 April 1919 cover | |
| Editor |
|
|---|---|
| Founder | Sheldon Warren Cheney |
| Founded | 1916 |
| Final issue | 1964 |
| Company | Theatre Arts, Inc. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 2690-0505 |
Theatre Arts Magazine, sometimes titled Theatre Arts or Theatre Arts Monthly, was a magazine published from November 1916 to January 1964. It was established by author and critic Sheldon Warren Cheney.
Cheney established the magazine as a quarterly publication [1] with the support of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, which provided him with a workspace and financial support. [2] The society's support proved short-lived. When the United States entered World War I, censorship of German art became common. Cheney criticized this practice in the magazine's August 1917 issue, leading the society to drop its support. Cheney responded by moving the magazine to New York City. [3] Cheney served as the magazine's editor until 1921, with several co-editors being added as of volume three.
With Cheney's departure, Edith J.R. Isaacs took over as the lead editor. In 1924, the name of the magazine changed to Theatre Arts Monthly, and its frequency of publication increased to match the new title. In 1939 the name was changed again to Theatre Arts. [4] As an editor, Isaacs included arts such as music and dance in her view of "theatre". She supported the Little Theatre Movement and the establishment of the American National Theater and Academy. She publicized emerging artists, including Martha Graham, Robert Edmond Jones, Jo Mielziner, Donald Oenslager, Eugene O'Neill, and Thornton Wilder. [5]
In 1945 the magazine was purchased by Robert W. Dowling and Henry Steeger. Isaacs retired due to health issues in 1946, [6] and Rosamond Gilder took over as editor. Across three years, Dowling and Steeger lost some $60,000. By the beginning of 1948, they were prepared to close the magazine down, but instead, they sold it to another publication, Stage, which merged with it, keeping the Theatre Arts name. [7] Charles MacArthur became the editor. Byron Bentley took over as editor and publisher in 1962. [8]
George Pierce Baker was a professor of English at Harvard and Yale and author of Dramatic Technique, a codification of the principles of drama.
William Miles Malleson was an English actor and dramatist, particularly remembered for his appearances in British comedy films of the 1930s to 1960s. Towards the end of his career he also appeared in cameo roles in several Hammer horror films, with a fairly large role in The Brides of Dracula as the hypochondriac and fee-hungry local doctor. Malleson was also a writer on many films, including some of those in which he had small parts, such as Nell Gwyn (1934) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). He also translated and adapted several of Molière's plays.
Dame Edith Mary Evans was an English actress. She was best known for her work on the West End stage, but also appeared in films at the beginning and towards the end of her career. Between 1964 and 1968, she was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines, its title another word for screenplay. It was founded in Chicago in 1911. Under early editors, Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk, in style and reach it became a pacesetter for fan magazines. In 1921, Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award. For most of its run, it was published by Macfadden Publications. The magazine ceased publication in 1980.
Martita Edith Hunt was an Argentine-born British theatre and film actress. She had a dominant stage presence and played a wide range of powerful characters. She is best remembered for her performance as Miss Havisham in David Lean's Great Expectations (1946).
Edward Brewster Sheldon was an American dramatist. His plays include Salvation Nell (1908) and Romance (1913), which was made into a motion picture with Greta Garbo.
Ernst Deutsch, also known as Ernest Dorian, was a Jewish Austrian actor. In 1916, his performance as the protagonist in the world première of Walter Hasenclever's Expressionist play The Son in Dresden was praised. Deutsch also played the antihero Famulus in Paul Wegener's The Golem: How He Came into the World in 1920. He is known by English-speaking audiences for his role as Baron Kurtz in Carol Reed's 1949 film noir, The Third Man.
Sheldon Warren Cheney was an American author and art critic, born at Berkeley, California, the son of Lemuel Warren Cheney (1858–1921), California lawyer and writer, and May L. Cheney (1862–1942), Appointment Secretary at University of California, Berkeley for over forty years. At first he worked in his father's real estate business, later moving to Detroit where he founded the Theatre Arts Magazine in 1916 and edited it until 1921. Cheney was one of the most significant pro-modernist theatre and art critics of the early twentieth century. He helped introduce European modernist practices in theatre to the United States. His Theatre Arts Magazine promoted American little theatre activity, advocated for New Stagecraft design, and nurtured new American playwrights.
Samuel James Hume was an American dramatic director, producer, art museum director, and book dealer.
As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theater as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. The Little Theatre Movement served to provide experimental centers for the dramatic arts, free from the standard production mechanisms used in prominent commercial theaters. In several large cities, beginning with Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and Detroit, companies formed to produce more intimate, non-commercial, non-profit-centered, and reform-minded entertainments.
Leonora Mary Johnson, known professionally as Nora Swinburne, was an English actress who appeared in many British films.
Ainslee's Magazine was an American literary periodical published from 1897 to December 1926. It was originally published as a humor magazine called The Yellow Kid, based on the popular comic strip character. It was renamed Ainslee's the following year.
A combination company was a touring theater company which performed only one play. Unlike repertory companies, which performed multiple plays in rotation, combination companies used more elaborate and specialized scenery in their productions.
Benjamin W. Huebsch was an American publisher in New York City in the early 20th century.
Adolph Walter Rich was a Milwaukee manufacturer, merchant and philanthropist best known for his work in founding the Jewish agricultural colony at Arpin, Wisconsin, United States.
Dorothy Agnes Donnelly was an actress, playwright, librettist, producer, and director. After a decade-long acting career that included several notable roles on Broadway, she turned to writing plays, musicals and operettas, including more than a dozen on Broadway including several long-running successes. Her most famous libretto was The Student Prince (1924), in collaboration with composer Sigmund Romberg.
A theater company formed in 1912, the Chicago Little Theatre spearheaded and lent its name to a historic, popular wave in American Theater, the Little Theatre Movement. Founded in its namesake city by Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne, the company was an art theater formed in opposition to the commercial values which held sway at the time. The company performed work by contemporary writers and Greek classics, as well as pioneering puppetry and puppet plays. Poetic dramas, restrained acting and new concepts in scenography were hallmarks of the Chicago Little Theatre.
Maurice Browne was a man of the theatre in the United States and the United Kingdom. A poet, actor and theatre director, he has been credited, along with his then-wife Ellen Van Volkenburg, as the founder of the Little Theatre Movement in America through his work with the Chicago Little Theatre.
George Foster Platt was an American stage actor as well as a director of stage and filmed shows. He was part of Thanhouser's short-lived Jacksonville, Florida, production unit.
Edith Juliet Rich Isaacs was an American theatre critic.
