Among the archival collections recently processed are the papers of Oreste Pucciani. Pucciani was born in Cleveland in 1916, the son of a candy manufacturer. He attended the Cleveland public schools and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Adelbert College, Western Reserve University (now Case Western University) in 1939. He took his doctorate in Romance languages from Harvard in 1943. In 1946-47, Pucciani studied in France and Italy on a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, meeting Sartre and his companion Simone de Beauvoir. Returning to the United States in 1947, Pucciani lectured at Harvard, before joining the faculty of the University of California Los Angeles as an Assistant Professor of French in 1948. He was became an Associate Professor in 1954, and a full Professor in 1960. He served as chairman of the French department from 1961 to 1966, and became emeritus in 1979.
 
Pucciani's scholarly interests were diverse. His doctoral dissertation was devoted to the reception of Walt Whitman in France. The French Theater since 1930 (1954) remains a useful anthology of French theater in the years between the world wars. He also published a well regarded translation of Racine's masterpiece Phédre in 1961. But Pucciani is best known as an interpreter of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, and pioneered in teaching courses on Sartre at UCLA before the philosopher's works were translated into English.
 
Pucciani was the long-time lover of fashion designer Rudi Gernreich. In 1988, after Gernreich's death, he established the ACLU Rudi Gernreich-Oreste Pucciani Endowment Fund to support the fight for GLBT rights.
 
He died in Los Angeles on April 28, 1999.

The bulk of the Pucciani Papers consists of materials documenting Pucciani's relationship with three individuals: Jacques Faure, a  French designer who served as the art director of French Vogue for over ten years; Stanley Kuniholm, a poet and teacher in New England; and Lionel Mailles.  Pucciani was romantically involved with Faure and Mailles at different points in his life.  He provided financial support to all three of these men at various times.
 
The Pucciani Papers also include letters, memorabilia, ephemera, and other materials relating to other friends of Pucciani, including graphic artist and designer Paul Batoon, born in Texas of Filipino parents, who studied at UCLA and became a protégé of Rudi Gernreich; Viennese-born abstract expressionist painter and graphic artist Lilly Fenichel; E. Dale Saunders (1919-1995), professor of Japanese at the University of Pennsylvania, whose friendship with Pucciani dated from their undergraduate days at Western Reserve; and French artist Raymond Voinquel (1912-1994).

Curious?  To find out more about this collection, you can view the Finding Aid online here.