Theater

Scarce flyer for the Progressive Citizens of America, featuring Lena Horne & Edward G. Robinson: “Yes We’re Actors, but We’re Citizens too!”

Progressive Citizens of AmericaProgressive Citizens of America
(Progressive Citizens of America) Scarce broadside advertising a “Mass Meeting” of the Progressive Citizens of America, 10 July [c. 1948[?]] at Park View Manor in Los Angeles, 303 x 230 mm. (12 x 9 in.), featuring images of Hollywood party advocates John Garfield, Lena Horne, Edward G. Robinson, Anne Revere, George Coulouris, Richard Conte, Gene Kelly, Paul Henreid, Betty Garrett and Larry Parks, proclaiming “YES! We’re Actors… but we’re citizens too! That’s why we joined P.C.A[,] to fight for a prosperous and free country in a peaceful world! Join your neighbors in this ‘Stop Depression’ MASS MEETING!” The verso explores the issues at hand: “Are you worried? No wonder! Last Year! the N.A.M. spent millions of dollars for ads which promised you ‘if OPA is permanently discontinued… prices will quickly adjust themselves to levels that consumers are willing to pay.’ Today! YOU check your budget and find that expenses have gone up 30% since Congress killed O.P.A. (meanwhile corporation profits are 33% higher, although small business failures and unemployment are increasing.) Tomorrow! DESPRESSION. But… you CAN do something about it! Join the P.C.A. ‘Stop Depression’ Drive!” Speakers and entertainers were Albert Dekker, Marie Bryant, Sam Levine, Stanley Prager, Raphael Konigsberg, chaired by Edward Mosk with “Skits & Songs by Actors Division PCA“.

The Progressive Citizens of America, spearheaded by an outspoken Gene Kelly, was extremely active in the campaign to end Hollywood blacklisting and ideological persecution by abolishing the House of unAmerican Activities Committee.

Toning, creasing, usual folds with some separation at folds, edge wear and some marginal tearing, else very good condition.

(EXA 5913) $300

A scarce 1862 broadside for the Holliday Street Theater, owned by John T. Ford, also the proprietor of Ford’s Theater, the site of Lincoln’s assassination in 1865

exa4551_01

(John T. FORD) Broadside, 403 x 142 mm. (15 3/4 x 4 1/2 in.), for the Holliday Street Theater, (Baltimore: “‘The Printing Office,’ Sun Iron Building,” [1862*]). A nice example promoting a run of performances by Annette Ince in Lady of Lyons, and the farce, Crimson Crimes.

The Holliday Theater was the first house managed by Ford. He leased the Hollday only a few years after entering the theatrical business as a tour manager of George Kunkel’s Nightingale Minstrels at age 22.

Light toning and faint dampstain at bottom, marginal wear including some minor chips not affecting text, folds, else very good.

(EXA 4551) $175

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* See Baltimore Sun, 5 September 1862., 2., “Holliday Street Theatre”.

Cyrano de Bergerac 
Plagiarism Case

Samuel Eberly Gross
Samuel Eberly GROSS (1843 – 1913) Signed book: In the Circuit Court of the United States, Northern District of Illinois, Northern Division. No. 23,030. – Present, Honorable Christian C. Kohlsaat, District Judge. – Samuel Eberly Gross vs. A. M. Palmer, Richard Mansfield, and Richard Mansfield company. – MASTER’S REPORT AND DECREE. – Wednesday, 21 May 1902. (Chicago: Bernard & Miller, [1902]), 68pp. with several blank leaves at end bearing newspaper reports on the case. In original titled wraps bound in three-quarter leather marbled boards. Signed and inscribed by Gross on the original titled paper wrap, “To Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker with the compliments of Samuel E. Gross Nov. 22, 1910.”1

On 28 December 1897 Edmond Rostrand premiered his new play, Cyrano de Bergerac in Paris to mass critical acclaim. Clayton Hamilton, the American drama critic declared, “No other play in history, before or since, has ever attained the popular success so instantaneous and so enormous.” Meanwhile in Chicago, Samuel Eberly Gross, a successful real estate developer cried foul. Asserting that Rostrand’s hit play bore a strong resemblance to his own published drama, The Merchant Prince of Cornville and specifically, the climatic balcony scene where Cyrano woos his love secretly feeding lines to another man while hidden in the bushes.

