Terry Southern Talks William S. Burroughs, Easy Rider, Rip Torn, And The New Screenwriter

by Stephen J. Gertz

An extraordinary cache of manuscripts, signed autograph and typed letters, ephemera, and awards from the estate of novelist, essayist, satirist, and screenwriter Terry Southern (1924-1995) - whose dark, absurdist manner of satire influenced three generations of writers, readers, film directors and movie-goers - has come to market. 

Offered in individual lots by Royal Books in Baltimore, the archive highlights Southern's involvement with the Beats and the movies, starring William S. Burroughs, actor Rip Torn, and the film that changed Hollywood forever, Easy Rider, which Southern wrote.

An animated letter to Burroughs from 1969 is a joy. Within, Southern anticipates of a visit from Burroughs and  references his involvement with Scientology:

"Buzz along the rialto has it that a certain grand guy W.S. Burroughs may be jetting Appleward anon. I certainly hope so, and hasten to assure that your quarters are being maintained in a state of round-the-clock readiness--with the E-meter fully serviced, tuned to needle-point precision, and porno flicks dusted and ready to roll! Meanwhile, I trust this finds you in top form and fettle, grooving there in Old Smoke."

The letter goes on to speak extensively of NYC mayor Ed Koch's recent election win, focusing on what would appear to be a dense philosophical obsession Southern has with the politician.

A one-page typescript with corrections, c. 1975, provides a fascinating review of Southern's crafting of the screenplay for Easy Rider, focusing on how he actually wrote the part of George Hanson, played by Jack Nicholson, for wild man actor, Rip Torn, with a detailed explanation of why Torn did not get the role, which distills to Torn and Dennis Hopper (who directed the film) engaging in a bitter argument in a New York restaurant that ended when the volatile Torn pulled a knife on the uneasy Hopper.

"It was ironic, however, that Torn, who had paid such heavy dues for so long a time, should miss this particular custom-built boat, His extraordinary film, Coming Apart [in which Torn played a mentally disturbed psychologist who secretly films his sexual encounters with women], too far ahead of its time (and which certainly opened the door for Last Tango in Paris) never achieved the fruition it should have…"

More Rip Torn in a c. 1971 seven-page manuscript, executed in holograph pencil with numerous corrections. It's an unfinished and unpublished essay by Southern regarding his first encounter with Torn, which is more an encounter with the concept of Rip Torn than Rip Torn himself (though Torn would ultimately become one of Southern's closest friends and confidants). Torn's reputation for danger preceded him and from a producer's perspective casting him was a choice between genius performance or preserving life and limb:

"'Rip Torn would be perfect,…"

"The producer, a man not without certain twists of humor himself, smiled without looking up…

"'You don't hire Rip Torn,' he said. 'You hire a Rip Torn type…here, how about Bob Duvall?'"

The letter references Southern's involvement in the movie, The Cincinnati Kid during director Sam Peckinpah's brief tenure at the helm, Southern describes a meeting with the film's producer, the producer still reeling from Peckinpah's acrimonious departure (Norman Jewison would ultimately take the directorial reigns). The bulk of the essay details how Southern wrote a new scene in the midst of the change, introducing what would become Torn's character, Slade, a "gentleman" card shark.

Southern defines the modern screenwriter in a c. 1975, five-page composite holograph manuscript in typescript and paste-ups, titled The Feelgood Phenom. Complete and unpublished, it's a humorous philosophical essay on the idea of the "new screenwriter" (i.e. Southern), who is expected to be much more than a screenwriter; cultural "doctor" is his gig. It is, perhaps, not so much an ideal as an observation on the role Southern had defined for himself and subsequently filled.

Above, Southern's 1965 Writer's Guild of America Screen Writer's Annual Award  nomination for writing achievement for Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Though he only worked on the screenplay for a month, it was Southern, fueled by amphetamine, who transformed what was originally a serious drama into a wild dark satire. Kubrick brought Southern into the project after reading his zany comic novel, The Magic Christian, which actor Peter Sellers had given him to read. In 1969 Sellers would star in the novel's screen adaptation written by Southern with contributions by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Peter Sellers, and Joseph McGrath. Southern's 1968 typescript final draft of the screenplay is also being offered.

