Research Catalog

Oliver M. Sayler collection of theatrical scrapbooks.

Title: Oliver M. Sayler collection of theatrical scrapbooks.
Publication: 1902-1939, bulk 1928-1932.

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6 Items

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request Appointment Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person.	Mixed material	Supervised use	MWEZ+ n.c. 2314	Performing Arts Research Collections - Theatre
Request Appointment Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person.	Mixed material	Supervised use	MWEZ+ n.c. 2313	Performing Arts Research Collections - Theatre
Request Appointment Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person.	Mixed material	Supervised use	MWEZ+ n.c. 2312	Performing Arts Research Collections - Theatre
Request Appointment Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person.	Mixed material	Supervised use	MWEZ+ n.c. 2311	Performing Arts Research Collections - Theatre
Request Appointment Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person.	Mixed material	Supervised use	MWEZ+ n.c. 2310	Performing Arts Research Collections - Theatre
Request Appointment Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person.	Mixed material	Supervised use	MWEZ+ n.c. 2309	Performing Arts Research Collections - Theatre

Details

Additional Authors

Sayler, Oliver M., 1887-1958

Description

6 scrapbooks : illustrations, some in color; 44 cm

Summary

Six scrapbooks of newspaper clippings compiled and arranged topically by Oliver M. Sayler documenting new theatrical productions in New York, the bulk in the late 1920s to the early 1930s, with some emphasis on performances of Russian origin. Feature articles and essays, including some by Sayler himself, are mainly in English, though Russian and Yiddish language material appears generously throughout. Includes an invitation, a thank you note, programs, promotional materials, half-tone photographs, caricatures, cartoons, and drawings.

Donor/Sponsor

In honor of George Freedley

Subjects

Genre/Form

Costume design drawings.
Scrapbooks.
Theater programs.
Playbills.
Printed ephemera.

