Gigi: How an Unlikely Duo Created Magic on Screen and on Stage to Bring Stories to Life

Authored by Melissa Nogues

This newspaper clipping shows an advertisement for the Broadway Musical Gigi, along with an advertisement for the original Broadway cast album. Favorite songs and new songs are highlighted.

‘Gigi’ is a great example of how a story can be told in different formats to give the viewers unique experiences. The story of ‘Gigi’ originated as a novel by Collete (Barnes 1973). This was then turned into a play, which Lerner and Loewe originally decided to adapt into a movie musical in 1958 (Encyclopedia of World Biography 2020). From the movie musical, the pair then created the Broadway show with additional songs and flair. The above advertisement highlights these new changes. In this story, the main character Gigi is sent off to be taught how to be an elegant woman, but on the way she falls for a man for which an interesting arrangement is then made (Barnes 1973). The details from the original story might be lost in the musical production, but what is gained is an enchanting viewer experience.

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Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking: A Story of Grief and Compassion

Authored by Elizabeth Hodges

This is an autographed poster advertising the 2007 play The Year of Magical Thinking starring Vanessa Redgrave. The autographers include Vanessa Redgrave, director David Hare, and Joan Didion (Autographed poster of The Year of Magical Thinking 2007).

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity” (Didion 2007a, 3). In December of 2003, Quintana Roo Dunne, daughter of writers Joan Didion and John Dunne, fell into septic shock after contracting pneumonia. On December 31, 2003, after visiting their daughter in New York’s Beth Israel North Hospital, Didion and Dunne sat down to dinner (Didion 2007a, 6-7). Shortly after they began eating, Dunne suffered from a major heart attack and died. Dunne’s death marked the beginning of a year that would change Joan Didion’s life. After a number of traumatic hospitalizations in 2004, Quintana developed acute pancreatitis and died August 26, 2005 (Meter 2005).

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Tartuffe: A Hypocritical Holy Man

Authored by Kelly Blabolil

Covers of programs of production for Tartuffe that were found in a folder of the William Harris papers at Marymount Manhattan College.

Tartuffe by Molière was originally written in French and first performed on May 12, 1664. It was performed at Palace of Versailles in France. Being that it was Molière’s most famous theatrical comedy, it was adapted and performed all over the world throughout the last four centuries. 

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Art Buchwald’s Sheep on the Runway: A Columnist’s Debut as a Playwright

Authored by Patricia Monaghan

This folder contains a unique selection of clippings compiled by the late William Harris, a drama and dance critic who assembled a sizable collection of theater memorabilia. The contents of the folder consist of reviews and articles, as well as a half-page advertisement, of Art Buchwald’s debut play, Sheep on the Runway. The play was a comedy directed by Gene Saks at the Helen Hayes Theatre on West 46th Street in Manhattan.

As “the most widely published American journalistic humorist of the second half of the 20th century,” Art Buchwald was a writer unlike any other (Biography Reference Bank 2007). Buchwald spent the majority of his career writing a satirical column that, at one time, was syndicated in 550 newspapers (Nilsen 1996, 80). His contributions to journalism earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 (Folkenflik 2007).

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New York Pride of the Past

Watermarked image of a written letter on a sheet of paper and business card admitting William Bordeau to the National Gay Alliance as a Charter Member

Now known as the National LGBTQ Task Force, the image above is of a handwritten note welcoming Bill Bordeau into the National Gay Task Force, and a business card sized membership card.

Authored by Kathleen Daly

At a time when there was a great deal of political and cultural turmoil there was one local New York City man who was a vocal activist for gay rights. Affiliation of any kind with a group like the National Gay Task Force was polarizing for some, especially when this was a time when the American Psychiatric Association, or APA, still had homosexuality classified as a mental illness. In the publication of the original Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, in 1952, as well as in the second version, “individuals were labeled sick because they did not fit in, not necessarily because they felt afflicted, in pain, or under any kind of mental stress” (Dunn 2017, 183). The stigma that homosexuals had to live under was codified under the guidelines of mental health diagnoses and it took a great deal of fighting back from many groups inside the APA, and a few outside as well, to get those definitions removed finally in late 1973.  Other legal definitions and laws changing, such as the case of 1964’s Civil Rights Act and the fallout within the homosexual community (Bruce 2016, 46-47) gave rise to many people within it wishing to take further action. Continue reading

Androcles and the Lion: How Theater Made an Identity for the Deaf

Authored by Kylie Feiring

Androcles and the Lion program
Marymount Manhattan College and St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf, Androcles and the Lion, 1971, Marymount Manhattan College, Collection #009, Box 2.

In 1971, Marymount Manhattan College and the St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf united forces to present “Androcles and the Lion,” written by Aurand Harris and adapted by Dorothy Dodd. Harris’ plays for children are remarkable, as he had a deep and real understanding of children’s interests and concerns, what they find funny, and what they find important (McCaslin 1984, 115).

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Marcel Marceau-William Harris Papers

Authored by Joann M White

Playbill featuring Marcel Marceau from the William Harris Papers

Playbill featuring Marcel Marceau from the William Harris Papers

The William B. Harris Papers are a collection of theater ephemera collected over a period of 30 years. After graduating from college William Harris moved to New York to become a writer. He would eventually be the theater editor for SoHo Weekly News and managing editor of Theatre Crafts Magazine. In the process of doing this work he would accumulate his theater collection. Mr. Harris would die of a massive coronary at the age of 49 on July 27, 2000. His brother John would donate the collection to Marymount Manhattan College, which has a dance and theater program.

 Mr. Harris’s papers are divided into eight separate genres; three are not in the archives at Marymount Manhattan College. The remaining five include unpublished scripts, photographs, posters, one videocassette and the largest part of the collection is in series #2. Series #2 contains 4,450 folders primarily newspaper clipping of reviews, playbills, photographs, postcards, advertisements for performances, as well as personal correspondence. This playbill from 1958 of Marcel Marceau is part of the collection. Continue reading

William B.Harris Papers-James Mundy

Authored By: Adina C. Brizel

1989 Theater Review of James Mundy's 'Sinners and Saints'

1989 Theater Review of James Mundy’s ‘Sinners and Saints’

One of the many treasures in the archives of Marymount Manhattan College is the William B. Harris papers. Harris, a theater and dance critic for the SoHo Weekly News and Theatre Crafts magazine accumulated over 96 unpublished play scripts and 4,450 archived boxes of clippings connected to various authors and playwrights over a thirty year period. When Harris died in 2000, his family donated his entire collection to the performing arts library at Marymount. Continue reading

William B. Harris Papers Collection

Authored by Emma Kelly

Peter Pan Playbill

Playbill for a production of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” from the William Harris Papers.

William B. Harris collected this playbill, along with many other theater-related items.  The collection is titled “The William Harris Papers,” and is located at Marymount Manhattan College in their library’s archives.  “This collection has been completely processed and consists of 96 scripts, 4,450 folders of clippings and a collection of photographs gathered by Mr. Harris during the decades of the 1960s to the 1990s, to support his work as a critic of avant-garde theater and dance in downtown Manhattan.”[1]  The collection is alphabetically organized within eight genres, (unpublished scripts, clippings, a videocassette, photographs, books, ephemera, periodicals, and recordings) three of which are not preserved in the archives, and are titled as Series 1-8.[2]

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