The Hill Cumorah Legacy Project

Items

• Hill Cumorah Pageant Sweatshirt
  This article of clothing is a gray sweatshirt made for Hill Cumorah Pageant cast members. According to Jerry Argetsinger, similar sweatshirts were made for stage crew members. The sweatshirt design consists of a round Pageant seal, consisting of three concentric circles, over the chest. The outermost circle functions as a border. The middle circle features the text "Hill Cumorah Pageant." The innermost circle features the Pageant's contemporary (circa 1990s) logo of three trumpeters, drawn with intersecting lines, standing side by side. Trumpets extend from the innermost circle into the middle circle. An Art Deco aesthetic is reflected in the seal's design. A trademark "R" symbol appears next to the seal. The capitalized words "CAST MEMBER" appear below the seal. Jerry Argetsinger's caption: "Even in summer it gets Cold at night. Official Sweat Shirts are available for purchase by Cast and Crew."
• Argetsinger Hill Cumorah Pageant Book Collection
  A stack of books and manuscripts addressing the Hill Cumorah Pageant that Gail and Jerry Argetsinger accumulated over the years.During the HIST 326 "History Harvest" event on Tuesday, February 22, 2022, Jerry provided handwritten index cards with the titles and authors of the different books.Collection Contents:Dalmath, Gabe, G. R. DeFranco, and Jan LaMartina Waxman. The Image is Rochester. Urban Tapestry Series. Memphis, TN: Towery Publishing, 1997. Jerry's caption: "An urban tapestry." Notes page 74 in reference to the Pageant.  Jones, Megan Sanborn. Contemporary Mormon Pageantry: Seeking after the Dead. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018.  Jerry's caption: "A Book of Scholarly Criticism. Examination of 6 Mormon Pageants." Moe, Christian Hollis, Scott J. Parker, and George McCalmon. Creating Historical Drama: A Guide for Communities, Theatre Groups, and Playwrights. 2nd ed. 1965; Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. Jerry's caption: "An Examination of many American Outdoor Dramas. Shakespear [sic], Religious, Historic." Naythons, Matthew, with contributions by Acey Harper, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Roger Rosenblatt. The Mission: Inside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. New York: Warner Books, 1995.  Jerry's caption: "A Travelog." Shaw, Marc E., and Holly Welker. Singing and Dancing to The Book of Mormon: Critical Essays on the Broadway Musical. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Jerry's caption: "It's [sic] strong connection to the Cumorah Pageant." Suskin, Steven. The Book of Mormon: The Testament of a Broadway Musical. Book and score by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone. Photography by Joan Marcus. New York: Newmarket Press, 2012. Jerry's caption: "A Broadway Musical. Text by Steven Suskin." Whitman, Charles W. "A History of the Hill Cumorah Pageant (1937–1964) and an Examination of the Dramatic Development of the Text of 'America's Witness for Christ.'" PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1967. Bound edition, UMI Dissertation Services, 1968. Jerry's caption: "PhD Dissertation." Note: The full Whitman dissertation is available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, ProQuest document ID302222137, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/history-hill-cumorah-pageant-1937-1964/docview/302222137/se-2.  Not pictured:Evenden, Michael. "An Analysis of America's Witness for Christ: The Hill Cumorah."   Note by Jerry Argetsinger: "Literary Analysis. Dramaturgy by Michael Evenden. Created to help theatre directors nuance the Outdoor Drama." Evenden wrote this manuscript specifically as a guide for Pageant directors.
• Hill Cumorah Pageant Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Flyer (2012)
  The document is a flyer advertising the seventy-fifth anniversary production of the Hill Cumorah Pageant in July 2012.The flyer is printed on glossy 8.5-inch-by-11-inch paper. Text and images appear only on the recto (front) side. The flyer features an anniversary seal with "Hill Cumorah Pageant" and "1937 [to] 2012" written along the borders and a large "75" in the center. A color photograph of the Pageant's opening tableau—the full cast assembled on the multi-tiered stage, arms outstretched toward the audience, with seven trumpeters at the top of the stage—spans the width of the page. Notes from the flyer:Performance dates: "July 13–14 and 17–21" "Free Admission" and "Free Parking" "Seating for 9,000" Directions to the Hill Cumorah: "Off highway 21 near Palmyra, New York [line break] 2 miles north of Interstate 90, exit 43" "Concessions available" "Handicap accessible" "Spanish and ASL available," followed by small images of hands making the "OK" sign "Anniversary displays and presentations" Phone number for the Hill Cumorah Visitors' Center Website link to www.hillcumorah.org. July 17, 2012, screenshot of the website, courtesy of the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20120717005945/https://www.hillcumorah.org/. Invitation to visit the Pageant's Facebook page Full name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Lehi's Robe, Sash, and Under-Tunic
  The first image is of a large cotton and wool purple robe with a textured golden lamé along the opening. It also has two large golden lamé-edged patches on both shoulders that run from front to back, the inner part of which contains gold and pink floral patterns on top of a black stripe. The patches have several golden frays on the lower ends. The arm openings are also lined with gold lamé. The chest area has a small oval-shaped brass plate that hangs off golden chains that are attached to the robe itself. The robe is pretty heavy as a result of all the lamé. The second image is a zoomed-in photograph of one of the two shoulder patches, and the proceeding image is a zoomed-in photo of the brass plate. The fourth image is of the sash, cotton, very long, and vertically striped with frayed ends. The stripes go in the following order: A wide strip of cyan, small strips of pink, black, white, yellow, cyan, maroon, indigo, pink, black, green, pink, blue, a wide stripe of black, small strips of blue, pink, green, black, pink, indigo, cyan, maroon, yellow, white, black, pink, wide strip of indigo, a small strip of pink, black, white, yellow, cyan, maroon, indigo, pink, black, green, pink, wide strip of mauve, a small strip of pink, green, black, pink, indigo, maroon, cyan, yellow, white, black, pink, and a wide strip of cyan. The fifth and final image is of a large, plain, cotton, light blue under-tunic, which the performer wore underneath the robe. It is still inside a protective and transparent plastic laundry sleeve. These items were made specifically to withstand rain, a common occurrence during shows. Lehi wore these items during the Pageant's Old World scenes (~600 BC Jerusalem).
• 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.