Jo Mielziner designs and technical drawings

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Collection Data

Description
Jo Mielziner, set and lighting designer, theater architect and consultant. The collection consists of set and costume designs, technical drawings, elevations and whiteprints documenting the work of Jo Mielziner.
Names
Mielziner, Jo, 1901-1976 (Set designer)
Berlin, Irving, 1888-1989
Loesser, Frank, 1910-1969
Porter, Cole, 1891-1964
Rodgers, Richard, 1902-1979
Rome, Harold, 1908-1993
Schwartz, Arthur, 1900-1984
Shelton, James H., 1912-1975
Thomas, Edward, 1924-
New York World's Fair (1964-1965)
Pittsburg Playhouse
Dates / Origin
Date Created: 1924 - 1976
Library locations
Billy Rose Theatre Division
Shelf locator: *T-Vim 1993-002
Topics
Theater architecture
Theaters -- Designs and plans
Theaters -- Stage-setting and scenery
Genres
Design drawings
Renderings
Set design drawings
Set design drawings
Notes
Content: 127 linear feet (141 oversized boxes)
Biographical/historical: Born in Paris in 1901, Jo (born Joseph) Mielziner became in adulthood the quintessential New Yorker, leaving for short periods of time only when it was necessary in his work. His father Leo, of middle-European Jewish ancestry, was an artist in Paris at the time of his birth; his mother Ella Friend, of mixed colonial and recent Irish immigrant heritage, was a correspondent for Vogue Magazine and a freelance journalist. The family returned to America in 1909. Jo and his older brother Leo, Jr. attended the Ethical Culture School in New York but were never graduated. Jo turned to art study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art in Philadelphia and Leo, Jr. became an actor under the name Kenneth MacKenna. It was Kenneth who introduced Jo to the theater and urged him to follow a career as a scene designer. He worked as an apprentice and assistant to Robert Edmond Jones and Lee Simonson, both leading exponents of the New Stagecraft, a movement that emphasized the importance of scenery in the interpretation of a play or musical. Their insistence on making the designer a full collaborator in the production process brought a new day to stage art in America. Mielziner struck out on his own, gaining confidence in his ability to ferret out the right scenic metaphor for the production. He soon outstripped his mentors. His first real success was his designing for The Guardsman (1924), an early Theatre Guild production that brought attention to both the producing company and the designer. Between 1924 and his death in 1976, he designed some 270 plays, musicals, revues, and an occasional opera, movie and ballet. Among them were such memorable successes as Strange Interlude, Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, Carousel, The King and I, South Pacific, Of Thee I Sing, the Little Shows, Look Homeward, Angel, Tea and Sympathy, Picnic, the motion picture Picnic, the ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, and the opera The Emperor Jones. Midway in his career, he turned his attention to the architecture of theaters out of his own displeasure in working in small, cramped and under-equipped stages and auditoriums. Although many of the projects on which he worked never came to fruition, his most notable achievements were the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, the Wake Forest University Theatre, the Power Center at the University of Michigan, Denver Theatre Center, and the Mark Taper Forum. From time to time, he also designed for such special projects as the Vatican display of the Pieta at the New York World's Fair, the White House East Room stage, and the convocation of the United Nations organization in San Francisco in 1945. Mielziner lived and worked most of his life at the Dakota apartment house in New York, and died suddenly in a taxicab four days short of his 75th birthday.
Content: Jo Mielziner's designs and technical drawings span the years 1924-1976, reflecting his long and varied career as set and lighting designer, theater architect and consultant. This collection consists of oversized production items, which include technical drawings, painter's elevations, rough sketches, set renderings, light plots, detail drawings, preliminary drawings, and paint and materials samples. Almost every play, musical, ballet, opera or project Mielziner worked on is represented and, for the most part, can be followed from inception to finished technical drawings. Included are theatrical productions (Boxes 1-128), ballets and operas (Boxes 129-130), and architectural and industrial design projects (Boxes 131-138). Also included are renovation plans for Mielziner's Dakota apartments, his Newtown, Connecticut house, and Kenneth McKenna's house in Truro, Massachusetts (Box 139). Other oversized materials are: unidentified Mielziner set designs; original art work by Henry McCarter, Hugh Hardy, and Robert Barnhart; rough sketches by Roger Planchon (Box 140); and original drawings for Mielziner's book The Shapes of Our Theatre (Box 141).
Content: Forms part of: Jo Mielziner Papers, Designs and Technical Drawings
Type of Resource
Still image
Identifiers
Other local Identifier: *T-Vim 1993-002
NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b14708879
MSS Unit ID: 21478
Archives collections id: archives_collections_21478
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 3f67a3c0-5863-0135-0e75-3723c2aba579
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