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Creator
Golden, John, 1874-1955
Call number
*T-Mss 1958-007
Physical description
97.39 linear feet (114 boxes, 11 volumes)
Preferred Citation

John Golden Papers, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library.

Repository
Billy Rose Theatre Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.
Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.

John Golden (1874-1955) was a songwriter and theatrical impresario who wrote, directed, managed, or produced over 100 shows in a career spanning more than 40 years, including Lightnin', Claudia, and Susan and God. The collection predominantly documents Golden's career as a theatrical manager and producer, with particular focus on the late 1920s until his death.

Biographical/historical information

John Golden (1874-1955) was a songwriter and theatrical impresario who wrote, directed, managed, or produced over 100 shows in a career spanning more than 40 years, including Lightnin', Claudia, and Susan and God. Golden was known for his "clean, humorous, American plays," which were suitable for a family audience. "I think Mrs. Warren's Profession is a great play," he explained in his autobiography, Stage Struck, "[but] given equal literary value, I should infinitely prefer a wholesome play."

Born in New York City, Golden spent much of his childhood in Wauseon, Ohio. Returning to New York as a teenager, he aspired to become an architect. He was hired as an errand boy at a New York architectural firm, through which he was offered a job assisting a bricklayer. In Stage Struck, Golden claims to have helped lay the bricks for Harrigan's Theatre. Around the same time, Golden found additional work as a spear-carrying supernumerary in a Roman spectacle at Niblo's Garden. He discovered that he loved the stage, and set aside his architectural ambitions to pursue work in the theatre.

Golden briefly attended New York University to study law, and while there, he put on a successful student show. It was not only his first foray into theatrical management, but the first production of the nascent NYU theatre department. "I decided that drama had certain undeniable advantages over law," he said. "For one thing, you reaped the rewards more quickly. For another, I liked it better." Golden doggedly pursued his acting career, but with limited success. His first review in the New York press was a single line in the October 12, 1898 edition of the New York Evening World, which said only, "John Golden made a good butler." While his big break as an actor failed to materialize, Golden pursued other avenues of work, including a stint as a chewing gum salesman, and more traditional executive positions at manufacturing and chemical companies.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Golden had also taken up freelance writing. In addition to publishing his comedic verses in Puck, Judge, and Truth magazines, Golden began setting his words to music, launching a lucrative songwriting career. Miss Prinnt, with music and lyrics by John Golden, opened at the Victoria Theatre in December 1900, and ran for nearly a year. Among his greatest successes as a songwriter were "Goodbye Girls, I'm Through" from the 1914 musical Chin-Chin, and "Poor Butterfly" (written with Raymond Hubbell and Charles B. Dillingham) from The Big Show, a 1916 Hippodrome extravaganza. Golden used the royalties from his hit songs to produce his first Broadway play, Turn to the Right by John E. Hazzard and Winchell Smith. His creative partnership with Smith yielded some of his most successful productions, including Lightnin', which Smith co-wrote with actor Frank Bacon. Turn to the Right also became a vehicle for Golden's patriotic efforts during the first World War. In addition to running Liberty Bond drives, Golden staged free performances of the production for soldiers at cantonment theatres, a practice which presaged his more extensive tickets-for-troops campaigns in World War II.

By the time his production of Austin Strong's Seventh Heaven closed in 1924, Golden had produced three of the five longest running shows in Broadway history, a record which remained unbroken for many years. As of 2011, the 1938 revival of Lightnin' was still among the 100 longest running shows in Broadway history. In 1929, Golden produced Rachel Crothers' Let Us be Gay, which marked the beginning of another long and fruitful professional relationship. Golden would go on to produce eight of Crothers' plays, including Susan and God starring Gertrude Lawrence, one of his most profitable productions. His career continued to flourish in the 1930s with such plays as Frank Craven's That's Gratitude, and When Ladies Meet, co-written by Golden and Crothers.

Yet not every Golden show met with raves. One productions which failed both critically and popularly was 1933's A Divine Drudge, which he co-wrote with Vicki Baum. It ran at the Royal theatre for only 12 performances. In a letter to Baum, Golden was uncharacteristically disheartened: "The failure of the play, its cost or the time given to it, none of these hit me so hard as the utter surprise, bewilderment, at the fact that I could be so terribly wrong," he penned. "Confidentially, Vicki, it has me so twisted that I'm preparing to do some plays that other people like simply because I'm afraid of my own opinion." Golden soon rebounded, however, with well-received productions of Frederick Jackson's The Bishop Misbehaves and Samson Raphaelson's Skylark, once again featuring Gertrude Lawrence.

