Edwin Booth as Iago in Othello 1871

John Lithgow as Captain Thorne and Meryl Streep as Edith Varney in “Secret Service” 1976

The photographs of Edwin Booth as Iago in “Othello” in 1871 and Meryl Streep with John Lithgow in “Secret Service” 105 years later are among some 30,000 photographs that chronicle some 5,000 Broadway productions in the Museum of the City of New York’s theater collection. Below are more, continuing more or less chronologically from Sarah Bernhardt in 1880 to Fanny Brice in 1929, Tallulah Bankhead in 1937, Brando in 1948,   Beckett in 1956… and several more generations of Othellos. (Click on any photograph to read the caption.)

Sarah Bernhardt in the title role of “Adrienne Lecouveur” in 1880. The play is about the leading French actress of the 18th century and her mysterious death.

Lillian Russell 1893

Marilyn Miller as Peter Pan, 1924

Fanny Brice and Albert Carroll (as Fanny Brice) in “Grand Street Follies” 1929

Florence Reed as Lady Macbeth 1928

Katharine Cornell as Juliet and Basil Rathbone as Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet”. 1934

Lillian Gish as Ophelia in Hamlet, 1936

Tallulah Bankhead in “Antony and Cleopatra” 1937

Bert Lahr as as His Most Royal Majesty, The King of France in “Du Barry Was a Lady” 1939 (See 1956 below)

Lynn Fontanne as Manuela and Alfred Lunt as Serafin in “The Pirate” 1942

Celeste Holm as Ado Annie Carnes and Lee Dixon as Will Parker in “Oklahoma!” 1943

Sophie Tucker in High Kickers, 1941

Paul Robeson in Othello, 1943

Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy in A Streetcar Named Desire 1948

“Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952” Eartha Kitt (center), Paul Lynde (right)

Gwen Verdon and Eddie Phillips in Damn Yankees, 1955

Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke ,Patricia Neal et al in The Miracle Worker, 1959-61

Faye Dunaway as Margaret More and William Roderick as Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons” 1963

Glenda Jackson in Marat/Sade, 1965

Katharine Hepburn and Dorothy Loudon in West Side Waltz, 1981, Hepburn’s final Broadway production.

James Earl Jones as Othello in 1982

Dianne Wiest as Desdemona in 1982

Bert Lahr as Estragon in “Waiting for Godot” 1956

Billie Whitelaw and Samuel Beckett rehearsing “Rockaby”. in 1984