Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Victorian grotesque
Image not available
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Visual Materials
The Fanchon & Marco collection contains approximately 1400 photographs depicting hundreds of Fanchon and Marco Inc. sets and performers between approximately 1925 and 1938. The collection also includes three boxes of ephemera, dated from around 1912 to 1940, that consist of newspapers clippings, musical scores, miscellaneous photographs, and the supplemental press books that were included with Fanchon & Marco's promotional magazine, Now (later The Idea), dating from 1930 and 1931. The 16 volumes (now disbound) of photographs in this collection served as a visual inventory for hundreds of Fanchon & Marco sets and performers. The images document the actors, dancers, costumes, sets, and concepts and appear to have been primarily photographed during rehearsals before the shows premiered in Los Angeles theaters such as Loew's State Theater and the Paramount Theater. The first volume contains some photographs presumably taken in San Francisco and later volumes include a few photographs by New York-based photographers. Photographers represented in the collection are: Archer's Art Shop of Los Angeles; Hollywood photographers Irving Archer; Archer's Studios; Curt Fox; Paralta Studios; and Harry Wenger. A few photographs include the imprints of Peerless Photo of Los Angeles, John Sirgio, H.W. Steward of San Francisco, Talbot of New York, Weaver of Los Angeles, and White Studio of New York.
photCL 487
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Manuscripts
Subjects of the entire collection include: Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, American dance and dancers, dance instruction and notes, exercises and warm-up routines, various dance types (international as well as American), famous dancers from around the globe, Denishawn dancers, the Ruth St. Denis Center, the Ruth St. Denis Foundation, the Ruth St. Denis Theatre Intime, Jacob's Pillow dance festival, American Dance Film Association, Society of Spiritual Arts Church, the various teachers and pupils at St. Denis' dance studio and school, the Orient trip the Denishawn dancers took in 1926, as well as dance productions and events St. Denis put on throughout her career. There is also much material about St. Denis' effort to have her studio and school become a non-profit entity and her desire to create an artist colony in Hemet, California. More specifically, several dancers show up in the notebooks and photographs, including: Harold Kreutzberg, Peter di Falco, La Meri, Karoun Tootikian, Miriam Schiller, Jean Léon, Gladys Bowen, Antonio Gades, Devi Dja, Doris Humphrey, Mary Wigman, and Martha Graham.
mssStDenis