International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts
Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle
... But can Broadway do without Me?
Richard Chigley Lynch
The Theatre and Theatre Collections / Le théâtre et les collections de documents
International
Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing
Arts
16th International Congress, London, 9-13 September 1985
Proceedings of the Congress
Société Internationale
des Bibliothèques et des Musées des arts du spectacle
16ème Congres Internationale, Londres, 9-13 september
1985
Procès-Verbal
London 1986, pp. 88-91
In 1929 Jimmy Durante sang a song on Broadway in Show Girl with the line, "I know damn well I can do without Broadway, but can Broadway do without me?" I have used this as the title of this paper, with 'Broadway' meaning the New York commercial theatre, and the 'me' being the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library.
Dr. No is in the library? The insidious Dr. No is standing in front of your reference desk smiling down at you! Where did he come from, and what did he want? The character of 'Dr. No' in the 1963 film was played by the distinguished actor, Joseph Wiseman. Word quickly spread to the staff in the workrooms and the pages in the stacks that he was in the reading rooms and most of them suddenly found reasons to walk slowly through the area and have a good look. But Mr. Wiseman, seemingly unaware of the stir he had caused was merely looking up all his stage and screen credits, as he needed to list them for some retirement papers he was filling out.
Another similar example that caused some excitement was a letter from Miss Diana Rigg. She would be in New York City for only a few days, but could she spend some time in our library researching her book, No Turn Unstoned. We may know her from Heartbreak House and Jumpers, but many of our staff know her as 'Emma Peel' on the very popular TV series, The Avengers.
But these are examples of a library fulfilling its usual functions. I would now like to turn to Broadway, and how the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library is utilised to help light up the Great White Way.
When Anthony Shaffer's play, The Case of the Oily Levantine was retitled Whodunnit and announced for Broadway, the noted costume designer Patricia Zipprodt was engaged. She immediately sent her assistant to the library. How could we help? The question first presented to us was for pictures of Agatha Christie characters in films and on the stage. The Theatre Collection has many thousands of such photographs, all neatly catalogued and arranged by title. For the most part, these come to us as gifts from press agents, critics or anyone else who has no further need for them. Since Act One of Whodunnit takes place on "an evening in the 1930's" it was also possible to approach this assignment from the period. The beautiful art deco design of the programme cover and poster carefully convey the style of the production.
Singing in the Rain, the stage version of the classic film musical which has been running here in London for several years, is now on Broadway. When production first started in New York, researchers came to the Billy Rose Theatre Collection to study our photos of movie sets and equipment, particularly early sound cameras.
The selling of Broadway is, necessarily, very big business. On occasion, nationwide (and even worldwide) television is utilised to publicise shows and stars. Alexander H. Cohen has produced the annual Tony Award Show for television since its initial telecast in 1967. The Tony is the highest award of the Broadway Theatre, similar to the Olivier Awards in London, or the Oscar for motion pictures. Mr. Cohen's wife, Hildy Parks, has written the script for all these shows, and they both function in the same capacity for the Actor's Fund of America benefit, Night of 100 Stars. Naturally Ms. Parks does a great deal of careful research in preparing her scripts and can frequently be seen in the reading rooms of the library. She and her staff are on occasion interested in re-creating numbers from past musical shows. For the 1983-84 Tony Award show, a lengthy salute to composer Stephen Sondheim featured numbers from his Broadway shows. Since the library's "Theatre on Film and Tape" project has many of these shows preserved on videotape forever, they were able to study the numbers and recreate them for the television salute, seen throughout the world.
And, before I leave the subject of the Tony Awards, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection received its own special Tony back in 1956 "for distinguished service to the theatre, 1931-1956."
Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George started out as a workshop production presented by Playwrights Horizon in 1983. Then it consisted of what is now only the first act. When it was decided to complete the work and present it on Broadway, Mr. Sondheim viewed our video tape of the original workshop production several times as he revised and completed the work.
More recently, Musical Theatre Works has viewed our videotape of workshop productiöns of All Girl Band and Cradle Song for possible later productions on or off Broadway. The library is able to tape these shows through unique agreements with the theatrical unions. The tapes must remain on deposit at the library and may only be viewed by qualified researchers.
Another way the library helps publicise Broadway is through exhibits. A recent theatrical exhibit was jointly sponsored by "Save the Theatres," an organisation born out of the trauma of the destruction of three theatres in Times Square. Drawing on the library's vast collection of posters, programmes, photographs and clippings, "eight decades of creativity" in Broadway's historical theatres was dramatically presented. Playing softly in the background was a medley of Broadway show tunes concerning the theatre and sung by the original cast members These recordings were assembled from the library's huge record collection in the "Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound."
One other example of helping to sell Broadway concerns the "gypsy robe." Some years ago a group of chorus dancers (called 'gypsies') started a tradition of passing a dressing robe from one show to another decorated with a souvenir of each show as a good luck charm. The library now has several of these robes and is frequently called upon to display them for photographing for Playbill, The New York Times or even more recently for use in a motion picture.
One of the particular strengths of the Theatre Collection is its vast holdings of typescripts and promptbooks, sometimes available nowhere else. And, since this is a public library, any adult can come in, without appointment or charge, and read and study these scripts. The stars come, such as Celeste Holm when she was considering a revival of Lady in the Dark. Jane Connell spent several days studying various scripts of one-woman shows, as she subsequently starred as The Singular Dorothy Parker. Tomorrow's stars come, also. Whenever revival productions are casting, we have to keep the scripts out at the desk, demand is so heavy. Where do we get our scripts? Recently Mrs. Boris Aronson generously donated to us 32 scripts and 60 original designs and blueprints from shows her late husband, the noted scene designer, had worked upon.