Note

Bound by The New York Public Library.
MWEZ + n.c. 2309 (1928-1931) documents the first production of The cherry orchard in English in New York, directed by and starring James B. Fagan; Steel by John Wexley; Olympia by Ferenc Molnár; foreign language productions by Leo Bulgakov and Bulgakov Associates; Lolly (Roundabout) by Fanny Heaslip Lea and The ledge by Paul Osborn, the first productions by Walter Greenough and the New York Theatre Assemblies, a high society producing group; Maurice Schwartz in the Yiddish Art Theatre's condensed version of The merchant of Venice; Lady Dedlock by Paul Kester, adapted from Bleak House by Charles Dickens; Zeppelin by Lowell Brentano; the baritone Victor Chenkin, including his formal invitation to a performance. There is a folder with nine leaves of loose material at the front of the volume.
MWEZ + n.c. 2310 (1928-1931) documents Elizabeth and Essex by Harry Wagstaff Gribble; the American Opera Company (New York), including a reproduction of President Herbert Hoover's appeal for support; a solo dramatic recital by the Hebrew and Yiddish actress Miriam Elias; two productions starring Charles Coburn and Ivah Wills Coburn: Falstaff by James Plaisted Webber and The yellow jacket by Benrimo and George C. Hazelton, including some material on the death of Norman St. Clair Hale who played Lee Sin in yellowface make-up in the latter, along with the rest of the all-white cast; the Silver Ball, designed by Joseph Urban and hosted by Will Rogers, an elaborate pageant and social event for debutantes held at Madison Square Garden to aid the building fund of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, founded by Elizabeth Blackwell; Ethel Barrymore and The Shuberts, including the unveiling of four statues by Alexander Stirling Calder on the I. Miller building depicting Barrymore, Mary Pickford, Marilyn Miller, and Rosa Ponselle and the short-lived drama Scarlet sister Mary by Daniel Reed, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize novel by Julia Peterkin, a white plantation owner writing in Gullah dialect about Mary Pinesett, a former slave in the South Carolina Lowcountry, in which Barrymore and an all-white cast appeared in blackface make-up.
MWEZ + n.c. 2311 (1929-1932) documents Devil in the mind by Leonid Andreyev, starring Leo Bulgakov and Barbara Bulgakova; the character dancer Belle Didjah, presented by Eva Le Gallienne; Fritz Leiber's performances in Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and The merchant of Venice at the Civic Theatre (Chicago); the mezzo-soprano Marguerita Sylva; The Neighborhood Playhouse; The American Laboratory Theatre, founded by Miriam and Herbert Stockton, and its affiliates Richard Boleslavsky, Maria Ouspenskaya, and Maria Germanova, including Germanova's formal thank-you note to patrons and audiences for the positive reception of her direction and performance in an English language production of Chekhov's Three sisters. There is a folder with more than fifteen leaves of loose material at the front of the volume.
MWEZ + n.c. 2312 (1928-1929) documents Maya by Simon Gantillon, translated by Ernest Boyd, the object of a censorship suppression in New York as a consequence of its allegedly salacious subject matter, the tragic romance of a Marseilles prostitute; the final incarnation of the Provincetown Players, with coverage of the group's move from MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village to the Garrick Theatre on Broadway and their ultimate dissolution following Fiesta by Michael Gold and Winterbound by Thomas H. Dickinson, the first offerings in the new venue. The actress Aline MacMahon, who starred in both Maya and Winterbound, figures prominently in this volume. There is a folder with four leaves of loose material at the front of the volume.
MWEZ + n.c. 2313 (1928-1939) documents George C. Tyler's production of Macbeth starring Margaret Anglin, Lyn Harding, and William Farnum, designed by Edward Gordon Craig, with many reproductions of Craig's designs; The man with red hair by Benn W. Levy, adapted from the novel by Hugh Walpole, starring Edward G. Robinson; the producer Sidney Ross with coverage of his arrangement bringing Vsevolod Meyerhold and the Moscow State Theatre (Bolshoi) to New York; the architect and theatrical designer Herman Rosse; The dark hours by Don Marquis; the Shakespeare Fellowship of America; the bass baritone Michael Bohnen; The Westchester Playhouse; The patriot by Ashley Dukes, adapted from the German novel Der patriot by Alfred Neumann. There are three folders with fifteen leaves of loose material at the front of the volume.
MWEZ + n.c. 2314 (1902-1937) documents The Mercury Theatre's productions of The cradle will rock by Marc Blitzstein and Heartbreak house by George Bernard Shaw; an issue of The Saturday Evening Post, November 4, 1939, containing Mary, this is your mother, the unique story of Helen Hayes as told by her mother, by Catherine Hayes Brown; an issue of The Illustrated Arena, vol 35 #100, season 1902; a press announcement for the publication of Modern opera houses and theatres by Edwin O. Sachs and Ernest A. E. Woodrow; The bachelor father by Edward Childs Carpenter, starring C. Aubrey Smith. There is a folder and an envelope with twenty five leaves of loose material at the front of the volume.

Call Number

MWEZ+ n.c. 2309-2314

OCLC

1019909004

Title

Oliver M. Sayler collection of theatrical scrapbooks.

Publisher

1902-1939, bulk 1928-1932.

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Biography

The critic and author Oliver Martin Sayler was born in Huntington, Indiana, on October 23rd, 1887 and died in New York City, on October 19th, 1958. A student of Russian theatre and performing arts, Sayler witnessed the early events of the Bolshevik Revolution during a visit to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Siberia as a journalist in the winter of 1917-1918, which he recounted in Russia, White or Red, published in 1919, and in The Russian Theatre under the Revolution, published in 1920. Sayler's continued scholarship and connections with Russian performers resulted in the Moscow Art Theatre's historic tour to the United States in 1923-1924, a producting collaboration with Morris Gest for whom he worked as a press agent.

Local Note

The volumes are in fragile condition with many loose and brittle items within. Please handle with deliberate care.

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Added Author

Sayler, Oliver M., 1887-1958, former owner.

Research Call Number

MWEZ+ n.c. 2309-2314

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