Terry Southern and William S. Burroughs
Photo credit: Jack Wright III

Terry Southern spent 1948-1952 as an ex-pat in Paris, where he became closely associated with The Paris Review. He spent 1953-1956 in Greenwich Village in New York. He lived in Geneva 1956-1959 but spent much of 1956-57 back in Paris, where, with Mason Hoffenberg, he wrote the classic erotic satire, Candy, for Maurice Girodias. He helped convince Girodias to publish Burroughs' Naked Lunch. He returned to New York in 1959 and became part of George Plimpton's literary salon. Then Hollywood. In short, Southern was everyplace where things were happening in the post-WWII literary world, a rebel whose weapon of choice was satire, and it was his voice that fought against the absurdity of the the postmodern world with deeper absurdity, the only way it could possibly be observed without tears. To Southern, the world was crazy, it required a little crazy to appreciate it, and he was just the man to write about it.

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Books by Terry Southern:

• Flash and Filigree (1958)
• Candy (with Mason Hoffenberg) (1958)
• The Magic Christian (1959)
• Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes (1967)
• Blue Movie (1970)
• Texas Summer (1992)

Screenplays by Terry Southern:

• Dr. Strangelove (with Stanley Kubrick and Peter George) (1964; Academy Award nomination)
• The Loved One (with Christopher Isherwood) (1965)
• The Collector (with John Kohn and Stanley Mann; uncredited, 1965)
• The Cincinnati Kid (with Ring Lardner Jr., 1966)
• Casino Royale (with John Law, Wolf Mankowitz and Michael Sayers;
  uncredited, 1967)
• Barbarella (with Roger Vadim, Claude Brule, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian
  Degas and Tudor Gates, 1968)
• Easy Rider (with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, 1969; Academy Award nomination)
• The End of the Road (with Dennis McGuire and Aram Avakian, 1969)
• The Magic Christian (with Joseph McGrath, et al, 1969)
• The Telephone (with Harry Nilsson, 1988)

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Archive images courtesy of Royal Books, with our thanks.

Southern-Burroughs photo courtesy of Terry Southern dot com, where it accompanies Burroughs' comments on Southern's Blue Movie.

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Alec Baldwin tells a wildly funny story about Rip Torn in his his episode of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

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"Wives Is What I Hanker For": Mormons Take Center Stage

by Stephen J. Gertz

We shift from rare prose literature to rare literature of the theater today, inspired by an item offered in Swann Galleries upcoming Vintage  Posters sale, August 7, 2013.

During the 1880-1881 theatrical touring season the Goesche-Hopper Company presented 100 Wives, an anti-Mormon tabloid-theater comedy-melodrama with a dash of anti-Chinese racism that appears to have sold out every performance in every town and city it played in.

The playbill set forth the proceedings:

EMBLEMATIC TABLEAU - Inner Temple of the Mormons. The Danites Receiving a New Covenant. The Solemn Oaths of the Blood atonement. The Chant of the Priests. Immediately following this picture, which illustrates the mission of the Destroying Angels, the curtain rises upon the Play.

ACT I - Salt Lake City. Arrival of the English Colony at New Jerusalem. Elder Bezum's Wicked Designs. The McGinley Family. Elsie Bradford Hears Terrible News. A Timely Rescue.

ACT II - Nick's Ranch at McGinely's Gulch. The Chinese Question. A Boys Celebrate. A Lost Child. The Danites in Pursuit. Bezum Baffled. The Dead Restored To Life.

ACT III - TABLEAU I - McGinley's Home. Reconciliation and New Terrors. Mrs. McGinley's Plan. "Wives is what I hanker for." TABLEAU 2 - Up among the Mines. Little Bessie Prays for her Papa. The Death Fall from the Cliff.

ACT IV - Exterior of the Mormon Tabernacle. The Marriage. Elder Bezum presses Hard. The Mormon Church is Supreme. Surprise. The Govermnet has Something to Say at Last. "Home Sweet Home."

First on the bill, the play's lead character possesses my new favorite name, one right out of S.J. Perelman. Elder Bezum, third on the bill, is the zealous Mormon who declaims, "Wives is what I hanker for." A better headline for a personal ad  would be difficult to compose, "SWMM Seeks Wives! Wives, Wives!" lacking its quaint colloquial fervor.

The Cast:

Confucius McGinley, a Doubtful Convert.
Edward Branford, a Gentile.
Elder Bezum, A Pillar of the Church.
Hung Li, a Celestial.
Mrs. Sophronia McGinley, an Ambitious Woman.
Elsie Bradford, a Deceived Woman.
Mrs. Andrews, a Deluded Woman.
Little Bessie

"If this play could run for a hundred nights instead of closing this week, it would still not exhaust popular interest, for every one who has once seen it must want to go again. It has taken the town by surprise, and that, too, in the midst of election excitement; such a fresh and dramatic story, based on a matter that all are familiar with, yet that for the first time seems to come home to the audience with all its tragic capabilities.

