Beach, Rex Collection

The BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION series contains a large amount of rich information about Rex Beach’s life, including short auto-biographical writings, biographies written by Beach’s colleagues, and biographies written by Rollins students and other researchers. The series also contains a small collection of newspaper clippings, mostly dating from the later portion of Beach’s life. The ROLLINS COLLEGE series largely contains correspondence that highlights the strong, lengthy relationship that Rex Beach maintained with Rollins College, particularly during his many years of service as the President of the Rollins Alumni Association (RAA). Also documented is Beach’s interest in experimental farming, which makes up a significant portion of his correspondence with RAA secretary Alfred J. Hanna. The series also contains papers related to Beach’s burial at Rollins, and documents the college’s correspondence with the Rex Beach Estate. Finally, the papers in this series document the transfer of Rex Beach’s property and papers to the college, though the series lacks in-depth information about the establishment of the Rex Beach House on campus. The ROLLINS COLLEGE series contains two sub-series: Rollins Alumni Association (RAA) and Estate. The RAA sub-series mostly consists of correspondence (1927-1941) between RAA President Beach and RAA Secretary Alfred J. Hanna, though the sub-series excludes other correspondence with Hanna about non-RAA related matters, such as Beach’s experimental farming activities. The RAA sub-series correspondence largely concerns the business of the Rollins Alumni Association and alumni affairs. The Estate sub-series contains legal documents and correspondence between representatives of Rollins and the Rex Beach estate, which mostly concerns Beach’s bequest of money and other items to the college. The WRITINGS series is most extensive series in this collection, and it contains largely typed and a few hand-written manuscripts and drafts of various Beach works. This series is divided into six sub-series: Articles, Novels, Plays, Personal Exposures, Short Stories, and Synopses, of which the latter three hold the richest and most extensive materials. The Articles sub-series contains galley copies and drafts of Beach’s articles about Alaska for Hampton’s Magazine, many of which contain marginalia and editing notes. The Novels sub-series is made up of hand-written drafts of chapters of Beach’s Woman in Ambush (originally entitled Dick Banning). The small Plays sub-series includes typed copies of three plays that Beach wrote or collaborated on, some of which were based on his novels and short stories. The Personal Exposures sub-series focuses solely on Beach’s series, Personal Exposures. Personal Exposures was a series of short, reportedly auto-biographical pieces upon which he based his book of the same name published by Harper Brothers (1941). The series was produced first as a radio play, and then was published serially in Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan Magazine. The Personal Exposures run does have gaps, but includes episodes 1-18, 24-25, 28, 39-42, 46-69, 74, 79-80, and unnumbered episodes. The sub-series is arranged in order by episode number. The manuscripts are typed individually, but a second copy of episodes 1-18 appear in a bound volume with an illustration of Rex Beach on the cover. The Short Stories sub-series contains typed drafts of several of Beach’s short stories, some of which have been annotated and edited. This sub-series is arranged alphabetically by title. Finally, the Synopses sub-series includes synopses of Beach’s novels and short stories, summarizing the works for use by publishers and filmmakers. Many of the short story synopses are grouped together in packets, but the sub-series is arranged alphabetically by the name of the first synopsis in each packet. Most of the synopses were written by Beach himself, though a few were written by his wife, Greta Beach. The PUBLICATIONS series contains published clippings and small pamphlets of fiction and non-fiction works written by Rex Beach. Many of these publications are short stories and articles printed in magazines such as Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan, and most of the short stories include illustrations. The non-fiction publications include articles about Alaska, as well as copies of Beach’s piece regarding Dr. Northen’s nutrition project. Longer publications by Beach are not represented in this series. Refer to the appendix to this finding aid to view a list of Rex Beach’s works in the Olin Library catalog. The PLAY PRODUCTIONS series contains programs from two different performances of The Spoilers, one from the early 20th century and another from the mid-1980s. This small series does not contain any further information regarding theater productions of Beach’s works. The FILMS series represents the treatment of Beach’s work for the film industry. Although the involvement of Beach himself in the movie industry is not particularly evident in these documents, this series highlights two movies based on Beach’s work: The Spoilers, and The Barrier. The series also contains a few other film treatments of Beach’s works, some of which were actually done by Beach himself. Photographs of the 1937 production of The Barrier are described in the PHOTOGRAPHS series. The PHOTOGRAPHS series contains approximately 150 photographs and a few film negatives, including several portrait and informal shots of Rex Beach throughout his life. Also included are 35 production stills of the 1937 film version of The Barrier. The series also contains one ZIP disc containing scans of selected photographs; however, the hardware to read the disc is not currently available at this facility, so the specific contents of the disc is unknown. Two oversized photographs also exist, one of which is signed to Fred and Allene Stone from Beach.