A sampling of the famous and not-so-famous among the 1,600 individuals in the 20th century collections at BU:
Music:
Sir Rudolph Bing, Alexander Brailowsky, Cab Calloway, Mark Fax, Ella Fitzgerald, Olive Fremstad, Vaughn Monroe, Charles Munch, Rise Stevens, Rosalyn Tureck.
Theater and film:
Annabella, John Antrobus, Fred Astaire, Frank Avruch, Stanley Donen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Fontain, Leatrice Fountain, Janet Gaynor, Tamara Geva, Tammy Grimes, Sonya Hamlin, Susan Hayward, Libby Holman, Glenda Jackson, Nora Kaye, Angela Lansbury, Jeremy Larner, Anita Loos, Myrna Loy, Roddy McDowall, Arthur Marx, Jo Mielziner, Robert Preston, Norman Reilly Raine, Basil Rathbone, Robert Redford, Wolf Tilla, Edward G. Robinson, Richard Roud, George Bernard Shaw, John Sherlock, Kate Smith, Ronald Tavel, Clifton Webb, Orson Welles, Lord Ted Willis.
Suspense and mystery:
Eric Ambler, Arthur Arent, Leslie Charteris, Susan Taylor Chehak, Eileen Dewhurst, Doris Miles Disney, Brian Freemantle, Sue Grafton, Patrick Hamilton, Michael Harrison, Reginald Hill, Evan Hunter, Mary Kelly, William Krasner, Eleazar Lipsky, Gregory Mcdonald, Mark McShane, F. Van Wyck Mason, Laurence Meynell, Richard O'Connor, Lillian O'Donnell, Kin Platt, Bill Pronzini, W. E. Dan Ross, Leslie Seldon-Truss, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, John Vance, Janwillem Van de Wetering, Frances Shelley Wees, Donald Westlake, Charles Willeford, Robin Winks, Oswald Wynd.
Literary writers:
Robert Ardrey, Richard Armour, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Isaac Asimov, Frederick Ayer, Sanora Babb, Faith Baldwin, Joanna Barnes, Mary Hayley Bell (Lady Mills), Nathaniel Benchley, Peter Benchley, Robert Benchley, Eric Bentley, Patricia Benton, Henry Beston, Florence Bonime, Mary Borden (Lady Spears), Roger Caras, Stanton Coblentz, Evan S. Connell, Geoffrey Cotterell, Warwick Deeping, Peter De Vries, James T. Farrell, Elton C. Fax, Euell Gibbons, Nikki Giovanni, Rumer Godden, Juan Goytisolo, Francine du Plessix Gray, Martin Hoade, Aubrey Hodes, Langston Hughes, Storm Jameson, Flecher Knebel, Margaret Lane (Countess of Huntingdon), D.H. Lawrence, Clarice Lispector, Yukio Mishima, Raymon Mungo, Deborah Saltonstall Pease, Giles Playfair, Santha Rama Rau, Mary Renault, Wolf Rilla, Aram Saroyan, May Sarton, Siegfried Sassoon, Claude Seignolle, Leslie Seldon-Truss, Frank Slaughter, Lucien Stryk, Thomas Tryon, Saul Turell, Irving Wallace, Galbraith Welch, H.G. Wells, Lady Tucker Wertenbaker, Elie Wiesel, William and Joanna Woolfok, Alexander Woolcott, Frank Yerby, Jose Yglesias, Lajos Zilahy.
Ink-stained wretches:
Elie Abel, Max Ascoli, Frederick Babcock, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Craig Claiborne, Alister Cooke, James Wedgewood Drawbell, Oriana Fallaci, Tana de Gamez, George J.W. Goodman (Adam Smith), Stephane Groueff, David Halberstam, Nat Hentoff, Aubrey Hodes, Myrick Land, Doris Lilly, Marya Mannes, Norbert Muhlen, Cabell Philips, Dan Rather, Bernard Redmont, Paull Sann, Gail Sheehy, Herbert Bayard Swope, Richard Tregaskis, Terence de Vere White.
Public affairs, social and religious movements:
Admiral Arthur Ainslie Ageton, Gar Alperovitz, Amiya Chakravarty, Admiral Winfield Scott Cunningham, Cardinal Richard Cushing, Danilo Dolci, Mildred Buchanan Flagg, Ralph Ingersoll, Bernard Johnpoll, Countess Catherine and Count Michael Karolyi, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John W. McCormack, William F. McSweeney, Melvin Purvis, Herbert Bayard Swope, Henry S. Villard, Bradford Washburn, Elie Wiesel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lt. General William Yarborough.