"The popular idea of the 'American play,' with its slang and localisms of manners and dress, is very far indeed from all that is presentd in 'The Hundred Wives.' Nor need any one fear to be introduced into the American harem at Salt Lake, or be treated to any moralizing sermons or situations, in themselves demoralizing and disgusting. On the contrary the plot of this Mormon story is worked out with a hand at once delicate and skilful.

"The believer and the Danite, Mormon Apostle and Destroying Angel, are given just that touch of fanatic devotion and of quaint phraseology as brings out the livery this creed has adopted to serve the devil in, and the opening tableau of the Danite vow in the Mormon Tabernacle is the real keynote to the story. The skill, too, with which the Chinaman is made to foil a Mormon plot is very noticeable, especially as he is a typical Chinaman, of the California pattern, not above the tricks of his tribe - yet turning his secretive qualities to good and loyal effect as the plot thickens.

"Here are the two nearest problems that the American people have to deal with - the Chinese and the Mormon - most ingeniously worked out, and although the audience is in a broad ripple of laughter from beginning to end, there is an undercurrent of appeal constantly that this is a live story, and here is a matter that must be presently be settled in one or another way.

"The entirely novel humor and style of acting of Mr. De Wolf Hopper and Miss Ada Gilman have already been noticed. Both are such natural and such new personations, and both have such unusual physical advantages for the comic situation, that the matrimonial argument is irresistible whenever the diminutive wife takes her tall, strapping miner in hand. Mrs. Sophronia, with her unwavering attachment to the Mormon creed, and her undisguised horror of it when the reality os played off upon her by her own earnestness and her husband's joke, is altogether delightful.

"…In fine, the play is an argument, such as people can understand, against the hideous Mormon creed, which is suffered to exist by virtue of popular indifference to its every-day features. There will certainly be a change in public sentiment wherever the 'Hundred Wives' is played, for it is the one wife that comes out triumphant.

"Forcible as the plot is, it is none the less a clean plot, and all the more dramatic for being a true bill" (The Scrap Book, Volume 2, Sept. 1906- Feb. 1907, pp. 723-724, reprinting a review from the Philadelphia Ledger, 1880).

"This talking drama will occupy the boards at the opera house on Monday night next. The New Orleans Democrat pays the entertainment the following flattering tribute: The new American play, 'One Hundred Wives,' which has created an immense sensation wherever presented, was produced here last night and made a decided hit. The theater was filled from top to bottom, and the unanimous verdict of the immense audience was, that the drama is the best thing in its line which has ever been brought before a New Orleans audience. Though it is somewhat on the order of 'The Danites,' it is far superior to that play both in plot and detail. The company presenting it is an excellent one" (Decatur Review, January 28, 1882).

Producer-Actor De Wolf Hopper (1858-1935), who portrayed Confucius McGinley and was, presumably, the play's writer-director, was ninety-four marriages shy of "100 Wives." Married only six times, his fifth pass at the altar espoused him to actress Elda Furry, who later became the famed Old Hollywood gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper.

The world awaits a play with clean plot and true bill whose lead character is named Lao Tse McGonagle, Mencius O'Malley, or Zhaozhou Schwartz.

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Images of 100 Wives and De Wolf Hopper courtesy of Swann Galleries; image of 100 Wives flyer courtesy of Ebay, with our thanks.

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Kids Give Dog A Colonic, And Other Childhood Amusements In 1824

by Stephen J. Gertz

The Remedy. (Aubry).

Kids Do The Darnedest Things:

It's France's Funniest Home Videos, nineteenth century edition, capturing, in hand-colored stills, those precious cinema verité moments when kids will be kids and memories are forever imprinted on the heart.

Particularly on the heart of a dog being given an involuntary clyster in der keister with a syringe that could pass for a cruise missile.

It's one of six lithographs in Jeux de l'enfance [Childhood Games] by Charles Aubry, a color-plate album printed and published in Paris by François Seraphin Delpech (1778-1825), the great, early French lithographer, in 1824.

The Little Smoker. (Aubry).

