Call Number:

C0842

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 25 boxes
• 10.2 linear foot

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Mildred Gilman Wohlforth Papers, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1910-1994 (inclusive) and 1927-1985 (bulk)

Creator:

Gilman, Mildred Evans

Form:

Articles., Clippings., Contracts., Correspondence, Interviews., Manuscripts., Photographs, Original., and Videocassettes.

Abstract:

Mildred Gilman Wohlforth was an American journalist, newspaper reporter, and novelist. Her papers include over 600 letters from friends, family, and literary associates, along with autograph and typed manuscripts for several unpublished novels. Also present are selected papers of her husband, Robert Wohlforth, a journalist, business analyst, and author.

Mildred Gilman Wohlforth, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, married James Gilman and moved to New York, where she became Heywood Broun's secretary. From 1928 to 1931 she was a reporter for the New York Journal. After divorcing Gilman she married Robert Wohlforth in 1930, and published Sob Sister (1931), a novel about a female tabloid reporter which was made into a movie. In the late 1930s Wohlforth went to Germany as a reporter for the International News Service to interview Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goring, and worked for the Washington Herald covering Eleanor Roosevelt and New Deal projects. Settling in Ridgefield, Conn., Wohlforth wrote articles, stories and novels, worked for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, raised three sons, and published her memoirs in 1973.

The collection consists of papers of Wohlforth. Included in the papers are over 600 letters from friends, family, and literary associates such as Barbara Belford, Silas Bent, Hewood Broun, Robert Benchley, Kyle Crichton, Zona Gale, Julian S. Huxley, Richard and Hildegarde Lockridge, H. L. Mencken, Ezra Pound, and Robert Wohlforth. There are autograph and typed manuscripts for several unpublished novels in various revisions with such titles as Diary of Alice, I Sobbed for Mr. Hearst, and The Woman Angle, as well as the manuscript for The Reminiscences of Mildred Gilman (1973); typescripts for some stories and many articles on a wide range of topics with many relating to issues of marriage and sexuality, such as "Are You Frigid," "Fearless Frances," "I Covered the Crash," "Safe Sex," and "Sob Sister Tells All"; contracts; documents; dreams recorded by Wohlforth; newspaper clippings; and about 120 photographs of the Wohlforth family, Mildred Wohlforth on various reporting assignments, friends, writers, and several movie actors and actresses, including Deanna Durbin, Jane Withers, Tyrone Power, Shirley Temple, Paul Robeson, Hermann Goring, Dorothy Parker, Hewood Broun, and others. There are two videocassettes of an interview with the Wohlforths.

Also present are selected papers of Robert Wohlforth, a journalist, business analyst, secretary-treasurer at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and author of an exposé novel of West Point entitled Tin Soldiers (1934), articles, and short stories. Included are about 100 letters to him by Harold Bender, Kyle Crichton, Pare Lorentz, Lewis Mumford, James Salter, Louis Untermeyer, and others, 15 typescripts of articles or stories, including "I Married a Sob Sister," and "A Nickelodeon Childhood," reviews of Tin Soldiers, and newspaper clippings.