Felix Mendelsohn scrapbook

1927-1962 [bulk 1927-1935]

Felix Mendelsohn, Jr. (1906-1991), was an advertising copy writer based in Chicago. As a young man, Mendelsohn aspired to be a journalist. He found work writing promotional copy, booklets and brochures for various companies. He died in 1991 at the age of 84. The Felix Mendelsohn scrapbook holds a number of interviews with prominent actors and actresses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the age of 21, aspiring journalist Felix Mendelsohn, Jr. conducted a number of interviews with famous stage performers in which he asked each one to describe the "most thrilling moment" of his or her career. Mendelsohn developed these interviews into profiles, and hoped to sell the resulting series to a newspaper or magazine, but was unable to do so. He later compiled the profiles into a scrapbook, adding photographs of all the interviewees, some of which were inscribed to him. The performers profiled were Helen Hayes, Otis Skinner, Helen Gahagan, John Drew, Irene Bordoni, Richard Bennett, Helen Menken, John Cromwell, Ina Claire, Dennis King, Fay Bainter, Laurette Taylor, Grant Mitchell, Lowell Sherman, Ruth Draper, Florence Reed, Estelle Winwood, John E. Kellard, Wilton Lackaye, O.P. Heggie, Effie Shannon, Elsie Janis, Frank Keenan, Leo Carillo, Amelita Galli-Curci, Arthur Byron, Louis Mann, Lenore Ulric, and Raymond Hitchcock. Mendelsohn also included in his scrapbook rejection notes the proposed series received from several newspapers and publishing syndicates, dated between 1927-1935. More photographs are tucked into the back of the book, mostly actors who were not interviewed by Mendelsohn and prominent personalities outside the field of theater; many of these photographs are autographed and inscribed to Mendelsohn. Subjects include Pauline Frederick, H. L. Mencken, Frank Harris, Fritz Feld, Whitford Kane, William Faversham, Fortune Gallo, James O'Donnell Bennett, Oscar Tschirky ("Oscar of the Waldorf"), and Burl Ives.