history theater

Hardcover. NY, Frederick A. Stokes, 1st, 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, orange cloth covers with stamped lettering in blue on front cover and same on spine. Frontispiece with tissue guard. Patterns in envelope on back pastedown. Square and intact binding. Clean and unmarked endpapers and text pages. History of marionettes, how to make marionettes and several scripts for puppet plays. B&w drawings by Marjorie Flack. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, George Routledge and Sons, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in maroon cloth with bright gilt lettering on spine. 439 pages + 8 pages of publisher's ads in rear.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, First Edition, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 464 pages. Hardcover. Ivory & light grey cloth boards with gilt titles to spine. Black & white illustrations throughout. Bright dust jacket with ligh wrinkles. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. Ann Arbor, MI, Ardis, 1st English, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 565 pages. B/w illustrations throughout. Gilt title on spine. Decorated endpapers. Dust Jacket shows some wear due to age: yellowing, fraying and chipping to edges of front, spine and back, but still in tact. Cover boards clean, covered in teal fabric and in good shape. Pages clean, edges slightly yellowed. From the front flap: "...a landmark work in Russian theater scholarship, this study reveals Meyerhold in the context of his time, as seen by friends and enemies, actors and critics, and analyzes the development of his remarkable career as Russia's most celebrated and influential experimental director."

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages. Through a lively text and 250 stunning duotone images (most never previously published), Millionaires, Mansions, and Motor Yachts re-creates an era of opulence and extravagance that today seems incredible. Dominating this volume are the mansions and yachts of Alfred and Jessie du Pont. Equally larger-than-life personalities include Thomas Lawson, his expansive estate, Dreamwold, and yachts such as Dreamer; empire builder John Spreckels's 227-foot Venetia; Emily Cadwalader, who commissioned a vessel destined for world renown as a U.S. presidential yacht, before checkmating this achievement by ordering the largest private yacht ever built, the 407-foot Savarona; Eugene Tompkins, the "Napoleon of Theater Managers"; George Fabyan; Harry Darlington; and William Rands. Enfolded in this volume's fascinating pages are not only the wealthy individuals who shaped this era but also curmudgeonly writer/yachtsman Thomas Fleming Day, photographer Nathaniel Stebbins, and the designers and builders who created the splendid yachts that here return to life.

Hardcover. NY, Citadel Press, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 294 pages, b&w illustrations. They were the Godfathers of the Movies. Groundbreaking pioneers of the Hollywood Dream Factory, Joseph and Nicholas Schenck may not have been household names like the Warner brothers or Louis B. Mayer, but they were infinitely more powerful, influential--and ruthless. A pair of Russian immigrants with giant ambitions, the Schencks turned their small nickelodeon business in New York's Bowery into a partnership with Loew's movie theaters and a controlling interest in three major studios: MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, and United Artists. They painted the silver screen silver, laid the foundations for the all-powerful studio system, and ruled a global movie empire from their Gatsby-sized mansions on the East and West Coasts. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, William Morrow and Company, 1st, 1978, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 225 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Gutter cracked in three places. Dust jacket shows edgewear and small tears at corners. Fading to top cover boards.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 233 pages, b&w illustrations. Foreword by Herschel Bernardi. A history of the Yiddish stage which involves the Bernardi family in the age of the intellectual on the Lower East Side. Clean copy.

Hardcover. OH, Kent State University, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 328 pages. During the nineteenth century-a time of great technical and cultural change-fashion was a cultivating force in the development of American society, influenced by one's social status, geographic location, and economic standing. My Likeness Taken is a collection of daguerreotype portraits of men, women, and children taken between 1840 and 1860. Selected from the top collections in the United States, each image is analyzed to clarify datable clothing and fashion components. With subjects from among the best-dressed members of society, these portraits-reproduced in full color-reflect the latest fashion developments, trends, and influences. For students of photographic and costume history, this is extraordinary material. Many of these images have never before been published, and Severa's keen analysis adds immeasurably to our understanding of the importance of dress in American society. Photo archivists and collectors, costume curators, social historians, material culturalists, and theater designers will find My Likeness Taken an invaluable resource.

