" to complete the construction of the Appalachian Trail. During the meeting, the Appalachian Trail Conference, later known as the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), was made a permanent body. Its purpose? To guide the completion and continuing care of the Appalachian Trail, an idealistic dream of Benton MacKaye in 1921 that had now become an improbable reality: 2,000 miles of nature trail that stretched across fourteen states as it hugged the Appalachian mountain range from Georgia to Maine. Over the last century, the ATC has provided stable leadership and a rallying point for those who agreed and still agree with MacKaye's long-held conviction that time spent in the outdoors could serve as a "sanctuary and a refuge from the scramble of everyday worldly commercial life".

"From Vision to Reality: The Appalachian Trail from Then to Now" looks back at the beginnings of both the AT and the ATC, explores the growth and change that have occurred along the Trail over the last one hundred years, and highlights the commitment and accomplishments of the Dartmouth Outing Club, one of many volunteer organizations that continue to keep the dream of a shared outdoors alive by protecting their portion of the Trail.

The exhibit will be on display in Rauner Special Collections Library's Class of 1965 Galleries in Webster Hall from September 15th through December 12th, 2025. It was curated by Dakota Jackson, Senior Director of Visitor Engagement at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, and Morgan Swan, Special Collections Librarian for Teaching and Scholarly Engagement at Dartmouth Libraries, with help from Kim Wheeler, Research & Learning Librarian at Dartmouth Libraries. The poster was designed by Max Seidman, Exhibits and Graphic Arts Designer at Dartmouth Libraries.

Censoring the Censor

 Anthony Comstock was a man with an obsession and that obsession was vice. He started the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (N.Y.S.S.V.) in 1873, which acted more or less as you might guess, lobbying for laws that would enforce a specific moral code for the public and then making sure that code was followed. Not long afterwards, the Comstock Act was passed, which made it explicitly illegal to distribute obscene matter via the U.S. postal service or other carriers. Comstock himself had a broad view of what should be considered obscene and so his targets ranged from literary works like The Decameron to nude paintings like Chabas' "September Morn" to even medical texts with remote references to sexuality and sexual health. During his career, he claimed to have arrested at least 3,800 people and to have driven at least fifteen to suicide.

Why are we bringing up such a truly unpleasant man, who saw immorality everywhere and thought that the arts were often just a cover for filth that would corrupt the public? Well, it's because we have a letter of his in the collections. In it, he addresses the Brooklyn Eagle, a daily newspaper which ran from 1841 to 1955, which apparently ran a piece stating that Comstock considered himself entitled to open people's mail and to enter the houses of citizens in the course of his duties. This seems to have made Comstock rather mad and, as this letter looks like a draft rather than a final product, we can see him self-censoring his cattier remarks. A digression is struck out in which he asks if there has been any change in management at the Eagle, as has the inquiry "Now sir, why cannot I be accorded fair play in your paper?" About a quarter of the text ends up being crossed out.

He leaves in his assertion that the editor will surely agree that "we have enough impure and unclean men and women at the present time" and that it is "not improper to repress, and keep from debauching the minds of the children" the materials which make them unclean. And the letter itself is typed on the N.Y.S.S.V. letterhead which presents an image summarizing his general position tidily: a man in simple clothes, being handcuffed and led away while another, dressed as a gentleman, tosses books into a fire.

To read Comstock's drafted letter, ask for Mss 886271.