Daniel Blum was born in 1900 in Chicago, Illinois, where his father was president of Federated Metals. He attended Shakespeare Grammar School in Chicago, Howe Prep School in Howe, Indiana, and the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Returning to Chicago he went to work for his father's firm. Rather than continuing the business career his father had intended for him, however, he turned to the theater as his field of interest, for it had been the theater which had most fascinated him from childhood.
As a child, Blum had been taken frequently to the Chicago theaters by his parents. At the age of ten, after attending an evening performance of Judy Forgot, with Marie Cahill, he began to keep scrapbooks and collect photographs and clippings. In 1929 he left his father's firm to pursue a career relating to the theater, becoming a mildly successful producer and columnist; but his main interest remained the theater collection he was amassing. By 1940, his private collection had become so widely known that he was plagued with requests for information and its size required a full-time staff to maintain it. By 1951, his staff could no longer both maintain Blum's collection and help him compile his increasingly popular books on the theater. For fifteen years thereafter the collection continued to grow, but its organization deteriorated.
Blum's activities as a producer and critic-columnist occupied the years from 1929 to 1940, while he was building his collection. In 1929, he co-produced the road production of Bambina. In spite of the show's mild success on broadway, it suffered a loss of 50,000 dollars. He served as drama critic for the Chicago Journal of Commerce from 1934 to 1937 and as drama editor for the Manhattan Magazine in 1939. He directed summer stock for the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia (1940), and was assistant stage manager for the New York production of Sons and Soldiers (1943). He subsequently co-produced The Country Wife with Malcolm Wells and the Playwrights Company (1957), and Between Seasons (1961), which opened and closed in preview.
Daniel Blum's books, however, were his most important contribution to theater history. From his massive private collection of photographs, he began publishing Theatre World, which he produced annually from 1944 until his death in 1965. The book was a comprehensive record of all Broadway and off-Broadway activities for each complete theater season. It featured sections of biographies and obituaries, as well as his annual theatre World Awards to twelve promising personalities, and four dolls to immortalize Blum's favorite performances, past and present. The success of Theatre World prompted two subsequent annuals, Screen World (1950-1965) and Opera World (1952-1954).
Blum also compiled and published seven other books. A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1900-1950 (1950) was expanded later to A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 100 Years: 1860-1960 (1960). In the decade between publication of these histories, Blum published Great Stars of the American Stage (1952), A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen (1953), A Pictorial History of the Opera in America (1954), A Pictorial History of the Talkies (1958), and A Pictorial History of Television (1959). As may be apparent, all except Great Stars featured a format of photograph-filled, large-sized volumes, with a minimum of text.
