Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler papers

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id: 991
origination: Boultenhouse, Charles, 1926-
date statement: 1927-1994
key date: 1927
identifier (local_mss): 349
org unit: Manuscripts and Archives Division
call number: MssCol 349
b-number: b14259589
total components: 544
total series: 10
max depth: 4
boost queries: (none)
component layout: Default Layout
Extended MARC Fields: false
Extended Navigation: false
created: 2013-04-01 15:04:04 UTC
updated: 2026-06-26 18:15:05 UTC
status note: (missing)
Display Aeon link: true

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unitid: {"value"=>"MssCol 349", "type"=>"local_call"}

{"value"=>"349", "type"=>"local_mss"}
unitdate: {"value"=>"1927-1994", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1927/1994"}
date_inclusive_start: 1927
date_inclusive_end: 1994
keydate: 1927
unittitle: {"value"=>"Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler papers"}
physdesc: {"format"=>"simple", "value"=>"35 boxes"}
repository: {"value"=>"The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division <div class=\"address\"> New York, New York 10018-2788</div>"}
abstract: {"value"=>"The Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler Papers (1927-1994) consist of correspondence; published and unpublished manuscripts and typescripts of each man's writings; photographs; personal files and mementos; subject files; films; sound recordings; art work; and printed material including books, periodicals, catalogs, and brochures. The papers document the men's relationship of almost 30 years; their involvement in and contribution to the arts; their social life with friends and colleagues; and, to some extent, the activities of the artistic communities with which they were involved. The bulk of the papers cover the period from 1945 on, after the men met and began living together, and so are in a sense the papers of their household as well as those of each man individually."}
langmaterial: {"value"=>"English"}
prefercite: {"value"=>"Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations."}
bioghist: {"value"=>"Charles Boultenhouse met Parker Tyler in 1945 when Boultenhouse moved to New York in order to attend Columbia University. Boultenhouse had, only a year earlier, read Tyler's The Hollywood Hallucinationand had been deeply impressed by Tyler's creative and intelligent analysis of commercial film. Soon after their meeting the two men became lovers; they lived together for almost thirty years, until Tyler's death in 1974. Before the 1940s Tyler had been best known as a poet and co-author, with Charles Henri Ford, of The Young and The Evil.Beginning with The Hollywood Hallucination,published in 1944, he came to be regarded as a pioneer in the new field of film criticism. Besides writing on commercial film, Tyler wrote several articles and books on the underground cinema emerging in the United States during the 1940s and `50s. Under the influence of Tyler and the experimental filmmakers with whom the couple were friends, Boultenhouse, who was an aspiring poet, began making films. His explorations in a genre he called “poetic cinema” enjoyed some success and critical acclaim within the small but lively world of experimental film in New York. In the 1950s and 1960s the couple thrived: Tyler was an esteemed cultural critic and champion of the avant garde, and Boultenhouse a promising filmmaker. Their apartment on Charles Street regularly bustled with social and artistic activity. Besides their accomplishments in cinema, both men worked in and wrote about other arts: Tyler continued to write poetry, art criticism, and biography, and Boultenhouse published several poems, translations, and film and dance reviews. Their group of friends and colleagues included Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Willard Maas, Marie Menken, Lloyd Williams, Jonas Mekas, Amos Vogel, P. Adams Sitney, and Gregory Markopoulos from the world of experimental film; and poets, artists, and composers such as Marius Bewley, Lucia Dlugoszewski, Charles Henri Ford, Philip Lamantia, Leslie Powell, Ned Rorem, Donald Sutherland, Allen Tanner, and Pavel Tchelitchew. Charles Boultenhouse (1926-c.1994) Charles Thayer Boultenhouse was born in Boston Massachusetts in 1926. In 1944 Boultenhouse graduated from high school in Buffalo and moved to New York with the intention of attending Columbia University. Boultenhouse was introduced to the coeditors of View,Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, when he went to visit an old friend from Buffalo who was managing editor at the magazine. Shortly thereafter Tyler and Boultenhouse began a relationship that lasted until Tyler's death almost thirty years later. Charles Boultenhouse became interested in making films, through his relationship with Tyler and his friendship with the two experimental filmmakers Willard Maas and Marie Menken. The first film Boultenhouse made, Henry James' Memories of Old New York (1959), was based on James's autobiographical memoir “A Small Boy and Others.” Later the same year Boultenhouse completed Handwritten,a film of his own hand as he wrote Mallarme's A Throw of the Dicein the shape of a hand. In 1963 Boultenhouse wrote, produced, and directed Dionysius,which he described as a “free treatment of Euripides' The Bacchae.”It starred the dancers Louis Falco, Anna Duncan, and Nicolas Magallanes as Dionysius, Agave, and Pentheus respectively, and the experimental filmmakers Charles Levine, Willard Maas, Gregory Markopoulos, Marie Menken, Lloyd Williams and William Wood as the Chorus of Cameras. The film's score was by Teiji Ito. Besides making films, Boultenhouse published some poetry, translations, and film and dance criticism. For some time during the 1960s he wrote the regular Film Chronicle for Kulchur.Boultenhouse supported himself by working at Brentanos; from 1953-1981 he held several positions—manager, buyer, Director