The Margaret Herrick Library

 One of the great places to do research on Greta Garbo, or any Hollywood legend, is the Margaret Herrick Library (Herrick). Herrick is owned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Academy), the folks who bring you the Oscars.

 The Academy joined together the actors, directors, writers, technicians, and producers who create the films and shows we watch. Each of these professions also has their own unions and professional associations, and the Academy is basically an industry wide forum that has expanded to seventeen trade branches.

The Academy was founded in 1927 and the library began collecting the following year. Margaret Herrick, for whom the library is named, was the first librarian. Originally housed in in a room at the Roosevelt Hotel it moved to its current location in 1991, taking over a beautiful Spanish Colonial building that had originally been the City of Beverly Hills waterworks.

 Margaret Herrick arrived at the library because she was the wife of the man who became the Executive Secretary of the Academy in 1934. She had been the head librarian for Yakima Washington before the family relocated to Hollywood and she stepped in and ran the then tiny place. She was formally appointed librarian in 1936, which allowed her to start building a more robust collection.

 In 1943 she took over as Executive Secretary of the Academy when her husband was mobilized. Upon his return, the Board opted to keep her in the job rather than her soon ex-husband. She ran the Academy for nearly three decades.

 Herrick is an intimidating place. It has limited public hours (10-6 four days per week) and limited seating. You must reserve your place and the materials you want to see in advance. At the front door you are buzzed in, and checked in. Then you proceed upstairs where you check in again. Then you proceed to the section with the materials you are going to access. At the desk you check each thing out and sit at a table.

 The staff is super helpful and knowledgeable. Because like all Hollywood archives there has been lots of theft over the years, they work hard to protect their materials. Everything is checked in and out one piece at a time. You can bring your computer, but not much else. A pad of paper and a pencil. No pens. I now take pictures of most things to maximize what I can see during my visit, and then organize it later. That means I have to organize the photos as I take them. I take photos of things like file tabs, just so I can remember where something was found.

I first visited to learn about photographs. I had the collection of the photographs Garbo had collected of herself from the MGM photographers, and I didn’t really understand what they were. The late Robert Cushman was my first teacher regarding the ins and outs of how MGM took photos and managed them. But I could help as well. I was able to show how an uncredited pair of scrap books were created by Ruth Harriet Louise, MGM’s first portrait photographer. Robert thought they were hers, but I could show him why that was correct. Louise had grown up in the city next door to where I grew up, and she even took a portrait of one of my father’s cousins. So I knew a little about her life.

I went back to look at scripts, production files, censorship files, letters that had been donated, advertising material, the list becomes nearly endless.

The downside of Herrick? Well they are closed Wednesdays. Since I come in from out of town, if I plan to be there for more than two days I have to figure out Wednesday. Searching through their collections online can be a little maddening. But I also don’t see how to make it better, they have so much stuff in different categories of stuff. Cataloging a photograph, a magazine issue, a scrap book, a censorship file and a letter covers a lot of ground.

With its limited access Herrick is not the kind of place where you just drop in. If you love Hollywood and have any research interest at all, it is worth a visit.