The Johnny Cash archives

Saul Holiff (1925-2005) was the manager of one of the most iconic figures in American music history, Johnny Cash, and is best remembered for pairing Cash with June Carter. Holiff, who started as a concert promoter in the late 1950s in London, Ontario, managed Cash from 1961-1973, by turns the most tumultuous and remarkable years of the singer’s life, and resigned at the pinnacle of Cash’s success. The collection in Special Collections at the University of Victoria Libraries contains photographs, letters, audio recordings, diaries, gold records, and ephemera that Holiff carefully accumulated during his career and preserved until the end of his life.

Jonathan Holiff is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the son of the late Saul Holiff. His 2012 film about the unlikely, rocky relationship between Cash and Holiff, “My Father and The Man In Black,” was released in theatres in the United States and the United Kingdom, and on television around the world. The film, which the New York Times called “complex and haunting,” won nine film festival competitions including Edinburgh and Hamburg. Jonathan also won the “Orson Welles Award" for Best New Director at the Tiburon International Film Festival.

Currently, Jonathan is developing When Johnny Cash Got His Moose, a documentary about the extraordinary 1961 Newfoundland moose hunt and concert tour that reinvigorated Cash’s career and put him on the path to superstardom.