Poor children. With Le Gulp Grande banned in Paris by an ancestor of New York's Mayor Bloomberg concerned with 19th century childhood obesity, opportunities to mimic dangerous adult behavior have dwindled, leaving smoking as one of the last bad adult habits for kids to engage in. The leader is a cool little hipster drummer boy; leave it to a musician to corrupt those around him. We do not see, however, the rib-tickling denouement to this scene, when Junior on the left and the girl at right get sick and toss their cookies.

The Paper-Curlers. (Aubry).

After enduring a colon-cleansing and now, presumably, purified of toxins, it's time for Fido's trip to the beauty salon. He doesn't look any happier than when he was fundamentally invaded, and we get a hint of how this tableau will play out as little Jane employs the curling iron and curling papers, a friend rapturously looking on while Fido nears feral, gives the little boy a look to kill and the kid understands to his horror that his nose will soon be Alpo.

The Pioneer's Beard. (Aubry).

Boo! Imitating ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons or Rasputin the Mad Monk is always a sure-fire laff-riot. The girl in the middle is cooly faux-frightened but the bejesus is clearly scared out of her companion at left. It's not, in and of itself, material for France's Funniest Home Videos but it has something extra that levitates above the banal: the poor dog at lower right appears to be suffering from them way down home, 'gainst my will, high-colonic blues.

The Flick. (Aubry).

Revenge of the Girls! While Dennis Le Menace sleeps, his sisters torment him, the youngest gently flicking his cheek to annoy without actually rousing him. Moments later, however, he awakes with a start and bladder accident. That's entertainment!

The Little Actors. (Aubry).

There's an interesting political subtext to the above plate with young boy being dressed-up as the king with pillow to allow for the monarch's girth: Jeux de l'enfance was published in 1824 and on September 16 of that year, Louis XVIII, the rotund progressive who reigned in post-Napoleon, Bourbon Restoration France, died, and Charles X, a hard-core reactionary, assumed the throne. He was not well-liked and in short order had censorship laws passed amongst other regressive and unpopular legislation; he was forced to abdicate in the July (Second) Revolution of 1830. Jeux de l'enfance by Aubry first appears in the Bibliographie de la France in its January 8, 1825 issue, as no. 41 in the Gravures section. The children are celebrating a popular and recently deceased king at the expense of the new king, Charles X. Aubry was playing with fire; such sentiments would soon become dangerous to publicly express.

Artist Charles Aubry made his reputation with hunting scenes and military  subjects. In  1822  he  accepted  the post of  professor of  art at l'Ecole Militaire de  Saumur.  That's about all that's readily available about the man. Note that he taught art in a military academy, an unlikely salon. But this is France and what's wrong with art appreciation for warriors? It's dash and élan du soldat, my friends, dash and élan. With paintbrush.

Grandmother's Bonnet. (Boilly).

This particular copy of Jeux de l'enfance is part of a collection album that includes prints by J.F. Scheffert, and two lithographs by Louis Leopold Boilly, the Boilly prints likely added to the album because they cover the same territory as Jeux..., albeit the scenes less aggressive than Aubry's views, Boilly's placid dog spared the humiliating depredations of Aubry's prepubescent juvenile delinquents gleefully engaged in mischievous play.

Grandfather's Wig. (Boilly).

Boilly's children, in contrast, enjoy completely innocent activity, scenes so charming that they will not be finalists in this week's episode of France's Funniest Home Videos. They lack that certain something, that je ne sais cruel slapstick that inspires peals of laughter rather than pleasant smiles that warm the heart but cool the ratings. In the above tableau, for instance, unless the bewigged little girl subsequently slips on a banana peel, does a header into the air, lands on Grandfather's top hat, then smites her brother with Grandfather's cane, where's the side-splitting guffaw?

On its own, Jeux de l'enfance is an insanely scarce book with only one copy in institutional holdings worldwide, at the Morgan Library. The Bibliothéque National has a set of the prints bound within a collection album.

I am aware of another album containing Jeux de l'enfance bound with the two Boilly lithographs, it, as well as the Aubry-Scheffer-Boilly album under notice, in a contemporary binding likely issued by Delpech to move unsold prints, a tactic routinely and successfully employed by Delpech's successor, Chez Aubert, the esteemed Parisian printing and publishing house owned by caricaturist, journalist and famed publisher of political and social satire (with a stable of artists that constitute the golden age of French caricature), Charles Philipon,  and operated under the nominal stewardship of his brother-in-law, Gabriel Aubert, and his wife, Philipon's sister, Marie-Françoise, the management brain, it appears, in the business.

