Playscript about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage trial, circa 1975

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Summary

Abstract:

Extent:

0.1 Linear Feet (1 folder)

Language:

English .

Preferred citation:

Playscript about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Espionage Trial. MS-S034. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Date accessed.

For the benefit of current and future researchers, please cite any additional information about sources consulted in this collection, including permanent URLs, item or folder descriptions, and box/folder locations.

Background

Scope and content:

The collection is comprised of one untitled playscript (50 pages) written by Barbara Clairchilde, Leslie Hoag and Dudley Knight. The play deals with the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1951) and the couple's resulting execution (1953). The first half of the play recounts the events leading up to the trial. The second half is comprised mainly of letters written by the Rosenbergs during their imprisonment. Letters are to each other, their lawyer Emanuel "Manny" Bloch, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and their children.

The play was probably originally written to be performed on KPFK radio station in Los Angeles. It was adapted in part by Robert Carl Cohen for the Rally to Reopen the Rosenberg Case, Santa Monica, California, February 2, 1975.

Biographical / historical:

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951. They were convicted when the court determined they had provided information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. In 1953 they were executed for the crime, an event that was and remains controversial.

Barbara Clairchilde, Leslie Hoag and Dudley Knight were associated with KPFK, a politically progressive radio station in the Los Angeles area, in the 1970s. Knight was an actor who became a member of the faculty in the Department of Drama at the University of California, Irvine, in 1981.

Acquisition information:

Acquired in 2009.

Processing information:

Processed by Dawn Schmitz, 2010.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:: Trials (Espionage) -- History -- Sources
Cold War -- History -- Sources
Actors.
Activists.
Radio plays

Access and use

Restrictions:: The collection is open for research.
Terms of access:: Property rights reside with the University of California. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permissions to reproduce or to publish, please contact the Head of Special Collections and Archives.