Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies

Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies

RBML, Phoenix Collection

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 – 1816)

Manuscript, 97 pages, late 18th or early 19th century

RBML
239b.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Miniature portrait

RBML, Plimpton Miniatures
Late in the eighteenth century, Sheridan told a publisher who asked for a corrected copy of School for Scandal, that after nineteen years he was still not satisfied with the text. Whether he ever completed a definitive text is not known, but he may have continued to work on the play as late as 1815. This late version, although not complete, shows some significant changes from an earlier one that has long been accepted as the basic text. The manuscript is in five hands: one appears to be either that of John Palmer (1742?-1798), the original performer of Joseph Surface, the hypocritical brother in this popular comedy, or, according to some scholars, that of George Steevens (1736-1800), the commentator on Shakespeare and collaborator with Samuel Johnson.
(Manuscript) Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum & Library Collection

(Portrait) Gift of Mrs. Francis Plimpton, 1987

Frances Anne Kemble (1809 – 1893)

RBML, Dramatic Museum Collection

Frances Anne Kemble (1809 – 1893)

Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835

RBML, Dramatic Library
Fanny Kemble was not yet twenty when she made her debut as Juliet at Covent Garden on 5 October 1829, wearing this bodice. The London Times reported: “Upon the whole, we do not remember to have ever seen a more triumphant debut. That Miss Kemble has been well and carefully instructed, as, of course, she would be is clear; but it is no less clear that she possesses qualifications which instructions could not create, although it can bring them to perfection.” Some critics thought she was even better than her famous aunt, Sarah Siddons had been at the same age.
In 1832 she traveled to the United States with her father, the actor Charles Kemble, and was an immediate success in New York and during a tour that lasted for two years. She married Pierce Butler in 1834. Butler was a retired actor and Philadelphian who owned a plantation in Georgia. Her diary from this time was published in two volumes in 1835, and in this copy she has made annotations throughout. Visiting Butler’s plantation, she was shocked to see the institution of slavery first-hand. Other parts of her diary were published as Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1835, and reissued in New York and London during the American Civil War in order to influence British opinion against slavery and the South.
Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum & Library Collection
241.

Fortune Theatre Model

London: James P. Maginnis, ca. 1912

RBML, Dramatic Museum
In 1599, Philip Henslowe, theater producer, and Edward Alleyn, actor and founder of Dulwich College, contracted with Peter Streete, carpenter, to build a theater north of Aldersgate on Golden (formerly Golding) Lane in London. Streete had been the contractor for the Globe Cheatre that had opened in late 1599. Henslowe paid £520 for the Fortune, opened in 1600, and almost twice as much to have it rebuilt of brick after it burned in 1621.
The working of the Fortune contract was exact enough to enable reconstructions to be made. This one was made by James P. Maginnis of London, under the direction of Walter H. Godfrey, for Columbia professor and theater history pioneer, Brander Matthews. The scale is 3:100. It became part of his Dramatic Museum, a vast collection of books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, recordings, puppets, masks, set models, theater models, and other museum objects, that he began in 1912.
The Fortune Theatre was to be three stories high, on a low wall foundation of brick “underpinning”). An open stage 43 feet by about 27 feet was to be surrounded by galleries, including four “gentlemen’s rooms” and other “twopennie rooms.” The stage, modeled on that of the Globe in Southwark, would have its pillars “wroughte plasterwise [i.e.strapwork pilasters], with carved proporcions called satiers to be placed and set on the top of every of the same postes.” The reconstruction shows how the gallery, the essential feature of the new theatres, was copied from the coaching inns (such as The George Inn, still partly standing in Southwark), which in turn had adapted it from the large house. The Fortune was located only a few blocks away from what is today the Barbican Arts Centre.
Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum & Library Collection
242a.

