Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Sam. Summerlin papers #4795, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Cynthia Summerlin, 4 March 1996 (Acc. 96022).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Tim Pyatt, January 1997

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Updated by: Nancy Kaiser, March 2021

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Associated Press--History.
• Detectives--Case studies.
• Henderson, Bruce E. 1:33.
• Henderson, Bruce E. Super sleuths.
• Henderson, Bruce E., 1929-
• Journalists--North Carolina--History--20th century.
• Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963.
• New York times--History.
• Nuclear weapons--China.
• Ryan, William L. (William Lawrence), 1911-
• Ryan, William L. (William Lawrence), 1911- China cloud.
• Summerlin, Sam.

A native of Chapel Hill, N.C., Sam Summerlin graduated from high school in Mexico City and speaks fluent Spanish. He earned Phi Beta Kappa honors at the University of North Carolina, then joined the Associated Press. When the Korean War broke out, he became the youngest foreign correspondent in that conflict and also covered other parts of Asia before moving to Latin America, where he reported on many countries from bases in Havana and Buenos Aires. He was named AP bureau chief in New Orleans in 1963 and directed coverage of the civil rights movement for two years. In 1965, he was promoted to New York, where he served as Deputy News Editor for AP World Services. Summerlin joined the New York Times Company in 1975, and, for 12 years, served as president and chair of the Times' News Service and Syndicate.

Summerlin took early retirement from the New York Times Company to pursue an entrepreneurial role in the emerging information/communications revolution. He created two companies: Hollywood Stars, Inc., which produces video programs, and SAGA Agency, Inc., which produces celebrity still photos, interviews and related news information, including news from SAGA’s White House correspondent. SAGA also serves as literary agent for a selected group of authors. Hollywood Stars, Inc. has completed more than 800 television shows and has a library of more than 6,000 exclusive interviews with the major movie stars. Its news segments have been broadcast in the United States on Rupert Murdoch's FOX News Service and abroad to more than 80 nations through Ted Turner's TNT network to Latin America and the Caribbean, via TV1000 to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, on the Hallmark Channel to the Far East, on FOX News in Japan, in Spain, and on the Internet through Microsoft. The company has also produced television specials about movie stars, such as Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Lee Curtis for the Biography series on the A&E Network; Century of Cinema for the Disney Channel; and Hollywood's Magic Night, an annual preview of the Oscars, broadcast nationwide on PBS and syndicated worldwide.

Summerlin is the author or co-author of four books, including The China Cloud (1968), which served as the basis for a CBS 60 Minutes network program. He has produced more than 800 television programs, ranging from entertainment to histories of the Winter and Summer Olympics and a 26-part series for the Discovery Channel on Portraits of Power, profiling how New York Times correspondents remembered such world leaders as Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and John F. Kennedy.

Summerlin is a recipient of Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Journalism Award for outstanding coverage of Latin America and is in the University of North Carolina Journalism School’s Hall of Fame. He was the first correspondent to flash the news that the Korean War had ended, as noted in Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else (2007), a book about the history of the Associated Press.

Sam Summerlin, whose wife Cynthia died in 2000, has two children, Claire Slattery of Encinitas, Calif., and Thomas A. Summerlin of Arlington, Va., and three grandchildren, Barrett, Berkley, and Thomas Andrew Kai.

Summerlin's papers consist largely of drafts of his books, short stories, and scripts. Some related correspondence and notes are present. Also included are book, television, and movie proposals. There is minimal documentation pertaining to his career with the Associated Press and as president of the New York Times Syndicate.

• Photographs (PF-4795/1-5)