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Collection Data
- Description
- Contains promptbooks, scripts and programs for plays produced and/or directed by Arthur Hopkins, scripts and articles he wrote, a small amount of correspondence and legal papers, drafts and notes for a biography about him, photographs, and scrapbooks of clippings.
- Names
- Hopkins, Arthur, 1878-1950 (Creator)
- Sprague, Rosemary, 1922- (Contributor)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1908 - 1954
- Library locations
- Billy Rose Theatre Division
- Shelf locator: *T-Mss 1992-017
- Topics
- Theater -- New York (State) -- New York
- Theatrical producers and directors
- Genres
- Manuscripts
- Correspondence
- Photographs
- Programs
- Drama
- Scrapbooks
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: Arthur Hopkins, theatrical producer and director, was born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 4, 1878, the ninth son and tenth and last child of David Hopkins, a mill worker who had immigrated from Wales with his widowed father as a small boy and Mary Jeffreys, a preacher's daughter. Hopkins, like his brothers before him, worked in the mills to put himself through school. His career began in New York in newspapers, then press agentry and booking vaudeville acts. His first production was Poor Little Rich Girl, 1913. He produced over seventy plays in the course of his career, directing most of them. He valued artistic over commercial merit and while he had many successes, he had even more failures.
Early successes included On Trial, 1914, Good Gracious Annabelle, 1916, A Successful Calamity, 1917, Redemptionwith John Barrymore, 1918, and The Jestwith John and Lionel Barrymore, 1919. His notable Shakespeare productions were Richard III, 1920, and Hamlet, 1922, both with John Barrymore and Macbeth, 1921, with Lionel Barrymore. He produced Ibsen revivals of Wild Duck, Hedda Gablerand A Doll's House, all with Alla Nazimova. He also directed Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie, 1921, and The Hairy Ape, 1922, What Price Gloryby Maxwell Anderson, 1924, and Philip Barry's Paris Bound, 1927 and Holiday, 1928. He slowed down after 1930 but staged a successful Petrified Forestwith Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart in 1935 and a successful Magnificent Yankeein 1946.
Hopkins had a light touch as a director wanting to preserve the "spontaneity of acting." He labored over the script with the playwright, but then his rehearsals were short. He studied theatrical production in Europe and developed the revolving stage in America. A biographical source credits him with discovering Katharine Hepburn and furthering the success of Robert Edmond Jones. He introduced unusual plays and new ideas to the Broadway theater of the 1910s.
Hopkins was also an author of numerous articles on the theater and other topics, and books including the novel The Glory Road, 1935, To A Lonely Boy, 1937, and Reference Point, 1948, both somewhat autobiogaphical, and How's Your Second Act. Arthur Hopkins was married to Eva O'Brien, an actress. He died on March 22, 1950 in New York City.
- Content: Collection consists of promptbooks and scripts for shows produced and/or directed by Arthur Hopkins; his writings, including plays, articles and speeches; a few letters and legal papers; programs; photographs; scrapbooks of clippings; and research materials of his granddaughter Rosemary Sprague who worked on a biography about him. The material documents the career of producer and director Arthur Hopkins.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 5.25 linear feet (10 boxes)
- Type of Resource
- Text
- Still image
- Identifiers
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b16413485
- MSS Unit ID: 21775
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 59138ad0-9a25-0139-9895-0242ac110004
