Softcover. McKinleyville CA, Fithian Press/, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 238 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY COHEN on the front fly leaf. Robert Cohen is the founding Chair of Drama a the University of California, Irvine, and has written 20 book on theatre. In this memoir, he recounts the "lucky breaks" that took him from being a college student preparing for law school to a long career as a man of the theatre. The first lucky break took place in his junior year of high school when Judy Berkenbilt asked him to be in "Belles On Their Toes," a play she was directing. She wanted to cast him as a policeman but after reading the script, Cohen asked for the role as the family handyman, which she agreed to. He identifies Lucky Break #2, in the same year, as ending up in a Vocational Typing class when he transferred out of the Mechanical Drawing class to escape a creepy instructor. He became a fabulous typist and was able to earn lunch money in college by typing papers for other students. Lucky Break #3 was getting into the 12th grade Advanced English class taught by Miss Casey, which advanced his intellectual development and reading "like crazy." Lucky Break #6 was being asked to take over as coach of the swimming program at the camp where he was a counselor. When Cohen did not have the $20 needed to to get a Water Safety Instructor certification, the camp owner asked him take over the drama program instead. And so on.
Hardcover. NY, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1st, 1896, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth stamped in gilt and black, 399 pages. Forty-one chapters, each on a different actor, with a portrait of each. Each of the mini-biographies was written by a different writer or critic. The editors include such actors as John Drew, Edwin Booth, Rose Coughlan, James O'Neill, Edward Harrigan, Joseph Jefferson. Very good copy of the first edition. The book has brighttop edge gilt. Previous owner's bookplate, inscription on front endpapers.
Hardcover. North Pomfret VT, David & Charles, Inc, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 152 pages, many photographic plates in colour and b/w. A history of puppets, puppetry and puppet theatre, including glove puppets, shadow puppets, rod puppets, marionettes.
Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown & Co, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 242 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Light edge wear, rubbing to dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, SIGNED & INSCRIBED BY SLEIGH on the title page. Widely considered one of the finest poets of his generation, Tom Sleigh brings to his new collection his trademark intensity and craftsmanship. In these poems, small things reveal large metaphysical and historical correspondences. In "Newsreel," for instance, the entire Cold War era comes to a drive-in movie theater, as Marilyn Monroe's screen image gives way to a tale of sci-fi Armageddon. In the elegiac "New York American Spell, 2001," Sleigh combines ancient spells with reportage of terrorism. Sleigh's overarching theme is the ever-changing face of love. As in Ovid's Metamorphoses, his poems reveal the workings of eros, for good or ill, in all its public and private guises. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 516 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on front fly leaf. The enduring appeal of the music of George and Ira Gershwin has spawned several biographies of the talented brothers who created more than 700 popular songs before George's untimely death at age 39 in 1937--Ira died in 1983 at age 87. But never before has the collaboration itself been the subject of such intelligent and fruitful scrutiny as in this intriguing study. Rosenberg, chair of the musical theater program of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, has a gift for making scholarly points in accessible, albeit mundane language. Readers require no particular musical background in order to enjoy and respond to her original theories about the connections between George's music and Ira's lyrics. Points of comparison are frequently illustrated with side-by-side measures of music, and the striking thematic relationships between such songs as Embraceable You and The Man I Love are also compared dramatically to George's orchestral composition, including the well-known Rhapsody in Blue. This is a rich feast for music historians, musicians and connoisseurs of musical theater as well as inveterate hummers who like a Gershwin tune. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Milano, Skira, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 320 pages. Hardcover. Profusely illustrated in full color. Clean, tight copy. This catalog of over three hundred artworks related to the Saisons Russes between 1909 and 1929 is the official companion to an exhibition in Monte Carlo. The legendary productions are brought to life through stage designs, costumes, paintings, sculptures, photographs, and programs. The artwork comes from a wide variety of public and private collections, including the Fokine collection in the St. Petersburg Theatre Museum.
Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 387 pages, b&w illustrations throughout. Remainder marks to top and bottom edge. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Else a very clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, tape-repaired dust jacket. 343 pages plus index, b&w photos. An intimate no-holds-barred light and dark portrait of the Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad from her first Metropolitan operas house performance through her career and retirement and more. Written by her accompanist- and often her orchestral conductor. Front fly leaf clipped, otherwise clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 219 pages, b&w photos. The author was the owner/manager of famous girl revue for 40 years and gives us this history. Preface by Maurice Chevalier. Dust jacket shoes wear, chipping.
Softcover. West LafayetteIN, Bordighera, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 224 pages, b&w illustrations. The biography of an Italian actress, playwright, and lecturer. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Abrams, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 511 pages. Hardcover, slipcase, ribbon marker. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Candid accounts of the people, hit movies, and adventures that have shaped his career enliven these memoirs from the director of Romeo and Juliet, Endless Love, and Jesus of Nazareth. 24 black-and-white, 16 color illustrations.
