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Performing Arts
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JONES, Terry and PALIN, Michael
Frost On Sunday and The Frost Report:
N.p. [London]: N.p. 1967-8
A small quantity of original typescripts, printed typescripts and photocopied typescripts, many secured with staple to top left corner, and many... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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PINTER, Harold
Tea Party
London: Methuen, 1967
Small 8vo, pp. 115, 4pp. advertisements to rear. Original black boards, lettered in silver to spine.
First edition, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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[SELLERS, Peter] GRAFTON, Jimmy and GRIFFITHS, Peter
Happy Holidays
London: N.p. [BBC], 1954
Five episodes, c.45 pp. each, secured with split pin to top left.
First editions. PRODUCER JACQUES BROWN'S COPY, WITH HIS ANNOTATIONS, AND ... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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NATION, Terry; JUNKIN, John; FREEMAN, Dave
Floggits [sic]: Series One, Episode 3
London: N.p. [BBC], 1956
34 mimeographed pp., 5 typed inserts, all secured with split pin to top left.
First edition. TERRY NATION'S EXTENSIVELY REVISED WORKING... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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[SELLERS, Peter] GREIFER, Lewis and RICHLER, Mordecai
Insomnia Is Good For You
London: Park Lane Films, 1957
Shooting script, 33 mimeographed pp., stapled in to oversized red card wrappers. Typed title label to front cover, typed ownership label ('Park... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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MILLIGAN, Spike; STEPHENS, Larry
The Goon Show: Series Seven, Episode Four: The Macreekie Rising Of '74
London: N.p. [BBC], 1956
23 mimeographed pp., secured with split pin to top left.
First edition. CO-WRITER LARRY STEPHENS' COPY, WITH HIS OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE TO... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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TERRY-THOMAS and MUIR, Frank
Terry's Topics: 'TRIAL RECORDING ONLY - NOT FOR TRANSMISSION'
London: N.p. [BBC], 1947
15 mimeographed pp., secured by split pin at top left.
First edition. PILOT SCRIPT FOR AN EARLY TERRY-THOMAS VEHICLE, RECORDED BUT NEVER... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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[HANCOCK, Tony] GALTON, Ray and SIMPSON, Alan
Calling All Forces: Series 2, Episode 12
London: N.p. [BBC], 1952
39 mimeographed pp., secured with split pin to top left.
First edition. ALAN SIMPSON'S COPY OF THE SECOND EVER GALTON AND SIMPSON SCRIPT,... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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[Riverside Studios]
A Fabulous Collection of Material Relating to the Appearances of Elisabeth Welch, Adelaide Hall and the Harlem Renaissance at the Riverside Studios, London.
Various dates, mostly 1980s.
1: PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIAL:
i) 35 original photographic negatives of ELISABETH WELCH performing at Riverside in April 1982.
ii) 67 original photographic negatives of ADELAIDE HALL... [more]
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[HANCOCK, Tony] STUCKEY, Hugh and WALE, Michael
[The] Tony Hancock Special: Director's Post-Production Script.
N.p. [Sydney]: N.p. [ATN-7], 1968
80 mimeographed pp. on white paper, housed in contemporary black springback binder with three labels to front cover ('HANCOCK'; 'TONY HANCOCK SPECIAL'; 'POST PRODUCTION MASTER SCRIPT E.D. JOFFE'). Profusely annotated, revised and corrected on every page, typed inserts tipped in in many places, and scene tags taped to leading edges.
DIRECTOR'S POST-PRODUCTION SCRIPT OF THE TONY HANCOCK SPECIAL, WITH HIS EXTENSIVE NOTES AND REWRITES.
n March 1968 Tony Hancock travelled to Australia to make a television series with the working title Hancock Down Under, a project he hoped would revive his career. He had recently been divorced, his alcoholism was out of control, and his prospects in the UK had sunk to nothing. But the Australian series had serious problems from the outset, quite apart from Hancock's own. The scripts were terrible: feebly structured, hopelessly unfunny, and with no understanding of what made Hancock Hancock. The star would have struggled to make anything of them even in his pomp. The series' fate was sealed by the producers' disastrous decision to shoot without a studio audience. Hancock's onscreen persona -- hapless, loveless, forever on the receiving end -- had always been kept afloat by the presence of supportive laughter provided by an audience willing their hero to dust himself down and try again. And Hancock himself, Hancock the brilliant but under-confident performer, had always been buoyed by the instant approval their presence provided. But here, in this final footage, Hancock seems to have been deserted by his audience just when he needed them most. He cuts a lonely, tragic and desperately unfunny figure. Unable to remember his lines, his eyes are constantly looking for his cue cards. He seems to be searching for his friends.
On 24 June 1968, with only three episodes of the showcompleted, Hancock committed suicide with an overdose of barbitu
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[HANCOCK, Tony] STUCKEY, Hugh and WALE, Michael
The Tony Hancock Show: Episode Four: The Tape-Recorder
N.p. [Melbourne]: N.p. [ATN 7], 1968
31 mimeographed yellow pp., originally stapled at top left corner, now disbound, pp. 17-18 present in facsimile. 'FINAL SCRIPT' to top... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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MORTIMER, Johnnie; COOKE, Brian; RUDGE, Myles
Stop Messing About
N.P. [London]: N.p. [BBC], 1969
30 mimeographed pp., secured with pin to top left.
