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Creator
Beim, Norman
Call number
*T-Mss 2009-003
Physical description
3.78 linear feet (9 boxes)
Preferred Citation

Norman Beim papers, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library.

Repository
Billy Rose Theatre Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.

Norman Beim is a prize-winning playwright, actor, and director. Beim has produced and published dozens of plays, and acted on stage, television, and film. Focusing on his work as a playwright from 1952 to 2007, the Norman Beim papers contain play scripts, theater programs, correspondence, travel memorabilia, newspaper clippings, postcards, photographs, and scrapbooks.

Biographical/historical information

Norman Beim is a Jewish-American playwright, actor, and director. Beim was born on October 2, 1923 in Newark, N.J. Originally intending to be a novelist, Beim attended Ohio State University from 1941 to 1942 and left to serve in the United States Army Field Artillery from 1942 to 1945 during World War II. While fighting in Germany, Beim was awarded second prize in the National Theater Conference competition for his first one-act play, Inside, which was first produced in 1951. After returning from the war, Beim continued writing and also worked as an actor.

Beim has won numerous awards for his plays, including the Robert J. Pickering Award, the David James Ellis Award, the Maxim Mazumdar Award, as well as the Samuel French Short Play Award for The Deserter. Beim's plays have been produced nationally and internationally. In the 1980s, Pygmalion and Galatea was produced in the Netherlands, as well as the play Success, which was also produced in Bruges, Belgium.

As an actor, Beim appeared in the Broadway production Inherit the Wind, which ran from 1955 to 1957, and Off-Broadway productions such as Coriolanus in 1954 and Black Visions in 1972. Beim also did some acting in television and film. Beim published two novels, Hymie and the Angel in 1999 and Zygielbaum's Journey in 2011, in addition to ten collections of his plays. Beim's play collections have been used as textbooks for an English course at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. In the 2000s, Beim worked as a resident playwright for two seasons at the Off-Broadway Turtle Shell Theatre in New York City, where several of his plays have run. Beim's plays continue to be produced in theaters around the country as of 2012.

Scope and arrangement

The Norman Beim papers (1952-2007) consist of play scripts, scrapbooks, photographs, newspaper clippings, theater programs, correspondence, maps, travel memorabilia, and postcards. The play scripts make up the bulk of the collection, serving as a catalog to Beim's lifelong career as a playwright. Most of the scripts are undated, with some dated between 1973 to 1978 and 2004 to 2007. There is an original copy of Beim's award-winning play, Inside, from 1952, with note cards that display comments from judges of the Philadelphia Art Alliance Playwrighting Contest and a single page playbill from the Columbia Theater Associates production. This collection includes copies of Beim's scripts in other languages. Pygmalion and Galatea is in English and Dutch and Success is in English, Dutch, and French. An early draft of Beim's first novel, Hymie and the Angel, is included as well.

This collection contains two scrapbooks. Contents include theater programs, maps of London and Amsterdam, correspondence and photographs relating to the Amsterdam production of Success, as well as travel photographs. Other notable items include clippings; theater programs; postcards from London, Amsterdam, Ashland, O.R., Princeton, N.J., San Francisco, C.A., and Minneapolis, M.N.; foreign coins; and other tourist memorabilia documenting Beim's travels.

Arrangement

Arranged alphabetically by title.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Gift of Norman Beim, 2009.

Processing information

Compiled by Lauren Dzura, Palmer School, 2012.

Duplicate programs were removed and returned to the Library for the Performing Arts.

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 Billy Rose Theatre Division.