Hardcover. NY, Samuel French, reprint, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket. B&w illustrations. A leading theatrical designer of his day, the Russian-born author (whose credits included many important productions for the Group Theatre and the Theatre Guild in the 1930s) also designed costumes, was a lighting director, and, later in life, a teacher of theatre. In this volume, an acknowledged classic, he "presents a vivid panorama of stage and screen technique, showing how styles of production change constantly in response to new audiences." It is the first adequate study of the social meaning of stage production. It analyzes the artistic relation of the stage to the screen. It describes the effect of new political ideologies on dramatic life and thought.

Hardcover. US, Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 176 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy. Roy Kemp's previously unpublished burlesque portfolio presents thirty-nine dancers performing in authentic clubs and backstage settings in 1950s New York. This nostalgic collection includes nearly 250 never-before-seen black and white and color photographs of well-known dancers, including Tempest Storm, Liz O'Leyar, Murine, Rita Gable, and Princess Domay, as well as other sultry performers, quite famous in their heyday. Kemp's talents as a photojournalist provide a fresh perspective on the lives of burlesque performers in this golden era. An artist as well as an investigator, Kemp created striptease photo montages and composed biographies for several dancers, giving the reader an intimate feel for the campy burlesque culture. This time capsule depicts live performances and peeps into club dressing rooms, and offers unedited material from pin-up photo sessions. It is a must-have for aspiring dancers, aficionados, or any modern-day guy or gal who appreciates the style and grit of this fabulous art form.

Softcover. Ludlow VT, privately printed, 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Local newsletter, 12 pages, printed by members of the Civilian Conservation Corps at Okemo Mountain Park. Dated September 10, 1936 it covers national news, camp news and what's playing that week at the Royal Movie Theater. ("Green Pastures", among others.) Center fold otherwise very good.

Hardcover. NY, Zone Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An examination of the ultimate power opera grants to singing: the reversal of death. In Operatic Afterlives, Michal Grover-Friedlander examines the implications of opera's founding myth-the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus's attempt to revive the dead Eurydice with the power of singing. Grover-Friedlander examines instances in which opera portrays an existence beyond death, a revival of the dead, or a simultaneous presence of life and death. These portrayals-in operas by Puccini and other composers and performances by Maria Callas-are made possible, she argues, by the unique treatment of voice in the operas in question: the occurrence of a breach in which singing itself takes on an afterlife in the face of the singer's death. Clean copy, 252 pages.

Softcover. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 167 pages. Along with cutting-edge art, literature, and jazz music of 1920s Paris, there was also experimental new dance, exemplified by the Ballets Suedois, the "Swedish Ballet." Choreographed almost entirely by Jean Bsrlin but visualized by 32 painters from 11 nationalities, it boasted costumes and backdrops from the likes of Fernand LZger, Gssta Adrian-Nilsson (GAN), Nils Dardel, and Gerald Murphy, with music by Erik Satie and even Cole Porter, in 23 ballets produced during the company's brief, brilliant existence. Illustrated with 78 archival photos and sketches and 67 color reproductions of posters and production paintings, this catalog is as much an art book as it is a dance history, with works seldom seen in over 80 years.

Hardcover. NY, Harry N Abrams, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 160 pages, illustrated in b&w and color. Long before the movies were created, peepshows were appealing to a public eager for entertainment and enlightenment. The peepshowman and his box were a common sight on bustling city streets and quiet village greens. The book includes nearly 200 annotated images, many never before published.