Hardcover. US, Michael di Capua Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 12 page board book. Minor wear to edges. Illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Fun mixture of Maurice Sendak drawings and live action photography, based on the theater company, the Night Kitchen: A National Children"s Theater, the authors created in the early 1990"s.
Softcover. NY, New York Public Library, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 108 pages. A collection of b&w drawings by Al Frueh. An index of performers and plays in rear. An incredible artist whose work is rarely collected. Quite scarce. Very good, clean. Forward by Brendon Gill.
Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A critical biography of the comic genius who, as both a writer and a director, dominated the Broadway comedy theater during the twenties, thirties, and forties. Detailed accounts of GSK plays and how they came together -- or did not. Kaufman is captured as a man of the theatre who compulsively was involved in a show a year for decades, as writer or director. 503 pages, b&w photos. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Routledge, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 198 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Focusing on the house and museum and its considerable collections of architectural fragments, models, drawings folios and publications, this book is about thirteen Lincoln's Inn Fields in London, England, built in the early 1800s by the renowned eighteenth-century architect Sir John Soane. The book maps the influences, references, connections, extensions, and productions at play in Soane's house-museum. The house, still a public museum, was highly original in its period, and it continues to influence and impress architects and historians alike. Today's visitor is confronted by a dense, complex series of spaces, a strange aCCU1mulation of rooms, objects and effects. This book examines the ways in which Soane enlisted light, shadow, color, fiction and narrative, vistas, spatial complexity, the fragment, and the mirror to produce a spectacular space. No dj issued, clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st US, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 398 pages. Illustrated with 24 pages of black & white photographs. Light foxing to page fore edges. Light wear to price clipped dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.
Softcover. England, UK, FAB Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Softcover. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgwear to wrappers. Graphic Thrills Volume Two proudly assembles another stunning selection of debauched and innuendo-packed theatrical film posters, with glorious unabashed sexuality dripping from every page. These joyous and colourful odes to sultry sin were designed to hang in the lobbies and front windows of the porno theaters and grindhouses of yesteryear.
Hardcover. New York, Monacelli Press , 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 320 pages. Hardcover without dust jacket. Extensive b&w and color photography throughout. Illustrated end papers and fly leafs. Includes extensive bibliography and chronology. Clean, tight copy. In early October 1959, thirty-two-year-old Allan Kaprow presented a performance piece entitled "18 Happenings in 6 Parts." This unique conjunction of visual, aural, and physical events, performed for an intimate art world audience by his friends and colleagues, would change the course of art history. The genre of artwork that evolved from this debut would become known as Happenings. This new volume provides a comprehensive look at this revolutionary art form. Prepared in conjunction with an exhibition at the Pace Gallery in New York, it focuses on the years that saw the movement's birth in New York and Provincetown, Mass., and the artists who made the genre a legend: Red Grooms, Allan Kaprow, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Simone Forti, Carolee Schneemann. Together, they created a new and outrageous art form with an "anything goes" attitude, one whose influence is still felt within the contemporary art world.
Hardcover. Bologna, Damiani , 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown cloth with gilt lettering, cover label on front cover, 160 pages. Diary of a Set Designer is a book of Polaroids taken over 25 years by Happy Massee while traveling the world as a production designer. The photographic journal is a journey through time, with a collection of images taken with the now-defunct Polaroid camera--which, at the time, was essential to the art of designing for film. One of the industry's top production designers, Massee has enjoyed a career spanning the realms of theater, film, commercials and fashion. He has worked with established directors such as Wes Anderson, David Lynch, David Fincher, Michel Gondry and more, while in the world of fashion he has collaborated with the likes of Inez and Vinoodh, Peter Lindbergh and Craig McDean, and worked for brands such as Gucci, Valentino, Armani, Bulgari and Swarovski. His film credits include, among others, Broken English, directed by Zoe Cassavetes, and Two Lovers, directed by James Gray, and he has designed sets for music videos such as Jay Z's "99 Problems" and Madonna's "Take a Bow." In this volume, "the images of personalities, sets, locations and encounters," Massee explains, "all tell a story related to my work and travels, and the people I met while on them. The images, raw and unretouched, are candid, and capture my art as well as my life as I like to travel through it." Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.
Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages. Collection of society photographer Zerbe's b&w photos chronicling the celebrities and events of the 20th century, with additional photographs of the Pacific Theater in World War II. Jacket design by Philip Grushkin.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color illustrations, map by Letizia Galli. A beautiful gown forms the focus of activity for the zany characters that introduce young readers to the Commedia del l'arte and the history of comic theater, along with a map, a list of stock characters, and historical notes.
Hardcover. NY, George Braziller, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. 257 pages, b&w illustrations. The Turbulent And Colorful History - 400 years long of the clown Harlequin - one of the most magical figures ever created in the theatre. No markings.