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AUBRY, Charles and BOILLY, Louis Leopold. Jeux de l'enfance. Paris: Delpech, 1824. First (only) edition. Folio. Eight hand-colored lithographs, six in series by Aubry, two out of series by Boilly.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Richard M. Nixon, Thespian Interpreter Of Ayn Rand

By Stephen J. Gertz

Ronald Reagan was not the only President of the United States who was an actor before entering politics.

On the evening of October 20, 1938, Richard M. Nixon, a year after being admitted to the  bar  and thirty years prior to his election as POTUS, trod the boards as District Attorney Flint for the first of a two night run of the Whittier Community Players' production, staged at the Whittier Woman's Club House, of Night of January 16th, Ayn Rand's courtroom drama,  her first play and a hit on Broadway during the 1935-36 season.

This was the amateur Master Thespian's first bite at potential stage stardom. Later in the year, he co-starred with Thelma "Pat" Ryan as the leads in the Whittier Community Players' production of George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woolcott's mystery-melodrama, The Dark Tower. Following the standard script, the two actors fell in love.

On this night (October 20, not January 16th), however, Nixon limned the role that he would wear as a political mantle, that of a D.A. whose traditional values drive him to prosecute the alluring, independent, atheistic flouter of social standards, Karen Andre (Rand's stand-in), for murder as much for her offense to the social order as her guilt.

The spokesman for the future Silent Majority found his voice in the character, his acting experience preparing him for the second of his six crises (the first as snake pursuing Alger Hiss), his 1952 role as  Vice-Presidential Candidate up against the wall to face dastardly charges of corruption. It was a heart-rending portrayal capped by the schmaltz-shmeared Shakespearean  monologue known as "the Checkers speech" in which he wept havoc and let slip the pooch of war to vanquish his enemies, succeeded, and definitively proved that in politics a honey-baked ham can make it to the big time. In politics, as well as strip-tease, you gotta have a gimmick.

And in dramaturgy, too. Rand's contrivance in Night of January 16th was to have the play's jury chosen from each performance's audience and let them decide the play's ending, "guilty" or "not guilty." Further, Rand left the ultimate truths ambiguous, leaving it up to the actors to decide whether their characters were lying or being honest. - another nod to politicians who often don't know whether they're  honestly lying, lying about being honest, are actually honest, or honestly don't know the difference.

The reviews for this production of Rand's Night of the 16th are lost to history; we don't know whether Nixon laid an egg or, as Ruby Keeler in 42d Street, went out a youngster and came back a star.

"Nixon, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!"

"Now, take off the dress and lose the hat. You look ridiculous."

Whatever the critics may have thought the footlights agreed with him. 

"One day in 1938, Mrs. Lilly Baldwin, the director of the local amateur theatre group, telephoned me to ask if I would like to play the part of a prosecuting attorney in their upcoming production of Ayn Rand’s courtroom drama, The Night of January 16th. I took the part and thoroughly enjoyed this experience in amateur dramatics" (RN, interview cited by Nixon Foundation).

This choice little piece of ephemera is being offered by Between the Covers as "The PERFECT gift for conservative objectivists." Liberal subjectivists may conscientiously object; it's the perfect gift for the Leftie in your life who needs a good laugh.

We leave you with Our Man Flint's bravura turn as Man On The Ropes; afterward, he was in like Flynn, without the sexual connotation, of course.

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[NIXON, Richard M.]. [RAND, Ayn]. Whittier Comunity Players Present "Night of January 16th" by Ayn Rand. Woman's Club House, October 20 and 21, 1938. Seventeenth Season, First Production. Whittier [California]: Whittier Community Players, 1938. Program for the play.

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Program images courtesy of Between The Covers, with our thanks.
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On 19th Century England's Master Thespian - and Acting!

by Stephen J. Gertz

Master Thespian.

Of all the actors to have ever graced the stage none have surpassed the bravura performance of he who  won the World Acting Association's Ultimate Acting Smackdown with Omlet's  soliloquy from The Existential Egg. ("I am darkly, starkly poached. O Gott im Himmel, to be sunny side up in S. Hoboken, New Jersey? Or not? How now, what gives?...").

Reviewers who were in attendance swoon at the mere recollection. Afterward, Meryl Streep, Sean Penn, and Robert De Niro announced their retirements; there was no point in continuing as long as the floodlights shone on the one who, having kicked Barrymore, Garrick, Gielgud, and Olivier to the curb, needs no name beyond that which captions his portrait in Theater's Grand Lobby: Master Thespian.