of Operations—at the 5th Avenue store. After Tyler's death in 1974, Boultenhouse became depressed and began to drink excessively. The drinking lead to a series of medical problems. By the early 1980s, his emotional and physical health began to improve. While he did not produce any new films, he regained some of his interests in his artistic pursuits: he got back in touch with his old friends in the film world, spoke at some film festivals showing his work, wrote several introductions for reprints of Tyler's books, and began to work on a biography of Tyler. This last project remained unfinished. Parker Tyler (1904-1974) Harrison Parker Tyler was born March 6, 1904 in New Orleans. Tyler arrived in New York at the age of 20 where, after brief flirtations with acting, dancing and drawing, he became a writer. He was soon known as a poet and book reviewer who assumed the self-stylized persona of The Beautiful Poet Parker Tyler; meanwhile he earned his living at a monotonous editorial position. Tyler read his modern poetry—his influences were Stein, Pound, Moore, Cummings, and Mallarmé—at Greenwich Village clubs like the Sam Johnson, and his poems were published in national periodicals alongside such poets as William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky. In 1928 Tyler began corresponding with Charles Henri Ford who edited and published the literary journal Blues.Ford moved to New York and the two became an infamous duo around town. In 1931 they co-wrote the novel The Young and Evilwhich portrayed the homosexual underground of Greenwich Village in which they lived. They could not find a publisher in the United States, so Ford journeyed to Paris where the book was eventually published by the Olympia Press in 1933. The book was banned and burned in the United States and England. Later, Tyler collaborated with Charles Henri Ford again: in the late forties they co-founded and co-edited View,a surrealist-inspired journal of arts and letters. Tyler spent the late 1930s and early 1940s in Hollywood and began writing film criticism in 1940. Along with James Agee, Tyler was one of the first to devote serious criticism to the Hollywood commercial film. While Tyler remained the occasional poet, biographer, and art and literary critic, he became and remains best known for his critical examinations of film—Hollywood, foreign, and underground cinema. In his evaluation and interpretation of underground and experimental film Tyler brought an esthetic eye previously reserved for high or fine art; his creative and rigorous analysis uncovered the social, psychological, and sexual meanings hidden behind the images and conventions of commercial film; these readings of film were the groundwork for his provocative and insightful observations on American culture in general. Tyler wrote nine books on film subjects including Magic and Myth of the Movies(1947); The Three Faces of the Film(1960); Classics of the Foreign Film(1962); Sex Psyche Etcetera in the Film(1969); Underground Film, A Critical History(1970); Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies(1972); and The Shadow of an Airplane Climbs the Empire State Building: A World Theory of Film(1972), and he regularly contributed reviews and articles to periodicals and journals such as Partisan Review, Sight and Sound,and Film Culture. In addition to his work on film Tyler published five volumes of poetry, including the long surrealist poem The Granite Butterfly;several studies of artists such as Van Gogh, Renoir, and Carl Pickhardt; and a full length biography of the painter Pavel Tchelitchew, The Divine Comedy of Pavel Tchelitchew(1967). Parker Tyler died at the age of 70 from prostate cancer."}
scopecontent: {"value"=>"The Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler Papers (1927-1994) consist of correspondence; published and unpublished manuscripts and typescripts of each man's writings; photographs; personal files and mementos; subject files; films; sound recordings; art work; and printed material including books, periodicals, catalogs, and brochures. The papers document the men's relationship of almost 30 years; their involvement in and contribution to the arts—predominantly film and film criticism, but also dance, theater, poetry, and art criticism; their social life with friends and colleagues; and, to some extent, the activities of the artistic communities with which they were involved. The bulk of the papers cover the period from 1945 on, after the men met and began living together, and so are, in one sense, the papers of their household, as well as those of each man individually. The correspondence is mostly to and from Charles Boultenhouse although some letters are addressed to Tyler or to both men as a couple. The works in the papers—art, film, writings, and photographs—were created by Tyler, Boultenhouse, and their friends (whose works Boultenhouse or Tyler were given or collected). The Personal Files include biographical material for both men, some of Tyler's tax returns, clippings, inventories of their library and art works, and medical records. The Subject Files consist of material collected on certain topics and individuals. The Photographs series includes negatives and positive prints of the two men and their friends; reproductions of works of art; dance, theater, and film stills; 36 photographs of a Greek fertility ritual; and a large group of negatives taken by Macario (Tosh) Carillo of his friends. The Art series includes works by Parker Tyler, Pavel Tchelitchew, Leslie Powell, and Dimitri Petrov among others. The Books, Periodicals, Catalogs series includes most of Parker Tyler's published works and periodicals containing Tyler and Boultenhouse's contributions—some with dedications, annotations, and marks of ownership—as well as books from their library, many of which are signed and dedicated by the books' authors. The papers also contain several artifacts, including Parker Tyler's wallet."}

