E. Drexel Godfrey Theater Scrapbooks

Scrapbooks contain personal comments, playbills, photo clippings from theatrical magazines, and approximately 1900 black & white photographs documenting performances from 1906 to 1928.  Photos are attributed to professional photographers and studios, and include individual and group shots of each show's cast on stage in costume, as well as portraits of individual actors.  A portrait photograph of Godfrey, the compiler of these scrapbooks, is included at the beginning of volume B.

The vast majority of productions represented in the scrapbooks come from New York theatres.  Other theatre locales represented here include London, Paris, and San Francisco, as well as smaller theatres in Germany, Austria, and New Jersey.  Godfrey attended numerous theatres in New York, but visited some quite regularly: Maxine Elliott's, Knickerbocker, Belasco, Lyric, Garrick, Lyceum, Metropolitan Opera House, Casino, New Amsterdam, Harris, Hudson, and others.

Some well-known performers tied to these productions include Ethel Barrymore (vols. F, H, J, L, M, Q, Y, Z), John Barrymore (vols. D, Q, R), Lionel Barrymore (vols. Q, R, S), Douglas Fairbanks (vols. J, L), Fred and Adele Astair (vols. O, X, 2), the Marx Brothers (vol. X), Sarah Bernhardt (vol. E), Billie Burke (vol. N), and Basil Rathbone (vol. Z).  Notable productions include Lionel Barrymore in Macbeth (vol. S), Bela Lugosi in Dracula (vol. 2), and Fred Astair in Funny Face (vol. 2).  Also notable is the first production of Show Boat at the Ziegfeld Theatre (vol. 2), as well as the Ziegfeld production immediately preceding that, Rio Rita (vol. 1).

The dates Godfrey attended each production are written above each pasted-in playbill.  Many productions were attended multiple times.