1960-1978.
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Unbound. A collection of material used by actress Paulene Myers in her one-woman stage performances and lectures, including her CBS *The World of My America* special. Assorted handwritten, typed, and photomechanically reproduced quarto sheets with some stapled. Overall very good or better, with age-toning and typical edgewear including nicks, tears and creases.
Myers was a pioneering African-American actress who made her Broadway debut in 1933 in *Growin’ Pains* and appeared alongside Gregory Peck in *The Willow and I*, Joan Blondell in *The Naked Genius*, and toured the Straw Hat circuit with Ruth Gordon’s theatre company during the 1940s. Myers appeared in small film roles throughout the 1950s and 1960s, before transitioning to television in the 1970s, where she was a series regular in *Room 222* and *Good Times*, and appeared in numerous guest spots on many of the most popular shows of the decade, such as *Marcus Welby, M.D.*, *All in the Family*, *The Jeffersons*, *Ironside*, and *CBS Playhouse*.
Included here are: several dozen typed and photocopied poems and writings by Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth, among others, that Myers selected and prepared for her shows with her corrections, notations, and performance notes; typescripts of promotional copy for several of her shows (“Great Americans of African Descent,” “Negro Poets,” and “Paulene Myers Reading from Modern Negro Authors”), as well as the three-page manuscript for another: “A Presentation of Negro Voices in American Literature”: four drafts of Myers’ handwritten letters seeking endorsements of her for use in promotional material, including one addressed to actor Dennis O’Keefe and another to television producer Albert McCleery (the latter of whom provided her a blub); lists of her stage and film credits; a program from the Kim Dawson Agency that features Myers as performer; and other assorted ephemera.
An interesting collection of material of a notable actress who made the contributions of important African-Americans the focus of her personal work.
Item #448112