The 1940s marked a particularly prolific period in Golden's career; he produced a string of Broadway hits and national tours, including Rose Franken's Claudia, starring Dorothy Maguire, Theatre by Somerset Maugham and Guy Bolton, and Three's a Family by Henry and Phoebe Ephron. When the United States entered the second World War in 1941, Golden became an active participant in a number of relief efforts. He was an early supporter of the American Theatre Wing War Service, Stage Door Canteen, and the Air Training Corps of America. He produced Red Cross shows at Madison Square Garden featuring cameo appearances by Eleanor Roosevelt, Crown Princess Martha of Norway, and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. Golden was also the director of the Officers' Service Committee, which provided junior officers of all branches of the military with half-price tickets to various New York City entertainments, and the chairman of the entertainment committee for the New York Defense Recreation Committee, responsible for distributing as many as two million free tickets for local entertainments to servicemen. He regularly donated thousands of dollars from the receipts of Claudia to various relief programs and humanitarian causes, and spearheaded a campaign to remove the tax on tickets for merchant seamen. Arguably Golden's most significant contribution to the war effort, however, was his creation of a playwriting contests for soldiers, and later for sailors. The first contest resulted in a series of five short plays by enlisted men which John Golden produced in 1943 as The Army Play by Play. The show brought in over $200,000 for the Army Relief Fund.

In addition to producing, Golden took an active role in many theatrical organizations and professional associations, including the Lambs Club, the first professional theatrical club in America. Inducted in 1893, Golden served as committee chair for the annual Lambs Gambols for ten years, and was the Lambs "Shepherd" (president) from 1944 to 1945. Golden was responsible for creating the Producing Managers' Association with Sam H. Harris in 1918. In one of the few dark episodes of his career, he found himself at the center of the 1919 actors' strike, which pitted him against performers he had known and respected since the earliest days of his career. Golden was also one of the original officers of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and an early member of the Songwriters' Protective Association, the Dramatists' Guild, the Stage Relief Fund, the Percy Williams Home for Aged Actors, and others; and Grover Whalen appointed him chairman for the Entertainment Committee of the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Golden continued his professional and humanitarian activities well into the postwar years, including supporting the Equity Library Theatre, and serving as chair for the New York City committee for United Nations Day. He also continued to produce for Broadway up to the end of his life, though audience numbers began to dwindle with the advent of television and the changing of popular tastes. His last show, a revival of Seventh Heaven, opened in May of 1955 at the ANTA Playhouse. John Golden died on June 17, 1955, at his estate in Bayside, Queens, which he bequeathed to the City of New York for use as a public park.

Scope and arrangement

The collection predominantly documents Golden's career as a theatrical manager and producer, with particular focus on the late 1920s until his death. There is little material documenting his earlier productions or his songwriting career, and there is very little material relating to his private life. That said, Golden's personal life and professional career were often inextricably bound, and information regarding his life outside the theatre can often be found or inferred from his correspondence with his colleagues, many of whom were also close friends.

Correspondence comprises a considerable portion of the collection, and is present in nearly every series. Golden's correspondents represent many of the most important and influential theatrical, political, and social figures of the day. Most prominent correspondents are actors, playwrights and authors, theatre owners, theatrical trade organizations, and members of the press. Subject files contain thematic correspondence on issues pertinent to Golden's work. Show files, another key series within the collection, document much of Golden's work as a playwright, theatrical manager, and producer, with an emphasis on the developmental stages of production, as well as other material generated over the life cycle of a production. Golden's participation in patriotic and humanitarian relief endeavors during World War II is also given considerable attention. A small quantity of material relates to his participation with the Lambs Club, mainly from his term as Shepherd. Some office files are present, as is a small quantity of personal miscellany. Photographs in the collection are mainly of actors, playwrights, and productions, but a few family photographs are also present. Scrapbooks contain considerable coverage of Golden's work, and in some cases provide the only documentation of Golden's songwriting career and early productions within the collection.

The John Golden papers are arranged in nine series:

  • Series I: Correspondence
    1903-1958
    38 boxes

    John Golden's correspondence covers a significant portion of his professional career and documents many of his humanitarian efforts. There is very little correspondence from the early years of his career, including his stints as an actor and songwriter; the bulk of the correspondence dates from the 1930s until his death. Outgoing letters from Golden are generally unsigned carbon copies, with many written by or dictated to Golden's personal secretaries, Clarence Van Sappe and Jean Dalrymple. Very little strictly personal correspondence is extant, though references to his life beyond the theatre are present in his communications with long-time friends, colleagues, and employees.

