Marian Seldes correspondence

Tony-winning actress Marian Seldes (1928-2014) was a giant of the American stage. In a career spanning six decades, she performed in film, television and radio, but she was most celebrated for her theater work. She made her Broadway debut in 1948 in the Robinson Jeffers adaptation of Medea, directed by John Gielgud and starring Judith Anderson in the title role. She famously didn’t miss a single performance during an entire four-year Broadway run of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, earning mention as “most durable actress” in the Guinness Book of World Records. She taught for many years at Juilliard. Seldes earned five Tony nominations, winning for her supporting role in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance. She received a Tony Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work in 2010.

These papers range widely, from detailed letters by playwrights concerning their productions to social correspondence. A number of the letters have to do with Seldes’s performances, and time and again this correspondence reflects the great love for her in the New York theater.

The following selected highlights convey the range of material in the collection:

1. Letter dated 1947 to John Gielgud from Rita Wallach Morgenthau, director of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. She seeks a small part in Gielgud’s upcoming production of Medea for her new graduate, Marian Seldes. A signed photograph of Gielgud commemorates that eventful introduction to New York theater.

2. Carl Van Vechten photograph of Seldes in costume as Bertha in Ondine (1954), silver gelatin print

3. Long letters by playwright Arnold Wesker concerning the production of his Shylock and Love Letters on Blue Paper

4 A series of Daniel Berrigan typescript poems sent to Seldes

5. Bernard Malamud 2pp typescript signed “Chekhov,” a comic opening to a play, written for Marian Seldes, with a note addressed to her (“My dearest Masha Ghilbertovna, There, I have begun a play for you! If you will add a hundred pages or so it will be a fine vehicle for your splendid talents.”

6. Seldes’s original heavily annotated script for her husband Garson Kanin’s Happy Ending, in which she starred in 1988.

7. Program of the 1965 revival of Medea which reunited Seldes and Judith Anderson eighteen years after Seldes’s 1947 debut. Numerous inscriptions plus related photographs.

8. Extremely long, humorous letter by Jean Stafford giving instructions for cat-sitting her cat Elephi, made famous in the book Elephi: The Cat with the High IQ.

An inventory of names and the number of pieces in the collection follows.

ACTORS

Bikel, Theodore (3 items)

Burton, Richard (1 inscribed photo)

Caldwell, Zoe (1)

Cronyn, Hume (2)

Daly, Tyne (1)

Davis, Allen (1)

Derwent, Clarence (1)

Eagan, Daisy (1)

Farrow, Mia (1)

Fierstein, Harvey (2)

Ferrer, Jose (4)

Foote, Horton (1)

Gielgud, John (4 plus 1 photograph inscribed for Seldes)

Grimes, Tammy (2)

Harris, Julie (2)

Hart, Kitty Carlisle (2)

Hayes, Helen (1)

Hepburn, Katharine (5)

Holm, Celeste (1)

Hunter, Tab (1)

Irwin, Bill (3)

Jackson, Anne (2)

Keach, Stacy (1)

Kilty, Jerome (2)

Lansbury, Angela (1)

Leigh, Vivien (2, plus  1 signed photograph)

Lunt Alfred (1)

McDowall, Roddy (1 photo he took of Seldes in 1958)

McKuen, Rod (1)

Mills, John (1)

Neal, Patricia (3)

Newman, Paul (1)

Novak, Kim (1)

Olivier, Laurence (1)

O’Neill, Carlotta Monterey (1)

Perkins, Anthony (2 plus 1 signed photograph from Equus)

Peters, Bernadette (1)

Pierce, David Hyde (1)

Power, Tyrone (1)

Reagan, Ronald (1 photo commemorating Marian Seldes visit to the White House)

Redgrave, Lynn (5)

Spacey, Kevin (2)

Stiller, Jerry & Anne Meara (2)

Streep, Meryl (1)

Van Ark, Joan (1)

Wallach, Eli (1)

SET DESIGNERS, ARTISTS, DANCERS, CHOREOGRAPHERS

Fonteyn, Margot (1 signed photo in Romeo and Juliet, a 2d signed photo of her dancing with Nureyev)

Frankenthaler, Helen (1)

Hawkins, Erick (1)

Long, William Ivey (3)

Loper, Brendan (1)

Sorel, Edward (1 portrait of Seldes)

PLAYWRIGHTS, DIRECTORS, AUTHORS, SONGWRITERS, & CRITICS

Albee, Edward (1)

Dickey, James (1)

Dietz, Howard (1)

Gill, Brendan (2)

Gurney, A. R. (1)

Horovitz, Israel (1)

Howe, Tina (3)

Kazin, Alfred (1)

Kaufman, Bel (4)

L’Engle, Madeleine (1)

Levin, Ira (1)

Lucas, Craig (2)

McNally, Terence (6)

Malamud, Bernard (4)

Mannes, Marya (2)

Oates, Joyce Carol (1)

Prince, Harold (4)

Rorem, Ned (3)

Selznick, Daniel (1)

Simon, Neil (2)

Sondheim, Stephen (1)

Stafford, Jean (1)

Van Vechten, Carl (4)

Wesker, Arnold (5)

Wilder, Thornton (2)

INTELLECTUALS AND OTHER PUBLIC FIGURES

Berrigan, Daniel (1, sending several carbon typescript poems)

Fuller, Buckminster (2 ephemeral printed works, inscribed)

Graham, Katharine (1)

McLuhan, Marshall

Sarnoff, David (1)

Schlesinger, Arthur (3)

Vanderbilt, Gloria (1)

Wiesel, Elie (1)

WRITINGS BY SELDES’S HUSBAND, PLAYWRIGHT GARSON KANIN

Garson Kanin (1912-1999) was an American playwright, novelist, and director of plays and films. With his first wife, Ruth Gordon, he wrote many important Hollywood scripts including the Tracy-Hepburn comedy Adam’s Rib. He directed the 1964 musical Funny Girl among many others. In 1990 Kanin married actress Marian Seldes. These manuscripts are from her papers.

Autograph manuscript draft review of Michael Korda’s Queenie, published in Harper’s Bazaar 1985 8 pp

Happy Ending: A Comedy of Course. Autograph manuscript draft plot and setting treatment dated 17 July 1985. 18pp, ink on yellow legal paper. This treatment differs greatly from what the play ultimately became.

Happy Ending. A New play by Garson Kanin. Bristol Riverside Theatre, September 1988. Original stiff paper boards, title label on upper cover. Extensively annotated photocopy script. This is Marian Seldes’s copy, with her parts highlighted. There are numerous deletions and additions to the dialogue and the action. Bound in are a set design diagram, copies of reviews and other press notices, a series of bulletins for the cast and crew, directories of same, and so on. This script identifies in manuscript the actors playing the four roles: Peter Dowat, Marian Seldes, Geoffrey Lower, and Cecilia Peck. Laid in are a series of notes in an unknown hand offering suggestions and criticisms of the performances.

Please inquire