Josephine Chippo

The Josephine Chippo papers span the years 1924–1929 and encompass 0.9 linear foot. The collection consists of miscellaneous personal and professional papers. The papers relate primarily to films directed by W. S. Van Dyke at MGM from 1927 to 1929, most notably White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). Because of her personal relationship with the director, Chippo received extensive correspondence from Van Dyke—primarily in the form of a daily journal—throughout the MGM company's four-month stay in the South Seas for White Shadows location shooting in late 1927 and early 1928. Midway through the production, Van Dyke—initially engaged as "associate director" to noted documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty—was given complete directorial responsibility for the project following the studio's dismissal of Flaherty. Van Dyke's journal was like an extended love letter to Chippo and provides an intimate record of his personal travails during the troubled production. The collection contains scripts (some annotated) for several other films directed by Van Dyke. Notable among these is The Pagan (1929), for which he returned to Tahiti one year after the White Shadows location trip, this time with Chippo as part of the company. Along with an extensively annotated script for this production, the collection includes various documents relating to the voyage to and from Tahiti. Although it is not clear exactly when the personal relationship between Van Dyke and Chippo came to an end, she was part of the MGM company (led by Van Dyke) that went on location to Africa for Trader Horn in 1930. (That expedition is chronicled in Van Dyke's book Horning into Africa, but is not represented in this collection.) The remainder of the collection consists primarily of personal correspondence received by Chippo from various friends, some of whom worked in similar capacities in the motion picture industry, and family members from 1925 to 1929. Correspondence from 1926 and 1927 partially chronicles the breakup of her marriage to Alfred Loewenthal.

Gift of Darwin Aller, 1992.