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, scrapbooks of 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.Accompanying descriptive information is scant with few performers identified by name. A typescript inventory with Idea titles precedes volumes 1-8. The production name appears in pencil on the back of many of the pages in Volumes 1-12. Volume 13 contains stage and lighting directions in typescript on the backs of some photographs.Photographers represented in the collection are: Archer's Art Shop of Los Angeles (Volume 6, 8, 11, 13); Hollywood photographers Irving Archer (Volume 12, 13, 14), Archer's Studios (Volume 8, 11, 13, 14); Curt Fox (Volumes 5-6); Paralta Studios (Volumes 2-4); and Harry Wenger (Volumes 1, 2-4, 6). A few photographs include the imprints of Peerless Photo of Los Angeles (Volume 13), John Sirgio (Volume 13), H.W. Steward of San Francisco (Volume 1), Talbot of New York (Volume 12), Weaver of Los Angeles (Volume 1), and White Studio of New York (Volume 9).
photCL 487
