Found 5 collections related to Performing arts -- United States

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is an organization of more than 420,000 artists that protects the copyrights of its members. The ASCAP records represent a portion of the artists who joined the society from the 1930s to the mid-1980s. Many notable recording artists are represented from vaudeville to rock music. The files hold articles, biographical data sheets, broadsides, film strips, memorandum, obituary notices, photographs and photograph negatives,performance brochures, publicity and sheet music. less

The George DeMott papers consist of correspondence, some diaries/appointment books, contracts, photographs, and scrapbooks. This material is almost all business related, and there are no significant personal papers. The papers are divided into two distinct parts, with some overlap: items such as contracts and correspondence that relate to the career of Mr. DeMott, and items such as posters, brochures, etc., that he collected, and placed into scrapbooks. The section of the DeMott papers devoted to Booking Agencies and Agents (Series IV) is divided into 18 sub-series, and contains a great deal of correspondence detailing the difficulties George DeMott and his wife Fanny faced booking their act into schools. The scrapbooks comprise the bulk of the collection and contain a variety of items, including clippings, posters, brochures, correspondence, handbills, fliers, photographs, and programs. The oversized material includes a poster and a road map. less

The Breen family was one of the popular performing families of American show business, playing the stages of America, Australia, and elsewhere during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Patriarch Thomas D. Breen, born of Irish immigrants in Massachusetts in 1868, fled his hometown as a teenager with a travelling medicine show. After a brief spell as a blackface minstrel, Breen honed his juggling skills and began touring the vaudeville circuits of the United States and the music halls of Europe. Breen and his first wife had four children, and, after her death, he remarried and had five more, one of whom died in infancy. Seven of the surviving Breen children joined their father in his stage act, either juggling, dancing, doing acrobatics, playing a musical instrument, or some combination of these skills. After the family act broke up around 1921, the younger Breens formed a number of specialty acts, either solo or with partners from outside the family, and continued performing in vaudeville, musical comedy, nightclubs, movies, and in the circus. Consists of a bound typescript written by Charles Breen (b. 1908), the youngest and only non-performing member of the Breen Family, accompanied by a portfolio of photographs of the various Breens. The typescript was apparently written during the late 1980s/early 1990s, completed in 1993, then privately bound under the title MEMOIRS AND STUFF. The text is divided into two sections, the first of which, entitled "The Show Business Breens," gives a general history of the Breens' professional careers, as a group and as solo performers. The first section is 75 pages and ends with a Breen family career chronology. In Book 2, "The Maverick," Charles Breen explains why he chose not to join the family act, and details his own career, first as a jazz musician, later as an electrical engineer. This section consists of 164 pages plus one errata slip. The portfolio of photographs includes pictures of all the performing Breens, and also includes a photo inscribed to the Breens by silent film star Ramon Novarro. less