{"value"=>"The Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler papers are arranged in ten series:\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717346'>I. Correspondence</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1927-1994,</div>\n<div class='series-description'>Most of the correspondence is to and from Charles Boultenhouse, or are letters addressing both men as a couple; there is some correspondence which is Parker Tyler's exclusively. Living together for almost thirty years and sharing interests in the arts, Boultenhouse and Tyler shared many of their friends and colleagues in common. Operating in a relatively small community of artists, the men enjoyed close relationships with many of those working in similar veins or related fields: the correspondence provides insight into the world of experimental and underground film, dance, and literature. Notable correspondents include Stan Brakhage and Jane Brakhage, Marius Bewley, Charles Henri Ford, Willard Maas, Gregory Markopoulos, Marie Menken, Jonas Mekas, Ned Rorem, Donald Sutherland, and Amos Vogel. The correspondence between Tyler and Boultenhouse (1947-1973) is predominantly from Tyler to Boultenhouse. It also includes some of Boultenhouse's diary entries from 1970.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717556'>II. Personal Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>The Personal Files are an assortment of clippings, printed materials, and lists which to a limited extent document both men's careers, biographies, legal affairs, medical problems, possessions, and finances. This series also includes many invitations to readings and book parties, and typed inventories of the couple's library and art collection.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717573'>III. Works</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>The Works series consists of manuscripts and typescripts of published and unpublished poetry, fiction, essays, and plays written by Boultenhouse and Tyler, as well as treatments, notes, scripts, and credits for several of Boultenhouse's films. (Tyler's art work and Boultenhouse's film can be found in the “Art & Artifacts”, and “Film” series.) This series also includes some of both men's published writing in the form of clippings and personally printed chapbooks. see also: Books, Periodicals, Catalogs Of special note are the preliminary drafts of Boultenhouse's planned biography of Tyler and the typescript of Tyler's unpublished novel The Clairvoyante & The Crime: A Novel in Prose and Verse.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717637'>IV. Subject Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>The Subject Files consist of material, mostly printed, collected on certain topics or people such as Avant Garde Film, Homosexuality, and Andy Warhol. The series also includes invitations and brochures for art, theater, and film openings.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717659'>V. Photographs</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>This series comprises negatives and positive prints of friends and family, dance performances and dancers, art, buildings, and children. Other photographs include film stills; theater stills; 36 photos taken by Colonel Thamos Veloudios, sent to Charles Boultenhouse by Gregory Markopoulos, of a Greek fertility ritual called the Chios Festival; and a large group of negatives of photos, some homoerotic, taken by Tosh Carillo (a friend of Boultenhouse's and an actor who appeared in several of Andy Warhol's films) of his friends. The personal photographs include an album compiled by Boultenhouse which consists mostly of pictures of himself and his friends, including Tyler, from his childhood onward; the other photos are of the two men and their friends at parties or on vacation. Many of the pictures of art, and the film, dance, and theater stills were pictures intended as illustrations in books or articles by either Tyler or Boultenhouse. Other film stills were sent to the men by the filmmakers and include stills from films by Gregory Markopoulos, Robert Beavers, and Donald Richie.