Tennessee Williams (1911 – 1983)

RBML, Tennessee Williams Papers

RBML, Tennessee Williams Papers

(Glasses) Purchased with the Tennessee Williams Estate, 1994

Thomas W. Lamb (1871 – 1942)

Charcoal and pastel on tracing paper, 1930

Avery Library, Drawings and Archives, Thomas W. Lamb Collection
A Scotsman who emigrated to Canada and then New York, Lamb became one of the leading theater designers in the early 20th century. He designed or renovated theaters for several chains, including Loew’s, Fox, and Poli, at sites in New York and around the world. For Manhattan, the archive contains a large number of projects or renovations in Manhattan alone, including the old Madison Square Garden at 8th & 50th St., and the Eltinge, among others. There are theaters for Calcutta, London, Cairo, Toronto, and Johannesburg. This drawing is part of a set of proposals for the renovation of the Audubon Ballroom, a theater Lamb had designed in 1912 and later became famous as the site of the assassination of Malcolm X. The building was redeveloped in 1995 as the Audubon Business and Technology Center by Columbia. Due to the instability of the abandoned structure, only the façade was salvaged and reinstalled.

The collection, containing over 20,000 drawings, was donated by John McNamara in 1982. McNamara, also a theater architect, had been Lamb’s associate and then successor. At the time of the donation, McNamara was at work preparing the Winter Garden Theater for a new production called “Cats.”

Joseph Urban (1872 – 1933)

“Blue Nursery Scene,” The Ziegfeld Follies, 1931

Theater set model; gouache, watercolor, and graphite; wooden base with paper board drops supported on metal poles; paper and transparent tissue paper decorations, some supported with wooden bases

RBML, Joseph Urban Papers
Joseph Urban studied architecture at the Akademie der bildenden Künst in his native Vienna. He established himself as an architect as well as a book illustrator, exhibit designer, interior decorator and set designer, often in collaboration with the painter Heinrich Lefler. Urban and Lefler were co-founders of the Hagenbund, an exhibiting society similar to the Secessionists. In 1912 at the age of 40, Urban emigrated to the United States and became the designer for the Boston Opera Company where he introduced the innovations of the New Stagecraft from the European theater.
After the Boston Opera Company went bankrupt in 1914, Urban began designing sets in New York. He designed the Ziegfeld Follies, as well as all other Ziegfeld productions, from 1915 to 1932. In 1917 he began designing for the Metropolitan Opera and continued to do so until his death in 1933, with operas including the first American productions of Puccini’s Turandot and Richard Strauss’s Egyptian Helen, and the first Metropolitan Opera productions of Verdi’s Don Carlos and Richard Strauss’s Electra.
From 1921 to 1925 Urban was also the art director for William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Studios. He had branched out to other artistic endeavors since moving to New York, including designing shop windows, roof gardens and interior decoration. From 1921 to 1922 he introduced the works of Viennese artists to the United States through his Wiener Werkstätte shop. He received his license to practice architecture in the United States in 1926, after which he designed homes, buildings, ballrooms and theaters in New York and elsewhere. Notable examples of his extant architecture are the Paramount Theater Building and Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and the New School and the Hearst Magazine Building in New York.
Columbia’s massive Joseph Urban holdings cover his entire career. Most recently, the Joseph Urban Stage Design Models and Documents project, through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has made possible the preservation of 240 three-dimensional models created by Urban for New York theaters between 1914-1933, including productions for the Ziegfeld Follies, such as the “Blue Nursery Scene” in 1931, the Metropolitan Opera, and a variety of Broadway theaters. The project has also created digital images of the set models and related stage design documents and drawings that are linked to the online finding aid: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/rare/guides/Urban/.
Gift of Mrs. Joseph Urban, 1955
245.

Florine Stettheimer (1871 – 1944)

Wire, crepe paper, thread, feathers, sequins, toile, velvet, cellophane, New York, 1934

RBML, Florine Stettheimer Papers
Artist Florine Stettheimer is best known for her lavish sets and costumes that she designed for the first production of Gertrude Stein’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts, with music by Virgil Thompson. Rather than use flat drawings, Stettheimer created these figures using a wide variety of materials, including the newly invented cellophane, seen here on the palm trees, and used extensively for the set itself. Shown here is part of the maquette for Act I of the opera, with the figures for the characters, from left to right: Saint Settlement, The Compere (in black), Saint Teresa I, The Female Dancers (three), Saint Teresa II, Saint Ignatius, and The Commere (in red).
Gift of Joseph Solomon, on behalf of the Estate of Ettie Stettheimer, 1967
246.

