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Creator
Donehue, Vincent J., -1966
Call number
*T-MSS 1967-002
Physical description
5.8 linear feet (14 boxes)
Preferred Citation

Vincent Donehue Papers, *T-Mss 1967-002, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

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

Donehue was a director working primarily for the New York stage and television in the 1950s and 1960s. He also directed two films in Hollywood. The collection includes personal correspondence; production files containing notes, letters, partial scripts, cast lists, contracts and financial papers; complete scripts, many for television shows; clippings of reviews; and a few manuscripts and photographs.

Biographical/historical information

Director Vincent J. Donehue was born on September 22, 1915 in Whitehall, New York to Julian B. Donehue and Helen E. Vincent. His father was director of redevelopment in Albany, New York. Vincent Donehue was educated at Christian Brothers Academy and the State University of New York and studied for the stage with Tamara Daykarhanova and with Fanny Bradshaw at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon, England. He made his radio debut in 1937 and in the years prior to World War II was heard on over 1500 radio shows. He also acted on Broadway during this time appearing as Cinna, the poet in Orson Welles' production of Julius Caesar, and in Katharine Cornell's Herod and Marianne, Guthrie McClintic's Christmas Eve, the Theatre Guild's Jeremiah, by Stefan Zweig, John Golden's The Old Foolishness by Paul Vincent Carroll, and My Fair Ladies with Betty Furness and Celeste Holm.

Donehue enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1941 and served through 1945 attaining the rank of Major. While overseas he co-authored, produced and directed a play San Francisco which toured France and Germany. After the war he and playwright Horton Foote established Productions, Inc., an acting school and professional theater repertory company in Washington D.C., sharing the responsibilities of producer, director and manager together. This repertory company staged productions ranging from J. M. Synge's Deidre of the Spirits to William Saroyan's My Heart's in the Highlands.

In 1950 Donehue signed as a director for NBC-TV's Chevrolet Theatre with Fred Coe, who had been his summer stock roommate back in 1935. Subsequently Donehue was producer-director for the Gabby Hayes Show dramas, an alternate director for Robert Montgomery Presents (1952), director of Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse (1952-1956), and Producer's Showcase (1957-1958). He staged many teleplays during TV's "golden age" including Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, Robert E. Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna, Clare Booth Luce's The Women, Paddy Chayefsky's The Big Deal, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Rudolf Besier's The Barretts of Wimpole Street with Katharine Cornell, and the Mary Martin production of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1960), one of the first television productions filmed on magnetic tape.

Donehue's career as a director on Broadway began with his staging of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful with Lillian Gish in 1953. This was followed by Foote's Traveling Lady (1954), Tennessee William's Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton (1955), Dore Schary's Sunrise at Campobello (1958), Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein's The Sound of Music (1959), Morris L. West's Daughter of Silence (1961), S. N. Behrman's Lord Pengo (1962), Arthur Schwartz's Jennie (1963), and Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert's Catch Me If You Can (1965). He also directed two films: Lonelyhearts (1959) and Sunrise at Campobello (1960), both produced by Dore Schary.

Vincent Donehue received a Tony Award and a Film Daily Award for his direction of Sunrise at Campobello and a Director's Guild Award for his television direction of Peter Pan. He died of Hodgkins disease on January 17, 1966 in New York City. He was fifty years old.

Scope and arrangement

The Vincent J. Donehue Papers document the director's professional career bringing plays to the stage and the television screen in the 1950s and early 1960s. The collection consists of correspondence, scripts, notes, contracts, financial reports, manuscripts and clippings. The bulk of the collection is annotated scripts for television shows and Broadway plays directed by Donehue and the strength of the collection is here and in the production files which include detailed written discussions with playwrights and producers on script development. There is almost no personal material and nothing from his early career.

The Vincent J. Donehue papers are arranged in six series:

  • Series I: General Correspondence
    1946-1966
    7 folders

    This series includes letters to Donehue on professional and personal matters from various individuals. Included here are cards from Horton Foote and Mary Martin, congratulatory telegrams, miscellaneous letters on a variety of topics, and letters from unidentified individuals. Of interest are the broadcast letters from Richard Halliday on his trip to Brazil with his wife, Mary Martin, and the warm letters of friendship and thanks to Donehue from Dore Schary. There are also a couple of letters by Donehue here, but most of his letters are filed under production title in Series II: Production Files.

  • Series II: Production Files
    1957-1966
    1 box

    This series contains correspondence, notes, partial scripts, cast lists, contracts and financial reports arranged alphabetically by production title. It includes correspondence discussing scripts with authors Morris West on Daughter of Silence, Gore Vidal on Honor which was shown on television's Playwrights 56, and Robert Penn Warren on Listen to the Mocking Bird which was not produced. Particularly rich are the detailed discussions in notes and letters by Donehue, Richard Halliday, Leland Hayward and Howard Lindsay illuminating the research that went into the development and script changes of The Sound of Music, including notes and transcripts from phone conversations with the Baroness Maria Von Trapp, whose life was fictionalized in the story, and with Sister Gregory, a nun at Rosary College, who gave guidance on the convent scene. Other productions included are Annie Get Your Gun, Catch Me If You Can, Jennie, Lord Pengo, Lonelyhearts, and Sunrise at Campobello.

  • Series III: Manuscripts by Donehue
    ca. 1959
    1 folder

    This file consists of two versions of Leading Ladies in My Life and a copy of A Man in Three Mediums published in Theatre Arts, June 1959.

  • Series IV: Clippings
    1949-1966
    21 folders

    Clippings consist of reviews of Donehue's productions, general interviews with him, articles on his family, and clippings on the opening of the Washington Theater Festival at Meridian Hill Park Theatre in 1949 under the auspices of Donehue's Productions, Inc. The National Theater, the capitol's only live theater, had closed down the year before rather than face an integrated audience.

  • Series V: Scripts
    12 boxes

    Consists of scripts annotated by Donehue for many of the theatrical and television productions he directed. Includes a complete run of the weekly Gabby Hayes series [1950-1951].

  • Series VI: Miscellaneous ephemera
    ca. 1957
    1 folder

    Consists of one award Donehue received for the television production of Annie Get Your Gun [1957] and an unidentified photograph [1959].

Administrative information

Custodial history

The Vincent J. Donehue Papers, a bequest of the estate of Vincent J. Donehue, arrived at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 1966.

Source of acquisition

Papers: bequest, Estate of Vincent J. Donehue, 1966

Processing information

Processed by Elisabeth Elkind.

Separated material

Designs from the Vincent J. Donehue Papers - *T-VIM 1967-002

Related Material

Vincent J. Donehue Correspondence and Ephemera - *T-Mss 1999-007

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.

Access restrictions

Photocopying prohibited.