    Correspondence is arranged alphabetically.

  • Series II: Show Files
    1900-1954
    19 boxes

    The Show Files document much of Golden's work as a playwright, theatrical manager, and producer. Material predominantly consists of correspondence, with an emphasis on the developmental stages of production, such as discussions regarding scripts in progress and casting, and is rich in correspondence between Golden and the playwrights, actors, and directors with whom he worked, including Rachel Crothers, Samson Raphaelson, Austin Strong, Winchell Smith, and Gertrude Lawrence. Researchers interested in specific individuals should also consult Series I: Correspondence. Some show files also include dispatches from his touring companies illuminating the complicated logistics of a national tour. This is particularly evident in the files for Claudia and Susan and God, where the normal trials and tribulations of a road show were compounded by war-related restrictions and rationing.

    In addition to correspondence, some files contain other material generated over the life cycle of a production, including contracts, box office and royalty statements, budgets and inventories of props and costumes, press releases, and ephemera. The productions are unevenly documented; in some cases, a show may only be represented by a single program. Almost no material is present to represent Golden's early work as a songwriter, save for some correspondence relating to his popular 1916 song Poor Butterfly. No material, or a negligible amount of material, is present to represent the following productions: Thunder, The Midnight Rounders of 1921, Caught Wet, Savage Rhythm, and Riddle Me This. Most extensively documented are The Army Play by Play, Claudia, Lightnin', Skylark, Susan and God, Theatre, and Three's a Family.

    In addition to produced works, this series also includes files on productions that were under consideration or in early stages of development which were ultimately not produced for financial, artistic, or other reasons.

    Golden's shows often had extended runs, many had national tours, and some were revived decades after the original Broadway production; the files do not always reflect these circumstances. Lightnin', for instance, opened on Broadway in 1918, but the earliest related material in the collection dates from 1920, at which point the show had run for one thousand performances.

    The show files are arranged alphabetically by title. Some of Golden's plays had previews or out-of-town tryouts under one title, only to have the name tweaked or changed entirely either during its Broadway run or in subsequent productions; working and alternate titles have been noted when available.

    Additional coverage of Golden's productions, including underrepresented early works, can be found in Series IX: Scrapbooks, and in the Billy Rose Theatre Division's collection of visual materials documenting the career of John Golden, 1903-1954 (*T-Vim 2011-233).

  • Series III: War Work
    1940-1954
    4 boxes

    Golden's participation in patriotic and humanitarian relief endeavors during World War II is documented almost exclusively through correspondence with and on behalf of numerous local, national, and international civilian and military organizations. His work with the American Theatre Wing War Service, the United Seamen's Service, and the U.S.O. is more thoroughly documented, and includes minutes, reports, and collateral material.

    War work, for Golden, was inextricably bound to his work in theatre. He arranged two playwriting contests for armed services members. His Army playwriting contest resulted in the production of The Army Play by Play, extensively documented in Series II: Show Files, which netted the Army Relief Fund over $200,000. His Naval playwriting contest, as evidenced by the limited correspondence presented here, was less fruitful.

    Golden served as chairman of the entertainment committee for the New York Defense Recreation Committee, which distributed over 12 million free tickets to servicemen over the course of the war. Some of the material presented here predates the formal creation of the committee; just as he had in World War I, Golden independently spearheaded campaigns to provide free entertainment for the troops, including tickets to his Broadway shows, in the earliest days of the war. Correspondence with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and President Franklin D. Roosevelt occurs frequently within the Defense Recreation Committee correspondence, as well as in Subseries I. A. General Correspondence.

    Evidence of Golden's efforts during the first World War, specifically his Liberty Bond drives and tickets-for-soldiers promotions, is limited to a small quantity of letters, clippings, and ephemera located in Series IX: Scrapbooks, Volume 1: 1911-1930.

  • Series IV: Lambs Club
    1923-1954
    2 boxes

    Lambs Club material represents Golden's participation in the club from 1923 until his death in 1954. His early activity with the club, including his ten-year tenure as committee chair for the Lambs Gambol, is not documented here. Programs and ephemera from many Gambols are present. Financial reports, general files, and a significant amount of correspondence date from Golden's term as "Shepherd" (president), 1944-1945. Material is arranged alphabetically by subject.

