The Theater Collection at the Museum of the City of New York contains over 190,000 objects that document theatrical performance in New York City from 1785 on. These include more than 30,000 photographs, documenting over 5,000 Broadway production, which are currently in the process of being put online. Below is a sample, including Sarah Bernhardt in an 1880 production of “Adrienne Lecouvreur,” and “New Faces of 1952” featuring Eartha Kitt and Paul Lynde, as well as Lunt and Fontanne, Katharine Cornell and Basil Rathbone, Fanny Brice and a Fanny Brice female impersonator, Paul Robeson, Patty Duke, Celeste Holm, Lillian Gish, Tallulah Bankhead, Glenda Jackson. Click on any picture to see it enlarged, and read the caption.

Sarah Bernhardt in the title role of “Adrienne Lecouveur” in 1880. The play is about the leading French actress of the 18th century and her mysterious death. Tallulah Bankhead in “Antony and Cleopatra” 1937 Katharine Cornell as Juliet and Basil Rathbone as Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet”. 1934 Fanny Brice and Albert Carroll (as Fanny Brice) in “Grand Street Follies” 1929 Lynn Fontanne as Manuela and Alfred Lunt as Serafin in “The Pirate” 1942 Glenda Jackson in Marat/Sade, 1965 Celeste Holm as Ado Annie Carnes and Lee Dixon as Will Parker in “Oklahoma!” 1943 Lillian Gish as Ophelia in Hamlet, 1936 Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke ,Patricia Neal et al in The Miracle Worker, 1959-61 Paul Robeson in Othello, 1943 “Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952” Eartha Kitt (center), Paul Lynde (right)

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