Gross claimed he had submitted his own play to the same Paris theater where Rostrand first presented Cyrano, but it had been rejected. Noting that Rostrand had the “run of the theater reading room” at the time, Gross concluded that the prolific French playwright had lifted the scene for inclusion in his own work. Although in reality, Gross’ claim was almost completely spurious, he managed to halt a Chicago production of Cyrano through a court injunction. Federal Judge Christian C. Kohlsaat ordered a special master, E. B. Sherman to sift through the evidence and submitting a report with recommendations for review by the court. Sherman concluded in his report that Gross had indeed been plagiarized by Rostrand, not only due to the signature balcony scene but in thirty other instances. Judge Kohlsaat upheld Sherman’ opinion and awarded Gross a token one dollar in damages – together with an order prohibiting the staging of Cyrano de Bergerac in the United States.

The case became a sensation in the press. In the wake of the verdict, New York Times published an excerpt from The Merchant Prince balcony scene ostensibly for “the reader to decide,” yet the snide tone of the article betrayed their true belief that the ruling was completely ludicrous. When asked about the verdict, Rostrand quipped: “I am ready to admit I took … all our 17th century history from Eberle Gross of Chicago, and, in order to end the matter once and for all, I confess I stole Les Romanesques from Smithson of Jefferson City, Mo.; La Princesse Lointaine, from Giles Trumbull of Columbus, Ohio; L’Aiglon from Tom Sambo of Springfield, Illinois; and that I drew the idea of La Samarataine from the apocryphal gospel of the Rev. Hon. Augustus Wonnacott of Hartford, Conn. I add that I am negotiating, at the present moment, with a Virginia planter for the purchase of a manuscript, and that I have just purloined from the house of a Louisiana shipowner a great piece on Joan of Arc, the Maid of New Orleans.”

Ironically, Gross should have asked for more than a token $1 in damages as he nearly bankrupted himself in his long quest for recognition. Although he made over $3,000,000 building suburban homes in the 1890s, at the time of his death in 1913, he was worth a mere $150,000.

In 1920 a federal judge in New York ruled against Gross’ widow and declared Rostand the true author of Cyrano. This is a rare memento from Gross’ quixotic quest for vindication.

Pages overall quite clean, outer boards rubbed and scratched, else very good.

(EXA 4320) $2,000

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1 (1843 – 1916) Pennypacker, the 23rd Governor of Pennsylvania, was also a voracious collector.

Richmond Hill Theatre relic

Richmond Hill Theatre relic
(Theatrical History) A 5 x 4 1/2 x 3 in. fragment of the proscenium decoration for the long-lost Richmond Hill Theatre that from 1831 to 1849 was located at the corner of Varick and Charlton Streets in Greenwich Village. The fragment was likely recovered during or prior to the 1849 demolition and preserved for posterity. It was part of the collection of the Player’s Club until the 1980s when it was sold at auction. It is housed in a simple but elegant wooden box with a glass top.

However the structure was much more than a theater. Major Abraham Mortimer built the original structure in 1760 as a country estate he named Richmond Hill, built upon an elevated, wooded spot known as Zandt Berg (or Sand Hill). The mansion was an imposing structure on with an elaborate garden which was the site of lavish parties among the New York elite. In the spring of 1776, George Washington briefly used the house as his headquarters as did the British during their subsequent seven-year occupation of the city. After the war, the house stood vacant until Vice President John Adams used the home while New York served as the nation’s capital from 1789 to 1790. Later in the decade, Aaron Burr made it his home from 1797 until his duel with Hamilton forced him to flee in 1804. Soon afterwards, John Jacob Astor took over the property around 1813. As the neighborhood developed, Astor moved the house about 100 feet to the corner of Varick and Charlton Streets in order to make way for more homes.

In 1819 the mansion and gardens became home to a circus and soon afterwards it operated as a pleasure garden. In 1831 an addition was made to the structure and it was converted into a theater operating under a variety of names including the Richmond Hill Theatre, Miss Nelson’s, Tivoli Gardens, National Theatre and the New Greenwich Theatre. For most of this period, the house struggled – when theatrical productions failed, the management tried opera. It finally closed as a theater in 1847 and prior to its demolition two years later, operated as a saloon and road house. It was replaced by a row of townhouses which in turn were demolished in 1913 when the City of New York extended Seventh Avenue from 14th Street which required a widening of Varick Street. The New York Times remarked in 1913 during the street-widening project: “Within a few months the Seventh Avenue subway diggers will be at work beneath the grounds which Mrs. John Adams admired for their attractive garden and handsome trees.”

The fragment bears the expected wear but is intact and makes for a great conversation piece.

(EXA 4345) $1,000