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David Westheimer Oral History interview

 Collection
Identifier: MS 0665
Finding aid note: Stored off-site at the Library Service Center and requires 24-hour notice for retrieval. Please contact the Woodson Research Center at 713-348-2586 or woodson@rice.edu for more information.

Scope and Contents

This collection contains ten Compact Discs and thirty-two cassette tapes of Professor Philip Napoli's interview with David Westheimer. The interviews were conducted over a two-day span in June of 2002.

Dates

  • Creation: 2002-06-27 - 2002-06-28

Creator

Access Restrictions

This material is open for research.

Conditions Governing Access

Stored off-site at the Library Service Center and requires 24-hour notice for retrieval. Please contact the Woodson Research Center at 713-348-2586 or woodson@rice.edu for more information.

Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish material from the David Westhemier Oral History Interview must be obtained from the Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library.

Biographical Note

David Westheimer (April 11, 1917-November 8, 2005) was born in Houston, Texas and graduated from Rice University in 1937. He left his career as a journalist for the Houston Post to join the U.S. Army Air Forces after the United States entered World War II. He became a prisoner of war (P.O.W.) after his B-24 bomber was shot down near Italy, He used this experience to shape one of his best known literary works Von Ryan's Express, which was published in 1964 and went on to become a bestseller and a film starring Frank Sinatra. Besides writing novels such as My Sweet Charlie(1965), Westheimer also wrote television screenplays (often based on his work) and his autobiography: Sitting It Out: A World War II POW Memoir(1992). He returned to the Houston Post as a columnist in the 1980s and died of heart failure in Los Angeles in 2005.

Biographical Note

Dr. Philip Napoli is an assistant professor of 20th-Century US Social and Public History at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He teaches courses on the theory and practice of oral history, the history of American popular culture, the history of the American war in Vietnam, and a variety of other topics.

Extent

0.5 Linear Feet (1 box)

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

This collection contains ten Compact Discs and thirty-two cassette tapes of Professor Philip Napoli's interview with David Westheimer. The interviews were conducted over a two-day span in June of 2002.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This collection was donated by Dr. Philip Napoli and transfer facilitated by Brooklyn College Archives and Special Collections in 2016.

Related Materials

David Westheimer Literary Papers, 1940-1997 MS 345

Title
Guide to the David Westheimer Oral History interview
Status
Completed
Author
Rebecca Russell
Date
2016
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
English

Repository Details

Part of the Woodson Research Center, Rice University, Houston, Texas Repository

Contact:
Fondren Library MS-44, Rice University
6100 Main St.
Houston Texas 77005 USA
713-348-2586