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Series Title
Stories from the VaultsExecutive Producer
Pamela Caragol WellsProduction Company
Caragol Wells ProductionsProduced For
Smithsonian Networks-
Duration
26 minutes Definition
HDAwards
2007 Winner, New York Festival Gold Medal Delivery
ImmediatelyYOP
2007-2008
The Smithsonian adds 50,000 objects each year to its vast collections. But where do they come from? How did they get to the Smithsonian? The premiere program looks at what President Teddy Roosevelt, author John Steinbeck, and even comedienne Phyllis Diller have contributed to the Smithsonian holdings.
Cavanagh is accompanied by a curator who oversees specific collections and is a repository of fascinating information about the items donated. At the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, he visits with Dr. Hans-Deiter Seus, reviewing animal specimens donated by Teddy Roosevelt before he became president. Roosevelt took a year-long expedition to Africa – “a mythical destination for explorers at the time,” according to Dr. Seus – resulting in Roosevelt’s bagging 500 big-game animals and donating their skins and skeletons to the Smithsonian. Many of the specimen tags still on the skins were filled out by Roosevelt himself.
Collections manager Linda Gordon, who oversees 580,000 mammal specimens, tells Cavanagh that the benefit to science of such a collection is that it lets scientists track significant environmental and ecological changes. Cavanagh then spends time with curator Dave Pawson, a deep-sea diver and submersible operator, who cares for the Smithsonian’s 35 million invertebrates. Pawson tells Cavanagh that part of the vast collection was donated by writer John Steinbeck and his seafaring partner, marine biologist Edward F. Ricketts. After Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1939, the two men collected marine animals along the coast of California in a boat called The Western Flyer, chronicling their adventures and discoveries in “The Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research,” published in 1941. Many of the species they found are named after them.
Entertainment Collection curator Dwight Bowers supervises a completely different set of items – one that includes the jokes, clothes and other memorabilia of Phyllis Diller, the first woman to have a stand-up comedy career in the television age and a record holder in the Guinness Book of World Records (for getting 12 laughs per minute). The Smithsonian holds Diller’s remarkable catalogue of jokes, written out on index cards and filed by subject – an extraordinary collection of American humor from a specific era in our nation’s cultural history.
Stories from the Vaults (14 x 26 minutes)
- Stories from the Vaults Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Superlatives Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- No place like home Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Beauty Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Firsts Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Life after Death Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Random? Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Edible Smithsonian Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Top Secret! Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Nature's Vault Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Crystal Ball Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Sex 101 Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Going Going Gone Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
- Villains and Rogues Half hour series
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Main category:History
Actor Tom Cavanagh hosts this humorous and quirky series, venturing beyond the exhibit halls into the back rooms, high-tech vaults and cutting-edge labs of the world’s most renowned museum complex to showcase the Smithsonian’s rarely-seen treasures and the brilliant, fascinating people working behind-the-scenes who care for and unlock their secrets.
In doing so, he tells some extraordinary stories of American culture and heritage.