Ely Jacques Kahn (1884 – 1972)

Charcoal and pastel on tracing paper, [1944-47]

Avery Library, Drawings and Archives, Kahn and Jacobs Collection
A 1906 graduate of Columbia College, Kahn spent several years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris before returning to New York to join the firm of Buchman and Fox. The firm had many connections in the retail and garment industries; department stores were among their clients. Bloomingdale’s and Oppenheim-Collins were two of their major patrons. Kahn, along with Raymond Hood and Ralph Walker, was one of the most successful New York architects of the 1920s. His buildings include 2 Park Avenue, the Squibb Building, Bergdorf-Goodman, 120 Wall Street, 525 Seventh Avenue, the Film Center Building, among many others. Because of Kahn’s decorative talents, the buildings were also known for their colorful lobbies and elevator cabs and exterior ornament.
Around 1940, Kahn teamed with a younger architect, Robert Allan Jacobs, son of the architect Harry Allan Jacobs, who had just returned from working in Le Corbusier’s office in Paris. This project for a post-war theater shows the exuberance and eagerness for a post-war New York City. After years of war-time blackouts, these drawings promised a return to the bright lights and excitement of Times Square. Unfortunately, this project was not built.
The Kahn collection was the gift of Hellmuth, Obata, and Kassabaum, the successor firm to Kahn and Jacobs. Additional personal materials, including scrapbooks, clippings, and photographs, were gifts of Mrs. Ely Jacques Kahn.
Gift of Hellmuth, Obata, and Kassabaum, 1978
247a.

Samuel (1899 – 1971) and Bella Cohen Spewack (1899 – 1990)

Typescript, with autograph corrections, 1948

RBML, Sam and Bella Spewack Papers
247b.

First Tony award for Best Book (Musical), 1949

RBML, Sam and Bella Spewack Papers

Judy Garland (1922 – 1969)

“The Judy Garland Story”

Typescript, New York, March 1961

RBML, Random House Papers
This is Random House’s copy of Fred F. Finklehoffe’s transcription, made in Mexico City, in February 1961, of the tape-recorded interviews that he had made with Judy Garland in London and elsewhere in 1960, for her proposed, but never written autobiography. Playwright, screenwriter, and producer, Fred Finkelhoffe worked on the screenplays for six of Garland’s films, including “Strike Up the Band,” “Girl Crazy,” and “Meet Me In St. Louis.” On page one of the transcript she states that, “Contrary [to] many rumors, I was not born in a trunk, but in a lovely white house with a garden, and until I went back to see it again when I was fifteen, always I thought it was the biggest house I’d ever seen.”
Gift of Random House, Inc., 1970
249.

Tom Stoppard (b. 1937)

Mimeographed copy of typescript, signed and inscribed to Carl [Petersen] by the author, New York, ca. 1967

RBML, House of Books Collection
The House of Books opened in New York on October 10, 1930, under proprietors Louis Henry Cohn (1888-1953) and Marguerite Arnold Cohn (1887-1984). It specialized in 20^th century British and American first editions and brought the Cohns into contact with many of the major literary figures of the day, including Tom Stoppard. This play was his first major success. It tells the tale of Hamlet from the point-of-view of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play.
Bequest of Marguerite A. Cohn, 1984

250.

“The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud” A Three Act Dance-Theatre Concert, Brooklyn Academy of Music

Poster, lithograph, “after engraving by William Blake/R. Wilson 70/300,” 1969

RBML, Robert Wilson Papers

In the early 1980s, Wilson began working on his multi-national epic, “the CIVIL wars: a tree is best measured when it is down,” his most ambitious project to date. Created in collaboration with an international group of artists and planned as the centerpiece of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles, the full opera has not been seen in its entirety, but individual parts have been produced in the United States, Europe and Japan.