AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

About Wednesday last week, I received a review copy of Historic Photos of Broadway: New York Theater 1850-1970 from Turner Publishing, a truly beautiful book that chronicles over a century of events on the Great White Way using some 240 photographs from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' Billy Rose Theatre Division. Accompanying the photographs is text from Leonard Jacobs (National Editor at Back Stage).

It's truly a marvelous book and many of the photographs are ones that I've never had the privilege of seeing before. For example, there's a swell rehearsal shot of Ethel Merman dancing with a couple of the toreadorables at the top of act two in Gypsy. Just two pages before this, there's a photograph of the original company of Long Day's Journey Into Night - i.e. Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, Jason Robards, Jr., and Bradford Dillman. It's not a production shot, but rather some sort of publicity photo that looks as if it might be a family photograph of the family in the play, the Tyrones. Not only does it capture an essence of the play, if you look at Eldridge's glassy stare, you can see mountains of what you need to know about her performance as the morphine addicted Mary Tyrone.

These photographs, both from 1950s, come at the end of the book, which is arranged chronologically. As you sift through earlier portions of the book, you'll certainly want to pause on each page that features a photograph of women who graced the stage at the turn of the last century, such as Amelia Bingham, Olga Nethersole, and Ethel Barrymore. The "glamour shots" of these women captivate.

The book does not simply bring the world of Broadway with photographs of the stars who have graced the stage. Included in "Historic Photos" are glimpses of interiors and exteriors of theaters, and even some photographs of promotional materials, for example, the program from the final performance of the record-setting Peg O' My Heart).

Now in the spirit of full disclosure, I feel that I should preface what I'm about to write. Jacobs, or Leonard as I call him, is both a colleague and friend. Just before receiving "Historic Photos," he and I co-mentored at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Critics Institute. While we were in CT, we even joked some about the copy of the book he was carrying around and showing.

This being said, I want to say that the text in "Historic Photos" is amazingly comprehensive. Each short paragraph beside the pictures does an exceptional job of not only contextualizing the photo, but also delivers a particularly deft mini-history of the theater.

"Historic Photos" is a book that should be on every theater lover's bookshelf. Most likely before it ends up on the shelf, though, you'll savor it in two ways: by both casually flipping through the pages and by reading it cover-to-cover and revisiting 120 years of Broadway history.

For further information, visit www.turnerpublishing.com