First edition. JOAN SIMS' WORKING COPY, WITH HER UNDERLININGS, DELETIONS AND AMENDMENTS THROUGHOUT.
The BBC radio show Round The Horne, one of the medium's finest, funniest and filthiest flowerings, came to an abrupt and tragic end after four series with the death of its star, Kenneth Horne, in February 1969. Prescribed an anticoagulant for a heart condition, Horne was persuaded by a faith healer to stop taking it. He died of heart failure while presenting an awards ceremony at the Dorchester.
Without its star, Round The Horne could not continue. But the material for Series Five was already far advanced at the time of Horne's death, and it was recycled into Stop Messing About, a show featuring most of Round The Horne's surviving cast -- and Joan Sims, the Carry On stalwart who had already been cast as the replacement for the departing Betty Marsden. Stop Messing About ran for a respectable two series in 1969-70, but never really emerged from the shadow of its predecessor. Kenneth Williams, a supporting actor of genius, struggled to anchor the show. But even if Williams had been able to do a better job of leading from the front, the show was still Round The Horne without Kenneth Horne, a melancholy reminder of what radio had lost.
This script is the working copy used by Sims to record the sixth episode of Stop Messing About, and is extensively marked up with her underlinings, deletions and amendments throughout. Unique and beautiful.
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STEPHENS, Larry [MILLIGAN, Spike]
Special Goon Show: The Dreaded Better Pudding Hurler
London: N.p. [BBC], 1955
23 mimeographed pp., secured with split pin to top left.
First edition. Valerie Simons' copy, with her plentiful notes and timings... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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MILLIGAN, Spike; STEPHENS, Larry; GRAFTON, Jimmy
Crazy People [The Goon Show]: Series 1, Episode 12
London: N.p. [BBC], 1951
22 mimeographed pp., secured with split pin to top left.
First edition. Original mimeographed script, the twelfth episode from Series One... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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[McKern, Leo]
First Night Telegram to Leo McKern from Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh
Nottingham: N.p., 1959
Greetings telegram, stamp-dated 10 August 1959 to reverse.
FIRST NIGHT TELEGRAM, DATED 10 AUGUST 1959, TO LEO McKERN FROM LAURENCE OLIVIER AND HIS WIFE VIVIEN LEIGH: 'Great good wishes for huge success, Vivien and Laurence Olivier.'
'[McKern's] second, and last ever, directing job was the Australian prize-winning stage play The Shifting Heart by Richard Beynon, a story of Italian immigrants living in Collingwood, then a slum suburb of Melbourne, and their struggle for acceptance and survival in a racist community. ... It's UK season was at the Nottingham Theatre Royal from 10 August 1959, then the Duke of York's in the West End -- a joint venture by Sir Laurence Olivier's company and the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. Olivier had invited McKern to direct.'
George Whaley, Leo 'Rumpole' McKern: The Accidental Actor [USNW Press, 2009]
The show received mixed reviews, and McKern himself felt he'd done a bad job. On the up side, he kept the telegram sent to him by one of twentieth century theatre's most glamorous couples.
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CUSHING, Peter
TLS to Leo McKern
Whitstable: N.p., 1993
1 p. TLS on Peter Cushing's personalised stationery. Unfolded.
TLS FAN LETTER FROM PETER CUSHING TO LEO McKERN DATED 16 SEPTEMBER 1993, LESS THAN A YEAR BEFORE CUSHING'S DEATH.
A warm, effusive fan letter from cinema's greatest vampire-slayer, it reads:
'Dear Leo McKern,
It's that fan again! Some years ago I wrote to you about your superb 'Rumpole' series, and received a most charming letter of thanks.
My admiration for your work goes back to the play (and subsequent film) 'A Man For All Seasons', and you have never failed to captivate me. Having seen you recently in 'Travelling North', and again the other evening in 'A Foreign Field' I just had to write once more.There is a 'je-ne-sais-quoi' quality about your performances which touches the heartstrings, and if you don't receive some public recognition eventually, there's no justice in this world!
Thank you, dear fellow, for such pleasure. It makes me very proud to remember we worked together in 1956 in 'Time Without Pity', with Michael Redgrave and Ann Todd. (Long ago and far away!)
With kindest wishes, and may God's blessing be with you always.
As ever,
(sgd) Peter Cushing O.B.E. Whitstable, Kent'
(The 'public recognition' Cushing refers to is of course not audience approval, but the possible future conferring of honours on McKern: Cushing himself was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1989).
A touching salute to a fellow actor from one of the most distinctive and distinguished figures of British cinema.
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MORTIMER, John
Rumpole Of The Bailey
Teddington: Thames Television, 1992
104 mimeographed script pp., unpaginated scene breakdown, unit list, and rehearsal room location, the whole secured with split pin to top... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
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[POWELL, Michael] GIBBON, Monk
The Tales Of Hoffmann
London: Saturn Press, 1951
4to, pp. 96. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt on spine. Cockerel device in gilt to front panel.
First edition, INSCRIBED BY... [please click on the image or book title for more details]