Concerning rare scripts, the Equity Library Theatre in New York (an organisation that stages revivals of past hits, primarily to showcase talent) had announced a production of Darling of the Day for last spring. When they were unable to secure the rights for this musical, they quickly searched for a substitute. One of the directors had been reading scripts of old musicals in our collection and particularly liked Very Warm for May, the 1939 Jerome Kern show with the famous song, "All the Things You Are." Since he liked the show, and it was Jerome Kern's centennial, they quickly obtained the rights from the Kern estate and announced it as their spring musical. But neither the Kern or the Hammerstein estates had a copy of the script. The only copy that could be found to exist was the one in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection! Since time was short, they could not wait to have it microfilmed and came to the library, typewriter in hand, and spent several days copying our script.
When actors are called upon to portray real theatrical personalities, they frequently come to the library. Recently the tragic story of Frances Farmer was done not only as a film, but on television and as three off-Broadway plays. The actors who portrayed her associates in the New York Group Theater came in to go through our collection of clippings for insights into the characters of these people.
The Billy Rose Theatre Collection prides itself on its virtually complete collection of New York theatre programmes for more than the past fifty years and many thousands going further back to the 19th century. Nowadays we automatically receive copies from the publishers of all Broadway and off-Broadway productions. Staff and friends are constantly enriching this collection with regional and foreign programmes they collect on their travels. Other gifts come from unexpected sources. Recently a Mr. Taylor Reed was in the collection researching the Gershwin musical, Of Thee I Sing. As he left he stopped at the desk to comment on how impressed he was with our material. He then identified himselfas a cast member of Cry for Us All, Pickwick, and other musicals of the 1960's and offered to donate his collection of programmes when these musicals toured before their Broadway debuts. This type of material is particularly important to anyone researching the evolution of a show as it works its way to Broadway. But programmes can answer a variety of questions. Recently the agency for a currently touring production of Zorba called to ask us to check the original Playbill for information on the press representatives when the show opened.
Of all the different types of users of the library, we probably help the writer the most. He ranges from the college student working on a term paper to professionals like Stanley Green working on his latest reference book. Joseph Shipley recently spent several months with us working on the revised edition of his Guide to Great Plays. Sometimes the newspaper critics visit us as well. Before writing his review of the new version of To Be or Not to Be, Vincent Canby of The New York Times spent an afternoon with us reading the script of the original Jack Benny film.
Some years ago Mrs. Josh Logan donated to the New York Public Library most of her father's memorabilia. Her father happened to be Edward Harrigan of the famous vaudeville team, Harrigan and Hart. For some years there has been talk of a musical about this team. So, when Mrs. Logan called the library recently to let us know she would be in to look at the material she had donated, we knew it was only a matter of time before the new musical, Harrigan 'n' Hart would be announced.
Another recent Broadway attraction was a new musical by Fay Kanin entitled Grind. In burlesque there is an expression (or movement!) "bump and grind!". This show concerns some black performers in a Chicago burlesque theatre in the 1930's. Mrs. Kanin came to the library seeking examples of speech patterns and expressions used by American blacks during this period. By using our collection of typescripts and prompt books, as well as comic burlesque routines she was able to do so. I should also mention the large collection of spoken recordings in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives, which writers and actors use for hearing accents.
Still another type of writer that uses the Theatre Collection is the press agent. It is unlikely that any show opens on or off Broadway without some checking, perhaps just a phone call, on the credits of the cast and crew. Several recent examples would include the Soho Rep Company calling to check on previous New York productions of A Winter's Tale, and a request for recent biographical information on Herb Gardner, author of the new play, I'm Not Rappaport.
Although I have limited this paper to the Broadway theatre, there is much that the library does to help regional and world theatre. Telephone calls come in constantly from all over the United States (and even abroad) for help. And we get letters, as well. A high school in Iowa is doing Minnie's Boys next fall, and writes: "I would appreciate anything that would be of help in determing set design, costume design, period in which it was set or any other information on the production that would be of help to us as directors." We were able to send them photocopies of various photographs from our collection. Recently a request arrived from Scotland for photos of the original Broadway production of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, in preparation for the first European production. We do provide service by mail, although condition of the material and copyright restrictions sometimes limit the materials we can copy. We do charge searching fees in addition to copying and mailing costs.
Since 1940 the Billy Rose Theatre Collection has maintained a 'guest book' for theatrical professionals to sign when they use the collection. The first person to sign was the noted producer, Daniel Frohman. There is one wonderful page in 1981 with the following British autographs: Diana Rigg, Anthony Shaffer, Malcolm McDowell, Tim Curry and Edward Petheridge.
I started off by quoting
the song, "I know darn well I can do without
Broadway ..." and yes, the Billy Rose Theatre
Collection could survive without Broadway. But without
the many gifts we receive, and the stimulation of the
theatre's professionals calling upon us, it would be a
much poorer place. "But can Broadway do without me?".
Well, yes, Broadway can do without the Theatre
Collection, but it, too, would be the poorer.
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Last updated: 27.11.2002
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