Call Number:

C0877

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

2 boxes

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Carl Van Vechten Photographs, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1923-1942 (inclusive)

Creator:

Princeton University. Library. Special Collections and Van Vechten, Carl, 1880-1964

Form:

photographs -- 20th century.

Abstract:

Consists of photographs taken and printed by Carl Van Vechten, primarily during the 1930s to 1940s, following his career as a music critic, journalist, and author.

Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. Eugene O'Neill was a Nobel Prize-winning American dramatist whose works include, The Iceman Cometh, A Touch of the Poet, and A Long Day's Journey into Night.

The collection contains 46 postcard-size, black and white photographs of 33 people, including two self-portraits, taken and printed by Van Vechten primarily during the 1930s to 1940s. His subjects in this collection cover a wide range of celebrities in the theatrical and literary world, including ballet dancers, actors and actresses of stage and screen (some in costume), singers, musicians, authors, and poets--for example, Marian Anderson, Pearl Bailey, Sir John Gielgud, Hugh Laing, Sinclair Lewis, Norman Mailer, Clifford Odets, Jerome Robbins, Artur Rubinstein, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Lin Yutang. Also present are two photographs (1923, 1930) of Van Vechten taken by the New York photographer Nickolas Muray.

An addition consists of 21 mounted images (8" x 10") of musicians, writers, entertainers, and actors (on stage and screen)--many of them well-known Black performers--which are identifed and dated on the verso. Included are Earl Jones in the Langston Hughes play Don't You Want to be Free?, Vincent Price in Angel Street, Pearl Bailey in St. Louis Woman, and Ethel Waters in Mamba's Daughters.

The photographs are arranged alphabetically by subject.