Master Thespian: [sitting st his desk, writing] Dear Diary: I am awaiting the arrival of my mentor and acting teacher, the great Baudelaire. Today's lesson is The Greatest Actor of All Time. Knowing Baudelaire, he will come over and try to fool me, as if there could possibly be another actor greater than I, Master Thespian. But today, it will be I who fools him. I hope.  [A knock is heard at the door] Yes?

Voice at Door: [mimicks trumpet fanfare] Make way for Her Royal Highness, Elizabeth II!

Master Thespian: One moment! [jumps up] Thank God! The Queen to see me! [at the door] Enter Your Majesty!

Baudelaire: [enters, disguised as the Queen] Thank you! I am looking for the greatest actor of all time! The theatrical community of all London told me I might be able to find him... here!

Master Thespian: Yes, your Majesty! The man you speak of stands before you!

Baudelaire: Ah-ha! Then you must be the great... Edmund Kean!

Master Thespian: [insulted] Don't be silly! I'm Master Thespian. Kean is merely a legend, and a very dead one. at that.

Frontispiece to The Life of an Actor.

Baudelaire: The dedicatee to Pierce Egan's The Life of an Actor,  the Poetical Descriptions by T. Greenwood, Embellished with Twenty-Seven Characteristic Scenes, Etched by Theodore Lane, Enriched also With Several Original Designs on Wood, Executed by Mr. Thompson, London: Printed for C.S. Arnold, 1825, merely a legendary actor?

Master Thespian: Yes! And barely one at that. An actor, that is.

Baudelaire: Oh, really? Why don't you try saying that... [removes crown and robe] ...to his face!

Master Thespian: Oh! Something is rotten in the state of Denmark: the ghost of Edmund Kean portraying Baudelaire playing Elizabeth II! You fooled me!

Edmund Kean: Acting! 

Master Thespian: Oh, please, forgive me..

Edmund Kean: No!

Master Thespian: Oh, please.. I beg you...[kneels]...on bended knee, from the very depths of my heart.

Edmund Kean: Oh, get up. I have already forgiven you, I was merely... acting!

Master Thespian: [fuming] Again?! You fooled me again! 

Edmund Kean: Thank you! Now, then.. what is the Question du Jour?

Master Thespian: Oh, Edmund Kean... Benjamin Franklin said, "The art of acting consists of keeping people from coughing." I've been offered to play the most difficult part of my entire career. I am to portray a dry cleaner with a wet nurse to satisfy his lactation fetish, trapped in the body of a woman with a hunchback seeking a female-to-male sex-change operation, playing the part of a five-year-old spayed chihuahua with a club foot who thinks she's a two-year-old neutered Persian cat with a ruptured left anterior cruciate ligament! My question is: How can I keep the audience from coughing?

Edmund Kean: [intensely considering. Then] Dose them with opium!

Master Thespian: Genius!

Edmund Kean: Thank you! And the audience will be spared the pain of your performance, too!

Master Thespian: [insulted] Oh, really? Riposte! The great Katherine Hepburn said, "acting is the perfect idiot's profession" -

Edmund Kean: - And you are perfect!

Master Thespian: Thank you! Wait a minute -

Edmund Kean: - Too late! Timing is everything. You really DO need to read Pierce Egan's The Life of an Actor, Dedicated to moi, Edmund Kean, Esq., The Poetical Descriptions by T. Greenwood, Embellished with Twenty-Seven Characteristic Scenes, Etched by Theodore Lane, Enriched also With Several Original Designs on Wood, Executed by Mr. Thompson, London: Printed for C.S. Arnold, 1825, the story of Peregrine Proteus, an actor forged on the anvil of Egan's imagination, and detailing the challenges facing the intensely stage-struck youth; the vicissitudes of an actor's life, and the world of the theater and its environs in early 19th century England. A British journalist on the popular culture scene, Egan is best known for Boxiana (1812-1828), Life in London (1821) and Sporting Anecdotes (1824); he coined the term, "the sweet science" to describe boxing. His was the best sportswriting since Pindar's coverage of the wide world of ancient Greek games.

[As Pindar, declaiming in the theater at Delphi] "The fame of Pelops shines from afar in the races of the Olympic festivals, where there are contests for swiftness of foot, and the bold heights of toiling strength..."

 Master Thespian: You really captured Pindar. I felt like I knew the man. Genius!

Edmund Kean: No. Acting!

Now, then... have you prepared the fencing scene from Hamlet?

Master Thespian: Yes! [grabs fencing foils] Here is your foil.

