The Hill Cumorah Legacy Project

Items

• Hill Cumorah Pageant Script 1980
  The Spring Script for the 1980 Hill Cumorah Pageant. There was a relatively new Pageant director, Jack Sederholm, at that time. Sederholm edited the script and continued to do so each year of his tenure (1978 through 1985). A handwritten notecard by Jerry Argetsinger is also included. Document Notes: Original script by H. Wayne Driggs; current script edited by Jack Sederholm. Digital Preservation Note: Optical character recognition (OCR) was used to make the PDF text-searchable, but the scan is not perfect, and it does not capture the script's handwritten notes.Copyright Note: After consulting with the LDS Church History Department about the script's copyright/intellectual property status, we determined that the PDF of the script cannot be made public here as of October 2022. For those interested in consulting the script, please see the following collection at the Church History Department in Salt Lake City.Argetsinger, Gerald Scott, 1946-. Gerald and Gail Argetsinger collection on the Hill Cumorah Pageant, circa 1930-2000. https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/record/78ed0e52-d180-46f1-9fcb-8f10ba47c34f/0?view=summary.
• Prolog: A Tribute to The Founding Fathers
  This play script, produced by Brent Hanson for the Hill Cumorah Pageant in 1976, was a one-time-use prologue created to celebrate the bicentennial of the United States of America. In this prologue, the national anthem is played and actors portraying the Founding Fathers of the United States are introduced as they recite the dialogue contained in the script. The dialogue praises 200 years of sovereignty for the United States and celebrates the United States’s long history with religious freedom. Being a production by the Church of Jesus Christ of The Latter-day Saints, the dialogue additionally celebrates the discovery of the North American continent, which is important to the Mormon religion. A handwritten notecard by Jerry Argetsinger is also included. Note: Optical character recognition (OCR) was used to make the PDF text-searchable, but the scan is not perfect, and it does not capture the script's handwritten notes.
• America's Witness for Christ: Script of the First Hill Cumorah Pageant, 1937 [Copy B]
  This entry is a printed paper copy of the 1937 Script of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. The title reads, “America’s Witness for Christ,” and the subtitle is “A Pageant in Six Episodes Prepared from the Stick of Joseph Known to the world as THE BOOK OF MORMON.” A handwritten note, "Corrected Copy June 16, 1937," appears above the title. The script is written by H. Wayne Driggs, and it is the original script for the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which was performed from 1937–2019 in Palmyra, New York. The script is annotated with pen markings that change stage direction or change some lines entirely. Some annotations change who the speaker of certain lines is, and other markings appear to get rid of certain monologues. The document is 20 pages, printed on single-sided photocopy paper. The typeface appears to be a Courier-style serif font and is black text on white paper. On the top of the first page of the document, the date June 16, 1937, is written, which dates this to be one month and 7 days before the first production, which was on July 23, 1937. Digital Preservation Note: Optical character recognition (OCR) was used to make the PDF text-searchable, but the scan is not perfect, and it does not capture the script's handwritten notes.Copyright Note: After consulting with the LDS Church History Department about the script's copyright/intellectual property status, we determined that the PDF of the script cannot be made public here as of October 2022. For those interested in consulting the script, please see the following collection at the Church History Department in Salt Lake City.Argetsinger, Gerald Scott, 1946-. Gerald and Gail Argetsinger collection on the Hill Cumorah Pageant, circa 1930-2000. https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/record/78ed0e52-d180-46f1-9fcb-8f10ba47c34f/0?view=summary.
• America's Witness for Christ: Script of the 1937 Hill Cumorah Pageant [Copy A]
  This item is a paper photocopy of the 1937 Script of the Hill Cumorah Pageant titled "America's Witness for Christ," written by H. Wayne Driggs. The original script was typewritten and heavily annotated for sounds and music direction. This includes which records to play during each part of the Pageant and timing for other sound effects. The records are noted as belonging to "Victor" for music records and "Gennett" for sound effects records. It is not recorded who annotated the script. The script is 24 pages long on single sided pages. The photocopy is in good condition, with some minor wear on the edges and no noticeable tears. Digital Preservation Note: Optical character recognition (OCR) was used to make the PDF text-searchable, but the scan is not perfect, and it does not capture the script's handwritten notes. Copyright Note: After consulting with the LDS Church History Department about the script's copyright/intellectual property status, we determined that the PDF of the script cannot be made public here as of October 2022. For those interested in consulting the script, please see the following collection at the Church History Department in Salt Lake City. Argetsinger, Gerald Scott, 1946-. Gerald and Gail Argetsinger collection on the Hill Cumorah Pageant, circa 1930-2000. https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/record/78ed0e52-d180-46f1-9fcb-8f10ba47c34f/0?view=summary.
• 1955 Hill Cumorah Pageant Script
  Folder: Yellow Folder containing the printed script of the 1955 Cumorah Hill Pageant. The Cover contains the text "Hill Cumorah Pageant Circa 1955." The word Cumorah was originally misspelled; an "o" has been crossed out and replaced with a "u" just above it. Script: Each page is one sided, with the photo-copied text of the script printed out. Some pages contain annotations and hand-written notes about the running of the play like "lights out" and "music." The one handwritten note is in cursive and reads, "Script change about 3 years ago. Pageant would begin with epilogue." Counting the epilogue, there are twenty-eight pages total included in this version of the script. Note: Optical character recognition (OCR) was used to make the PDF text-searchable, but the scan is not perfect, and it does not capture the script's handwritten notes.
• Prologue: The Constitution, Hill Cumorah Pageant 1987
  This pamphlet is Jerry Argetsinger's copy of the revised prologue script for the 1987 Hill Cumorah Pageant, dated April 20, 1987. Harold Hansen wrote the script, although no author is listed on the cover. The pamphlet consists of five 8.5x11-inch single-sided pages, bound with a staple in the upper left corner. The cover page features a computer-designed illustration of a rolled-up parchment document bisected by a quill pen. Instead of beginning immediately with stories from the Book of Mormon, the 1987 Pageant began with a prologue celebrating the U.S. Constitution Bicentennial. Founding Fathers and Framers of the Constitution featured in the script include (in order) James Madison, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Daniel Webster and Joseph Smith also appear. The stage directions indicate tentative plans to feature a recording of Ezra Taft Benson, who was the current President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Note: Two PDF scans of the script processed with optical character recognition (OCR) are provided here. The first is the unaltered text. The second is annotated, transcribing words that the scanner did not convert into machine-readable text.