A few years ago, my wife and I were out in Los Angeles, and we stopped in at the Television Academy to say hello to some of the people I worked with after my second book, The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961, was published. The academy had contacted me because they were interested in setting up their own oral history project, videotaping the pioneers of early television before moving on to current movers and shakers. It was a great idea (you can see many of the interviews, including a few I conducted, online, here). A couple of years later, when my bank account was close to empty and I needed a way to pay the rent, I saw a little money in my collection of tapes that I had recorded for the book. Thankfully, the Academy bought them, figuring that researchers might find something helpful in them.
On our visit, I asked about what happened to the tapes. It turned out the few hundred TDK cassettes that I had bought for less than .99 each, were now bar-coded and called “The Jeff Kisseloff Collection.”
Fast forward to a few days ago when a carpenter was replacing some rotted boards outside my office. The vibration from his hammering knocked a picture frame off my wall, and the various pieces of ephemera looked like litter on my carpet. I picked the pieces up with renewed interest. There was some real history in the pile, and even more around my office — old photographs, videos, ephemera, letters, recordings and more. It’s probably egocentric of me to think that that history that might interest a few people, but what the hell, here I am, thinking that someone might enjoy seeing selections from the Kisseloff Collection (as opposed to the Jeff Kisseloff Collection) and hearing the stories that go with them. If people do enjoy it, I’ll keep updating the site.
Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think.
