The collection provides little information on Behrman's personal life but does offer great insights into his work as a dramatist. Extensive notes, usually written daily during the writing and rehearsing of a play, detail character and plot development and often include Behrman's personal reactions and attitudes toward his work. Also included are variant scripts and rewrites, often extensively annotated; correspondence, congratulatory first-night messages, and fan mail; clippings, including reviews of road productions; playbills; box office statements; and miscellany. The papers have been organized in three series: Theatre, Motion Pictures, and Radio. Arrangement is generally alphabetical by production title.
Behrman's THEATRE works comprise the majority of the collection and includes plays such as Amphitryon 38, Biography, End of Summer, Fanny, Jacobowsky and the Colonel, No Time for Comedy, The Second Man, Serena Blandish, and Wine of Choice.
Major productions are arranged alphabetically by title with a small section of miscellaneous files completing the series. Included in the latter section are several of Behrman's one-act plays, unidentified script materials, and some biographical clippings.
Behrman co-authored several pieces with his friend playwright J. Kenyon Nicholson. These include All in a Night's Work, an untitled one-act play, and an unidentified manuscript. However, unless noted otherwise, Behrman is assumed to have written the works. Amphitryon 38 correspondence includes two brief sketches of Act I's set which were designed by Lee Simonson. Correspondence for The Cold Wind discusses adapting the story to film, while the Dunnigan's Daughter file includes several drafts of a letter concerning Behrman's withdrawal from the Playwrights' Company. Among the Fanny materials is a transcript of a phone conversation between Joshua Logan and Oscar Hammerstein in which they discuss the play. Included in the Jacobowsky and The Colonel correspondence are telegrams and letters discussing questions of authorship plus a draft script co-authored by Franz Werfel and Clifford Odets. A partial index to notable correspondents in the collection follows:
|
Name
|
Date
|
Production
|
| Atkinson, Brooks |
1958 June 16 |
The Cold Wind
|
| |
1958 December 10 |
The Cold Wind
|
| Choate, Edward |
1958 September 9 |
Me and the Colonel
|
| Fontanne, Lynn |
1937 April 5 |
Amphitryon 38
|
| |
1937 April 6 |
Amphitryon 38
|
| |
1946 April 1 |
I Know My Love
|
| |
1948 March 31 |
I Know My Love
|
| |
1948 May 12 |
I Know My Love
|
| |
1948 May 20 |
I Know My Love
|
| Logan, Joshua |
1958 October 29 |
The Cold Wind
|
| Lunt, Alfred |
1937 April 5 |
Amphitryon 38
|
| |
undated |
I Know My Love
|
| Marx, Harpo |
1949 April 5 |
I Know My Love
|
| Reinhardt, Gottfried |
1956 June-1957 October |
Me and the Colonel
|
| |
1944 September 11 |
Jacobowsky and the Colonel
|
| Ross, H. W. |
1949 November 7 |
I Know My Love
|
| Sherwood, Robert |
1939 April 6 |
No Time for Comedy
|
| |
1945 May 9 |
Dunnigan's Daughter
|
| Swope, Herbert Bayard |
1939 April 19 |
No Time for Comedy
|
| Werfel, Franz |
1944 February 11 |
Jacobowsky and the Colonel
|
| |
1944 February 25 |
Jacobowsky and the Colonel
|
MOTION PICTURES includes scripts of Anna Karenina, Bonjour Tristesse, Ninotchka, Queen Christina, Quo Vadis, A Tale of Two Cities, and others. Typically these files are smaller than those for theatre productions.
RADIO consists of one script for an adaptation of Behrman's theatrical work I Know My Love, which was adapted for radio by Erik Barnow.
