Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum Ephemera, 1750-1970

A collection of prints, photographs, pamphlets, clippings, playbills, and programs dealing with the theater, chiefly American and English, in all its aspects including drama, opera, dance, movies, puppets, and spectacles. The majority of the material documents the 19th century.

Portrait File: includes 20 lin. Ft. of cartes de visite, 90 linear ft. of cabinet photos, 60 grey boxes and 60 oversized (30") folders. Prints and photographs of actors, actresses, playwrights, composers, opera stars, movie stars, dancers and other performing artists. The portraits are arranged by name in three groups. 1) Prints and Photographs [60% American; 40% English and others] 2) Cabinet Photographs [75% American; 25 % English and others] 3) Carte de Visite Photographs and Prints [90% American; 10% English and others] (ca. 34,500 items) SEE CARD CATALOG FOR NAMES AND LOCATIONS

Subject File: Clippings, pamphlets, programs, prints, and photographs arranged by name and subject. Included are many prints and photographs of scenes from plays. There are extensive files on Shakespeare and Moliere. The programs included are a selective proup of twentieth century programs filed under playwright, producer, composer or other important person connected with a production. They are chiefly for the New York stage and to a lesser extent for other northeastern U. S. cities. In addition there is a selective group of late 19th and early American and English souvenir programs. (ca. 15,000 items)

Program File: A collection of mid-19th and 20th century American, English and to a lesser extent 20th century German and Austrian programs arranged alphabetically by country and subdivided alphabetically by city and theatre. The majority of these programs represent productions of the New York and London stage. For the American stage there are also miscellaneous files arranged alphabetically by title of play and by actor's name. (ca. 23,000 items)

Scrapbook File: A small collection of scrapbooks of programs, norices, reviews, photographs and other clippings relating to the American and English stage and to a lesser extent the German and Austrian stage for the late 19th and 20th centuries. (109 volumes in 46 boxes, includes index). at ReCAP since August 2005. Card shelf list in the RBML Reference Section: 42C-F

Playbill File: American and English playbill broadsides ca. 1750-1900, arranged by country and subdivided by city and theatre, chiefly the New York and London stage with some English provincial and northeastern U. S. cities represented. (ca. 18,000 items)

Poster File: A miscellaneous collection of some 400 19th and 20th century mostly English and American posters from dramatic and musical productions, minstrel shows and other theatrical entertainments. The posters are arranged by country and subdivided by lithographic company, where known. [The posters were microfiched in 1996. The only posters not filmed were duplicate copies. Researchers should use the fiche to identify posters that wnat to see]

Lantern Slides: Twelve lantern slides from various productions of "Romeo and Juliet" showing different stars in the leads (Ellen Terry, John Barrymote, etc.), three from Macbeth and one of a stage rendering from a production of "Midsummer Nights Dream." In addition there are 36 slides in the Theatre Department at Barnard College