[unknown recipient] ([unknown date])

#1885: On behalf of Willa Cather to [unknown recipient], [unknown date]

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Textual Feature	Appearance
passage deleted with a strikethrough mark	~~deleted passage~~
passage deleted by overwritten added letters	~~overwritten passage~~
passage added above the line	passage with added text above
passage added on the line	passage with added text inline
passage added in the margin	passage with text added in margin
handwritten addition to a typewritten letter	typed passage with added handwritten text
missing or unreadable text	missing text noted with "[illegible]"
uncertain transcriptions	word[?]
notes written by someone other than Willa Cather	Note in another's hand
printed letterhead text	printed text
text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc.	printed text
text of date and place stamps	stamped text
passage written by Cather on separate enclosure.	written text

CEC FORM LETTER which we used during the past two or three years on movies or dramatization of her books

Miss Cather is now in California³ and I am taking care of her correspondence during her absence. I am sorry I cannot give a favorable answer to your request. Miss Cather is absolute and unvarying in her refusal⁴ to allow any of her books or stories to be filmed or dramatized. She not only refuses offers from cinema producers but within the last year two of her oldest and best friends, who are both stage and screen stars, have urged her to allow them to dramatize two of her novels in order that they may play the leading role. She wrote them both personal letters, explaining clearly that had she intended these books to be dramatized she would have written them quite differently.

Very truly yours, Secretary⁵

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let1885.xml
Letter identifier: 1885
Contents: This document may be a partial transcription created after Cather's death to guide the management of her literary property. The handwritten note is by Edith Lewis, Cather's first executor, and the initials in the corner may indicate Charles E. Cather, her second executor. Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: [unknown recipient]¹
Date letter was written: [unknown date]
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection (MS228), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE

Individual Annotations

By the mid-1930s, after the 1934 film adaptation of A Lost Lady was released, Cather refused to sell film rights for her novels, and her will also sought to prohibit adaptation of her work after her death.

Person Annotations

0871

Unknown recipient. No further information is available about this person.

0102

Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

California, United States