Softcover. NY, Barnes & Noble, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages, profusely illustrated in b&w. More than simply an escape from New York's sweltering summer streets, the strip of Brooklyn's south shore known as Coney Island embodied a new American attitude toward entertainment. Here, you'll experience the decadent delights of this magical land of ritzy hotels and penny arcades, where dance pavilions and freak shows shared space with sizzling burlesque and cooling ocean breezes. You'll meet George Tilyou, whose Steeplechase Park featured the Blowhole Theater, the Insanitarium and the Human Pool Table, and Nathan Handwerker, whose Nathan's Famous hot dogs became synonymous with summertime food. You'll ride the legendary Cyclone roller coaster and stroll through Dreamland and Luna Park, where generations of New Yorkers met and mingled in a place that came to define American fun. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Pantheon, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 1330 pages. Hardcover. Small red remainder mark on bottom edge. Light wear. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Government Printing Office, 1st, 1863, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, embossed brown cloth, with gilt lettering on spine. 659 pages including index. Volume 3 covers the war's Western Theater. This book is the third report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which was a committee of the US Congress during the American Civil War. The committee was tasked with investigating allegations of misconduct or incompetence by Union Army officers and contractors. The reports provide detailed accounts of these investigations and shed light on the political and military context of the era. Contains testimony concerning the massacre of over 100 Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians at Sand Creek, Colorado Territory, by U.S. troops under Col. Chivington and Maj. Anthony. Covers are worn and stained, first 70 pages with light stain to margins, not affecting text.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in bright, unclipped dust jacket. 575 pages, b&w illustrations. Stephen Kercher here provides the first comprehensive look at the satiric humor that flourished in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. Focusing on an impressive range of comedy--not just standup comedians of the day but also satirical publications like MAD magazine, improvisational theater groups such as Second City, the motion picture Dr. Strangelove, and TV shows like That Was the Week That Was--Kercher reminds us that the postwar era saw varieties of comic expression that were more challenging and nonconformist than we commonly remember. His history of these comedic luminaries shows that for a sizeable audience of educated, middle-class Americans who shared such liberal views, the period's satire was a crucial mode of cultural dissent. For such individuals, satire was a vehicle through which concerns over the suppression of civil liberties, Cold War foreign policies, blind social conformity, and our heated racial crisis could be productively addressed. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, A sociological look at the influence of Shakespeare's Shylock on world mythology describes the character's creation and his evolution on the stage, and presents writing about him by Proust, James, T. S. Eliot, and others. Amazingly, Shylock is in only five scenes in the Merchant of Venice. Yet, as pointed out by Gross, the theater critic for the London Sunday Telegraph , his impact and significance transcend his physical presence, so much so that his name and "pound of flesh" idea are almost universally known. In the first part of this character/cultural study, Gross examines the antecedents of Shylock and the play, and his development within the play. The second part considers "interpretations" both theatrical and literary in England and America until World War II; the third part considers Shylock more broadly as a touchstone (e.g., how his "type" is used by the Victorians--Trollope's Lopez, Dickens's Riah, Ruskin's use of him in Munera Pulveris ). Clean copy.

Hardcover. Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Starkly beautiful photos of abandoned and converted movie theaters with new essays by Peter Bogdanovich, Molly Haskell, Andrew Sarris, and Chester H. Liebs. The single-screen movie theaters that punctuated small-town America's main streets and city neighborhoods since the 1920s are all but gone. The well-dressed throng of moviegoers has vanished; the facades are boarded. In Silent Screens, photographer Michael Putnam captures these once prominent cinemas in decline and transformation. His photographs of abandoned movie houses and forlorn marquees are an elegy to this disappearing cultural icon.

NY, Metro Books , 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket,178 pages illustrated in color and b&w. A pictorial history of the Broadway musical. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Metro Books , 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 178 pages illustrated in color and b&w. A pictorial history of the Broadway musical. Light edgewear to dust jacket. Clean copy.

Softcover. Lincoln NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover. At a time when few Americans had visited Australia, journalist John Lardner sailed down under with the U.S. armed forces as one of the first American war correspondents in the Pacific theater. With his excellent sense of humor and gift for narrative, Lardner penned vignettes of MacArthur's arrival and his reception in Melbourne and a flight with the daring Dutch flier Capt. Hans Smits. More frequently, Lardner wrote about the ordinary day and the average person. Traveling throughout the country, in Southwest Passage Lardner offers a glimpse of Australia in the 1940s and generates warmth and admiration for World War II fighters in the Pacific, whether Australian, New Zealander, aboriginal, or American. Clean copy.