China Beach, April 1998 - July 1991

Broyles co-created China Beach with John Sacret Young in 1988. The series follows the lives of doctors, nurses and other civilians living on an American military base in Vietnam and stars Dana Delany, Michael Boatman, Marg Helgenberger, and Robert Picardo. Broyles wrote or co-wrote many of the early episodes, and he remained producer and creative consultant throughout the run of the show. The hour-long drama aired weekly on ABC from 1988-1991. Included among the series’ many awards is the 1990 Golden Globes award for best dramatic television series.

Research, story development files, scripts, notebooks, episode files, production files, financial materials, reports, correspondence, and other administrative files document the production of China Beach. The first two series, research and story development, highlight Broyles’s early work developing the show and include files on a variety of topics including attitudes about the conflict, character backgrounds, locations, the role of American civilians in Vietnam, and medical information. Scripts (boxes 100-118) comprise the bulk of the China Beach series, They are arranged chronologically according to the date originally aired. Broyles and John Sacret Young co-wrote the Pilot that first aired in April 1988. Broyles has writing credits on four other scripts including “Home,” “Chao Ong,” and “Lost and Found” (Parts I and II). Other items of note in this series include the production files with casting, set, music, and shooting information. Any video copies of individual episodes were removed to Series XII: Videocassettes, at the end of this collection (boxes 247-248).