Edmund Kean: Thank you! Very well, then. You shall play the part of  Hamlet. And I shall play the great...Edmund Kean! By the way, you were brilliant in  You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown as Linus in crisis.

Master Thespian: Oh, thank you. And, may I add, you were a perfectly raging queen! Elizabeth II, of course.

Edmund Kean: [an octave lower] Of course! [an octave higher] Now!

[They begin to fence furiously. Edmund Kean staggers backwards as Master Thespian swings his foil near him]

Edmund Kean: [covering his chest with his hand] Oh, Master.. M-master, you've cut me.. look how the blood gushes from my very veins!

Master Thespian: Oh, please forgive me, it was an accident..

Edmund Kean: Don't be silly! [opens his jacket to reveal no cut] Acting!

Master Thespian: Oh, you fooled me!

Edmund Kean: Of course I fooled you! I am the greatest actor of all time! I am...Kean! 

Master Thespian: [thrusts foil] En-garde!

[They begin fencing again. Suddenly, Master Thespian drops his foil and falls gracefully into Edmund Kean's arms]

Edmund Kean: Master? Are you hurt?

Master Thespian: Oh, Kean, I'm afraid we've played this acting thing too far. You've made worm's meat of me! Adieu.. adieu.. remember me. Look! [points] The face of death is near! And so.. I flail! [his legs kick before his body falls limp]

Edmund Kean: Master! [cries] I have killed my protege! How... how... how will you ever forgive me?

Master Thespian: [stands] Very good! I was merely acting!

Edmund Kean: So was I! I've fooled you again!

Master Thespian: No! It is I who fooled you! For I am dead... and merely acting alive!

Edmund Kean: Genius! Yet I've been dead, mort, cadaverous, extinct, deceased and defunct for over a hundred and fifty years! It is I who am the genius!

Master Thespian: Curses! I see I shall have to read The Life of an Actor by Pierce Egan, dedicated to what's-his-name, to learn the secret to acting alive while dead yet still alive but actually a ghost.

Edmund Kean: Ah, yes! Have I mentioned it? The classic tome dedicated to moi,  a life on the boards scarce in original boards, no copy in the original printed and illustrated boards at auction since 1975, unrecorded by Tooley, whose copy was that issued in parts within wrappers.

Master Thespian: A pox on your house! I shall read it anyway, yet, bringing the method of the great acting coach from Brooklyn, Stan Islavsky, to bear, I shall only be pretending to read, for I am...Master Thespian!

Edmund Kean: Genius!

Master Tespian: No. Acting!
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EGAN, Pierce. The Life of an Actor. Dedicated to Edmund Kean, Esq. The Poetical Descriptions by T. Greenwood. Embellished with Twenty-Seven Characteristic Scenes, Etched by Theodore Lane. Enriched also With Several Original Designs on Wood, Executed by Mr. Thompson. London: Printed for C.S. Arnold, 1825.

First edition. Quarto (10 x 6 1/8 in; 254 x 160 mm). xvi, 272 pp (a-b4, B-C8, D-Z4, Aa-Kk4). Twenty-seven aquatints with original hand-coloring. Nine text woodcuts. Printed and illustrated boards.

Abbey, Life 414. Prideaux. p. 308. Cf. Tooley 195.

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This post freely adapted from a sketch transcript from the December 7, 1985 episode of Saturday Night Live.
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Book images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, currently offering this copy, with our thanks. Image of Jon Lovitz courtesy of NBC.
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Ransom Center Exhibit Proves Costume Creates Character

Percy Anderson (1851-1928)
Costume design for A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1911.
Margery Maude as Titania.
(All Images Courtesy Of The Harry Ransom Center.)

Though most actors would be loathe to admit it, an essential ingredient for creating a believable character on stage or screen is a costume. Could Charlie Chaplin convince us he was The Little Tramp without his derby hat, baggy pants, and big shoes? Or to use a more recent example, would anyone buy Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw if she didn't sport her "J'adore Dior" t-shirt, Jimmy Choo stilettos, and Hermes Birkin bag? A new online exhibition from The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin shows virtual visitors that the costume designer was already the actor's best friend as far back as the Victorian era, and that one firm in particular helped hundreds of British thespians get into character whether they trod the boards or made magic on the silver screen.

Costumier's copy, after Aubrey Hammond (1893-1940)
Costume design for The Circle of Chalk, 1929.
Anna May Wong as Chang-Hi-Tang.

