Abstract The American Play Company / Century Play Company was a conglomerate publishing house that represented many of the most prominent American playwrights and dramatists of the 20th century. The scripts and business papers in the collection document numerous aspects of American theater production history, including author representation, show production, publishing, and licensing for television, film, radio, and stock productions. The script library notably includes five working copies of ...

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Theater programs, playbills, newspapers, incunabula leaves, prints, official documents, bookplates, inaugural souvenirs, and other papers of prominent historical figures in the arts and politics primarily in the US, but also Europe. Persons represented in the collection include Albrecht Durer, Peter Schoeffer, Wynkyn de Worde, Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, Edwin Booth, and several US Presidents.

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The Brill Family Collection of Programs contains ephemera from performances of concerts, motion pictures, musicals, plays, revues, and variety programs attended by Richard S. Brill, his parents Maurice and Rhona, and his brother Robert between 1921 and 1941.

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Actor, producer, and director Hume Cronyn and stage and film actor Jessica Tandy. Family papers, correspondence, annual file, productions and projects file, and scrapbooks documenting Cronyn and Tandy's stage, screen, and television performances and Cronyn's activities as a director, producer, and writer.

Abstract The Federal Theatre Project, created by the U.S. Works Progress Administration in 1935, was designed to conserve and develop the skills of theater workers, re-employ them on public relief, and to bring theater to thousands in the United States who had never before seen live theatrical performances. The collection includes correspondence, memoranda, play and radio scripts, reports, research studies, manuals, publications, bulletins, forms, lists, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, charts,...

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The papers consist of approximately 2,800 original playbills, plus extensive research materials and data sheets covering the historical breadth of American musical theatre.

Abstract Performer and teacher Muriel Manings and her husband William Korff, a performer, dance historian, and writer, compiled a substantial collection of materials that highlight activities of the New Dance Group, with particular emphasis on the dance trio of members William Bales, Jane Dudley, and Sophie Maslow. Manings's acumen as a teacher of modern dance earned her two engagements to teach in Cuba, both of which are documented in personal journals. Her leadership with the American Dance Guild...

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Houston L. Maples was a United States naval attaché to Moscow. His son, Houston Maples Jr., worked in the State Department's Moscow Office of Information and Culture. The collection includes photographs, programs, and writings pertaining to dance and opera, particularly in the immediate post-World War II period in the Soviet Union. The Bolshoi Theatre and Kirov Ballet (now known as Mariinsky Ballet) are well-represented.

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Gilbert Miller (1884-1969) was an American producer and theater owner. The collection includes correspondence, photographs, scenic renderings, contracts, and other materials that document Miller’s theatrical influences, personal connections, and professional accomplishments.

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Louis "Lou" Monchick was a chemist at Johns Hopkins University. The programs document theater, circus, film, and ballet performances in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area and New York City. Some programs contain ancillary items such as cast change slips and promotional flyers.

Abstract Harold Rome (1908-1993) was an American composer and lyricist best known for his work in musical theater. Rome first made his mark by writing and composing musical revues, most notably his 1937 hit debut Pins and Needles. He later established himself as a writer of shows that were considered to be socially conscious for the time, including I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1962) and The Zulu and the...

Abstract Neil Simon (1927-2018) was a playwright and screenwriter who is best known for the more than 30 plays and musicals, more than 30 screenplays and teleplays, and two autobiographies he authored over the course of four decades. The collection holds complete and partial drafts of more than 210 individual titles written by Simon for the stage and screen as well as drafts of his two biographies: Rewrites (1996) and ...

Abstract Roger Lacey Stevens (1910-1998) was an American theatrical producer and financial backer with more than 200 shows to his credit; an arts administrator who served as the founding chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the first chair of both the National Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts; and founder, executive officer, and shareholder of numerous commercial and residential real estate businesses that owned iconic buildings including the...

Abstract Paul Freeman Stiga (1936-2019) was a collector of set and costume designs created for stage productions, television, and film. The Paul F. Stiga Collection of Stage and Costume Design consists of approximately 2,600 design renderings that date between 1821 and 2017 and document more than 1,300 ballets, motion pictures, plays, operas, operettas, revues, and television shows. These renderings encompass the work of more than 900 designers, including Georg II, Duke of Sachsen-Meiningen, Robert...

Abstract The Harry Von Tilzer and H. Harold Gumm Papers consist of both personal and professional papers of composer and music publisher Harry Von Tilzer (1872-1946) and his brother, H. Harold Gumm (1881 or 82-1973), who was a lawyer, agent, and producer in the entertainment business. After having served as attorney for the Harry Von Tilzer Music Publishing Co. (HVTMPC) for several decades, Harold Gumm served as executor of Harry Von Tilzer's estate and took over the company when Von Tilzer died in...