Photos of Josephine Baker in 1936, Carmen Miranda in 1941, and a bevy of beauties portraying dabs of paint arranged around a huge painter’s palette in 1924; a costume design for CATS in 1981 and the Wizard of Oz… in 1903; a window card for David Bowie in 1980, and a flyer for Mae West in 1928. These are among the treasures at The Shubert Archive, which has just launched a new website, where you can see these and other examples of records, scripts, scores, designs, photographs, some odd memorabilia and much else dating back to the 1890s.
Click on any entry to see it enlarged and read the caption supplied by the archivists.
Window card, THE ELEPHANT MAN, 1980. David Bowie made his Broadway debut when he took over the role of John Merrick for a little over three months in the Fall of 1980.
Flyer, DIAMOND LIL, 1928. Producer Jack Linder’s name is blackened out. Instead, penciled in to the right of West’s name is the phrase “Presents Herself.” The star’s very public legal feud with Linder resulted in the change in billing.
Stork design by Alfredo Edel for the “Land of the Birds” ballet at the New York Hippodrome, 1908
One of Howard Greer’s flamboyant art deco costumes for THE GREENWICH VILLAGE FOLLIES, 1922
John Napier’s design for McCavity in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s CATS, 1981.
Carolyn Siedle’s design for the character of Trixie Tryfle in the stage-musical version of THE WIZARD OF OZ, 1903.
The Living Palette from the second edition of ARTISTS AND MODELS, Astor Theatre, 1924.
Josephine Baker performing at the Folies Bergere in 1926. Based on her Parisian triumphs, the Shuberts hired her as one of the stars for their ZIEGFELD FOLLIES OF 1936. Unfortunately, she found a lukewarm reception on Broadway, and remained with the show for only a few months. In her book “The Many Faces of Josephine Baker” (2015), biographer Peggy Caravantes points out that Baker was the first and last black woman ever to appear in a Ziegfeld Follies.
Carmen Miranda in one of her trademark costumes in a scene from Olsen and Johnson’s SONS O’ FUN at the Winter Garden Theatre, 1941. This was her second and final Broadway show before departing the stage for an extremely successful career in Hollywood.
A lavishly costumed group of chorus girls from an unidentified Shubert revue pose in this hand-tinted photograph, circa 1910s.
Bradley Cooper backstage at the Booth Theatre during the run of THE ELEPHANT MAN, 2014.
Special silvered souvenir ticket for the performance that marked the original run of A CHORUS LINE assuming the honor of becoming the longest-running Broadway show up to that time, September 29, 1983.
Design for a giant water wheel with maidens and storks, designer Hugo Baruch & Cie, unknown production. Baruch was the leading theatrical design firm in Berlin in the late nineteenth through the first two decades of the twentieth centuries. In addition to costume and set designs, the firm also supplied fabrics, trimmings, jewelry, ornaments, and all manner of historical and contemporary stage props and furnishings. Although they had a New York office for a time, they have few official Broadway credits. The Shuberts often imported design sketches, and even costumes themselves, from Europe, so it is possible that this is one such import.
A souvenir pin cushion marking the 75th performance of French sensation Gaby Deslys in THE HONEYMOON EXPRESS at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1913. Deslys was noted for her dainty feet, and the show featured a dance created for her called “The Gaby Glide.”
Design for a painted drop, street view, unknown production and designer. As with the pencil sketch seen in another slide, the grid transfer overlay is clearly seen here. But in this case, the designer has painted in the colors that would be used for the final drop.
Casino Theatre, postcard, circa 1903. One of the earlier theatres leased by the Shuberts upon their arrival in New York City in 1900, the Casino, architecturally speaking, was a Moorish fantasy inside and out
Audience of schoolboys, Winter Garden Theatre, 1916. The original design for the Winter Garden interior was meant to evoke an actual winter garden, hence the exposed cast iron ceiling, the trellis effect on the rear wall of the orchestra, and the garlands and floral motifs throughout. Most noteworthy was the runway that extended down the center aisle. This was dubbed the “Bridge of Thighs” in honor of the scantily clad chorus girls that paraded up and down it. Between 1922 and 1923, the Shuberts asked Herbert Krapp to remodel the theatre using his more traditional Adamesque style.
Orchestra, proscenium, boxes, Belasco Theatre, 2010. Photo by Whitney Cox, 2010. The renovation of the Belasco included the restoration of the original Tiffany Studios fixtures and the murals by artist Everett Shinn. All seventeen of Shubert’s Broadway playhouses are full of interesting, and often whimsical, decorative details.