The exhibition, entitled A Tonic To The Imagination: Costume Designs for Stage and Screen by B.J. Simmons & Co., spotlights the work of the British company which remained London's premier preparer of costumes for operas, operettas, plays, pageants, pantomimes, musicals, movies, and revues for over 100 years, from 1857 to 1964. This sartorial showcase is divided into 10 distinct types of costume design, illustrated by 228 images taken from 60 historic theatre and film productions.

Percy Macquoid (1852-1925)
Costume design for The Merchant of Venice, 1908.
Alfred Brydone as the Prince of Morocco.

The Ransom Center acquired the B.J. Simmons archive, one of the largest of its kind in the world, in two installments in 1983 and 1987. This vast collection is comprised of 34,000 original costume designs and costumier's copies of the originals, as well as almost 30,000 related items such as production timetables, research materials, selected articles and reviews, touring dates, rental arrangements, and photographs of individual costumed actors as well as ensembles. Altogether the Simmons materials fills more than 500 standard-sized archive boxes.

Costumier's copy, after Doris Zinkeisen (1898-1990)
Costume design for The Way of the World, 1924.
Edith Evans as Mrs. Millamant.

Artists employed by B.J. Simmons often copied a set of designs for use in the studio, these "costumier's copies" allowed the designer of record to retain the originals. Some costumier's copies are simple tracings, but most are freehand drawings, and those from the late 19th century are often incredibly exact watercolor renderings. The skilled artists hired by Simmons could not only recreate every minute detail of a designer's work, but also add construction notes, fabric swatches, and even incorporate the actor's face and body type to more accurately portray the finished product. Because stage plays from this era were rarely photographed, costume designs are often the only surviving visual record of these early productions.

Gordon Conway (1894-1956)
Costume design for Aunt Sally, 1933.
Directed by Tim Whelan for Gainsborough Pictures / Gaumont British Picture Corporation, Ltd.

In 2002, the Ransom Center was awarded a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the preservation, arrangement, description, cataloging, and selected digitization of the B.J. Simmons costume design collection. The Simmons collection was in dire need of conservation work. While stored in London, all paper materials in the collection, regardless of size, were folded into letter-size packets, placed between acidic pieces of cardboard, and then bound with cloth ribbons. Papers on the exterior of these packets were often coated with soot from the coal-burning fires of the British metropolis. Many items showed a great deal of wear and tear, and all were full of folds and creases from decades of disuse.

Percy Anderson (1851-1928)
Costume design for Trial by Jury, 1920.
A Lady in the Box.

All papers in the Simmons collection were surface-cleaned to reduce the soot, humidified in a water chamber to soften folds, and then gently blotted and pressed until flat. Any attached fabric swatches were removed during the process, and then replaced using non-rusting stainless steel pins. Materials were then placed in acid-free folders large enough for them to be stored flat within archive boxes. Drawings in need of more extensive conservation were noted for further work. The Ransom Center's paper conservation department completed work on approximately 12,500 drawings and other documents over a two year period. Associate Curator for Performing Arts at the Ransom Center, Helen Adair, stressed the importance of the government grant: "The Ransom Center is fortunate to have had the support of the NEH for this cataloging and preservation project. The NEH recognized that the collection as a whole is more valuable than the sum of its parts, and we never would have been able to tackle a project of this size without its generous support."

Percy Anderson (1851-1928).
Costume design for Chu Chin Chow, 1916.
Courtice Pounds as Ali Baba.

The results of this painstaking work are now available to anyone who visits the Harry Ransom Center's website. The images selected for A Tonic To The Imagination: Costume Designs for Stage and Screen by B.J. Simmons & Co. represent the major strengths of the collection. Preliminary sketches and final renderings of costumes for the grand opera, patriotic pageants, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, classic plays by Shakespeare and Shaw, and British cinema are all part of the online exhibition. Two complete costume portfolios for the play Trelawny of the "Wells", one for the 1898 premiere and one for the 1926 revival, are also included. This allows viewers to compare each designer's unique conception of the same material, and to see the progression of stagecraft through the years.

Unknown Designer
Costume design for The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1928.
Julia Neilson as Lady Blakeney.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, costume designers were rarely credited in theatre programs by name. Many did not sign their sketches and renderings, so the creators of these pieces, which were so essential to the effectiveness of stage and screen productions, remain anonymous. But after gazing at the intricate and thoughtful creations on view in this exhibition, there can be little doubt that without the costume designer, even the actor with top billing might wind up being an unknown.