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Bucks County Playhouse records
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Held at: New Hope Historical Society [Contact Us]45 South Main Street, P.O. Box 41, New Hope, PA, 18938
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the New Hope Historical Society. 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
"The Bucks County Playhouse is located in New Hope, Pennsylvania, at the site of a former grist mill on the banks of the Delaware River. The original structure was built in 1790 when owner Benjamin Parry rebuilt the Hope Mills, which had recently burned down. The newly christened New Hope Mills inspired the village to change its name from Coryell's Ferry to New Hope.
"Facing demolition in the 1930s, the site was saved when a small band of artists, including Broadway playwright and Bucks County resident Moss Hart, helped rally the local community to renovate it as a theater. The Bucks County Playhouse opened on July 1, 1939, with a production of Springtime for Henry, featuring Edward Everett Horton.
"Over the next 70 years, a veritable Who's Who of Hollywood and Broadway legends have played the stage of BCP--Grace Kelly, Angela Lansbury, Bea Arthur, Walter Matthau, Uta Hagen, Leslie Neilson, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn (in their first stage production together), Liza Minnelli, Helen Hayes, Tovah Feldshuh, Andrea McArdle, June Lockhart, Colleen Dewhurst, Kitty Carlisle, Bert Lahr, and Robert Redford, to name a few.
"BCP has also showcased some of the theatre's most beloved musicals and plays, including She Loves Me, West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie, Annie Get Your Gun, The Glass Menagerie, The Odd Couple, Dial M for Murder, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Playhouse has also launched many Broadway productions including the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, Harvey, Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, and James Whitmore's one-man show about Harry Truman, Give 'Em Hell, Harry!"
Bibliography:
Quoted text from: Bucks County Playhouse. "History." Accessed February 21, 2013. http://www.bcptheater.org/about-us/history/
This collection includes annual reports (1954-1961), playbills, miscellaneous correspondence and financial and business records (1950s), property records, and legal correspondence and business records (1961-1972).
Gift of Anna Walker Liebgold, 2012
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 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 New Hope Historical Society directly for more information.
Organization
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- New Hope Historical Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Faith Charlton through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- 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 New Hope Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.