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717747'>VI. Films</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>This series consists of two 8mm films by Stan Brakhage; a 16mm film by Charles Boultenhouse of Parker Tyler, Marjie Borisoff, and Norman Borisoff drinking wine on a roof top; and several frames, sent to Tyler and Boultenhouse by the filmmakers as mementos, from films by Charles Henri Ford, Gregory Markopoulos, and Paul Sharits. NOTE: Use of films restricted pending creation of surrogate copies.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717754'>VII. Sound Recordings</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>Sound recordings include experimental takes and rehearsal from Boultenhouse's film Handwritten;conversations about film between Boultenhouse and Tyler; two talks given by Boultenhouse at a film festival in Colorado in 1982 about his film Dionysiusand the films of the early American avant garde filmmakers; an interview of Stan Brakhage by Parker Tyler; a segment of Brakhage's radio show; and the Greek narration for Gregory Markopoulos's film Serenity.NOTE: Use of sound recordings restricted pending creation of surrogate copies.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717763'>VIII. Art & Artifacts</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>This series consists of drawings, prints, collages, and watercolors by Parker Tyler, Pavel Tchelitchew, Leslie Powell, Dimitri Petrov, and Alan Kaprow among others. The artifacts are Parker Tyler's wallet and three dimensional art objects (i.e. collages and assemblages) by Parker Tyler, Edward Owens, and Marius Bewley.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717782'>IX. Oversized Material</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>This series consists of material removed from other series because of its size. It includes posters and photographs, as well as the sheet music and lyrics of musical collaborations between Parker Tyler and Ned Rorem and between Stan Brakhage and Ramiro Cortes.</div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/349#c717798'>X. Books, Periodicals, Catalogs</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'>This series is made up of publications written or contributed to by Parker Tyler and Charles Boultenhouse and books and periodicals from their library. Many of the books bear some mark of either man's ownership, their names or other annotations. Several of the books by other writers are signed and/or are dedicated to one or both of the men. Of special note are the privately printed or limited edition chapbooks of poetry, usually signed by the authors with personal messages.</div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
arrangement: {"value"=>"The Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler Papers are arranged in the following ten series: <ol class=\"list\"> <li>I. Correspondence</li> <li>II. Personal Files</li> <li>III. Works <ul class=\"list\"> <li> III. 1 Charles Boultenhouse</li> <li> III.2 Parker Tyler</li></ul></li> <li>IV. Subject Files</li> <li>V. Photographs</li> <li>VI. Films</li> <li>VII. Sound Recordings</li> <li>VIII. Art & Artifacts</li> <li>IX. Oversized Material</li> <li>X. Books, Periodicals, Catalogs</li></ol>", "supress_display"=>true}
acqinfo: {"value"=>"Purchased from George Robert Minkoff Inc., March, 1996"}
accessrestrict: {"value"=>"Fire-damaged material was replaced by photocopies. The original material is unavailable for use. Use of films and sound recordings restricted pending creation of surrogate copies."}
sponsor: {"value"=>"Encoding funded by the generous support of the Gladys Krieble Delmas\n Foundation."}

{"value"=>"Encoding funded by the generous support of the Gladys Krieble Delmas\n Foundation."}
processinfo: {"value"=>"Processed by William Stingone; machine readable finding aid created by Apex Data Services and revised by Chatham Ewing."}
origination: {"value"=>"Boultenhouse, Charles, 1926-", "type"=>"persname"}
date_start: 1927
date_end: 1994

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Charles Boultenhouse and Parker Tyler papers

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