  • Series V: Office Files
    1917-1954
    3 boxes

    These are administrative files maintained by Golden in the course of his work as a producer, theatrical manager, and theatre owner, as well as those pertaining to his humanitarian efforts both within and outside of the theatrical community. Material includes a 1925 circular from Golden proposing the creation of a producing managers' trade association (separate from his Managers' Protective Association); a 1932 journal detailing the management of the Majestic, Royal, and Masque theaters; material relating to the activities of the Stage Relief Fund; material relating to the activities of the Advisory Committee on Entertainment for the 1939 New York World's Fair; snapshots and resumes submitted for the 1943-1944 John Golden Auditions, including a submission by a young Jean Stapleton; and drafts of writings and speeches by or about John Golden. Of particular note are the play submissions, which include synopses and frank appraisals by Golden or his staff of plays under consideration or written on spec for production. Among the plays critiqued are early and unproduced works by Claire Boothe Luce (then Claire Boothe Brokaw). This series is arranged alphabetically.

  • Series VI: Personal Miscellany
    1874-1955
    2 boxes

    This collection focuses on Golden's extensive theatrical career rather than his private life; as such, very little personal material is available. Present in this series are awards, certificates and recommendations; invitations to various parties and events; posthumous memorials; and souvenir programs for events and productions. Material is arranged alphabetically by subject or genre.

  • Series VII: Financial Material
    1922-1954
    19 boxes

    The Financial Material series contains box office receipts for productions running between 1925 and 1927; touring company grosses for national companies from 1941 to 1952; production accounts for numerous shows; and check registers for related accounts. Also included are stock certificates for J. G. Theatre, inc., and one ledger for a personal account. Production accounts are arranged alphabetically by show title; not all shows are represented. Check registers and other ledgers are arranged chronologically. In some cases, dates are overlapping.

  • Series VIII: Photographs
    1925-1954
    5 boxes

    This series contains photographs of individuals, generally actors and playwrights, associated with Golden and his productions, and production stills. Also found here are photographs of John Golden, including formal portraits, staged publicity shots, and images documenting his attendance at various events and meetings. One folder of miscellaneous images contains unidentified subjects, and group photographs inscribed to Golden. One personal album contains informal and candid photographs of family and friends, though a small quantity of production photos are present here as well. Photographs are arranged alphabetically by subject or show.

    Additional images can be found in the collection of visual materials documenting the career of John Golden, 1903-1954 (*T-Vim 2011-233); and John Golden : photographs (*T Pho B Golden, John), both of which are held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division. Some production stills for But Not Goodbye and Counsellor at Law were collected previously by the Theatre Division, and have been cataloged separately.

  • Series IX: Scrapbooks and Clippings
    1893-1971
    19 boxes 11 volumes

    Scrapbooks and clippings document Golden's theatrical and philanthropic works, and record his activities as a popular public figure. General scrapbooks follow multiple productions, and contain articles on, and interviews with, Golden himself. One box of material covering the years 1893 to 1926 provides the most thorough representation within this collection of his early work as a songwriter and producer. The volume dated 1911-1930 documents his efforts on behalf of the Liberty Bond drive during World War I, includes several Lucky Strike Cigarette advertisements featuring Golden as their spokesman, and many clippings pertaining to the issues of decadence and censorship in theatre-- issues of considerable significance to Golden, whose professional mission was to provide "wholesome" entertainment for audiences of all ages. Later material consists of posthumous articles and memorials. Publicity for many of Golden's productions, both in New York and on tour, is captured in individual scrapbooks, though not all of his shows are represented; coverage for early productions through the 1920s is limited.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Received from an unknown source, ca. 1958

Processing information

Compiled by Kit Messick.

The collection is comprised of multiple accessions. Some correspondence had been partially processed and alphabetically arranged at the folder level. As original order had not been maintained, the remaining accessions were integrated into the collection following that arrangement. Some scrapbooks have been disbound due to deteriorating bindings. The collection contained additional scrapbooks suffering from extreme and irreparable water damage; these items will not be processed or made available to patrons at this time.

Related Material

Collection of visual materials documenting the career of John Golden, 1903-1954. Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library.. John Golden: photographs. Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library..

Using the collection

Location

Billy Rose Theatre Division
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish, contact the Curator, Billy Rose Theatre Division.