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S. J. Perelman ephemera
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Held at: James A. Michener Art Museum Archives [Contact Us]138 South Pine Street, Doylestown, PA, 18901
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the James A. Michener Art Museum Archives. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Sidney Joseph Perelman (February 1, 1904-October 17, 1979), almost always known as S. J. Perelman, was an American humorist, author, and screenwriter. He is best known for his humorous short pieces written over many years for The New Yorker. He also wrote for several other magazines, as well as books, scripts, and screenplays. In cinema, Perelman is noted for co-writing scripts for the Marx Brothers films "Monkey Business" (1931) and "Horse Feathers" (1932), and for the Academy Award winning screenplay "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1956). With Ogden Nash he wrote the book for the musical "One Touch of Venus", which opened on Broadway in 1943 and ran for more than 500 performances. His play "The Beauty Part" (1962), which starred Bert Lahr in multiple roles, fared less well, its short run attributed at least in part to the synchronous 114-day 1962 New York City newspaper strike. He also wrote a notable series of sketches called "Cloudland Revisited" in which he gives acidic (and disillusioned) descriptions of recent viewings of movies (and recent re-readings of novels) which had enthralled him as a youth in Providence, Rhode Island, later as a student at Brown University, and then while a struggling comic artist in Greenwich Village.
Bibliography:
Wikipedia. "S. J. Perelman." Last modified April 7, 2016. Accessed September 13, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._J._Perelman.
S. J. Perelman ephemera, 1929-1992, consists of 44 items relating to Perelman: 12 books, 22 photographs, 2 US passports (1929, 1934), 1 scrapbook of newspaper clippings, 2 articles, 1992 invitation and program to Pearl S. Buck US stamp dedication, and a 1943 program from "One Touch of Venus." The collection is arranged into the following groupings: Photographs Books Passports Newspaper clippings Programs
A more detailed finding aid, biographical note, or inventory for this collection may be available on-site or on the Michener Archives finding aid page: http://www.michenerartmuseum.org/collections-research/archives/finding-aids/.
This collection was acquired for the James A. Michener Art Museum's "Creative Bucks County" interactive exhibit as an archival gift from Dorothy Herrmann on April 4, 1996.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2014-2016 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact James A. Michener Art Museum Archives directly for more information.
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Place
- Publisher
- James A. Michener Art Museum Archives
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Sarah Leu and Anastasia Matijkiw through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories using information provided by the James A. Michener Art Museum Archives
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact James A. Michener Art Museum Archives for information about accessing this collection.