Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson, and Odetta are three legendary female vocalists who established the African American woman in the first half of the 20th Century as, not only a significant voice in the Civil Rights Movement, but a defining inspiration for both female and male vocalists.
AMADEUS (Jul 9, 1982) Second Draft screenplay by Peter Shaffer Berkeley, CA: Saul Zaentz Production Company, 1982. Vintage original film script, bound with a metal clasp. Printed wrappers with a die-cut window, 11 x 8 ½” (28 x 22 cm.), 148 pp., just about fine.
According to Czech film director Miloš Forman (1932-2018), he first encountered Peter Shaffer’s play AMADEUS during its initial London theatrical run. At the end of the First Act, Forman went backstage and told author Shaffer that if the rest of the play was as good as the First Act, he was going to make a movie of it. Forman was not disappointed. Shortly thereafter, he called producer Saul Zaentz with whom he had made the Academy Award-winning ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975), and the rest is cinematic history.
AMADEUS is one of the most honored films of all time. It earned a total of eight Academy Awards for the year 1984, including Best Picture, Best Director (Forman), Best Adapted Screenplay (Shaffer), Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham as Salieri), Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup, and Best Sound. It also earned four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, a Directors Guild of America award, and in 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it 53rd on its “100 Years… 100 Movies” list.
The film is a happy confluence of two major auteurs, Shaffer and Forman, fully expressing the most personal themes of each. For playwright Peter Shaffer (1926-2019), AMADEUS embodies his recurring theme of one man’s obsessive envy for another whom the former believes to have been touched by the Divine. In the case of Shaffer’s THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN (London premiere, 1964), it was the Spanish conquistador Pizarro’s envy of the Incan Prince Atahualpa who considered himself the son of the Sun god. In EQUUS (London premiere, 1973), it was a psychiatrist’s envy of a young patient who worships horses. In AMADEUS (London premiere, 1979), it was the comparatively obscure composer Salieri’s envy of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played in the film by Tom Hulce), the “obscene child” in whose music Salieri hears the “voice of God.”
For director Forman, Mozart was the archetypal protagonist who appears in virtually all of his best films, eccentric anti-authoritarian misfits like McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975), Evelyn Nesbit and Coalhouse Walker in RAGTIME (1981), Larry Flynt in THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT (1996), and Andy Kaufman in MAN ON THE MOON (1999).
Shaffer and Forman spent four months together reimagining Shaffer’s play as a motion picture, and there were many changes that occurred during the adaptation process. For Forman, the key was, “More Mozart, more music.” The creators agreed that where the play had two principal characters, Salieri and Mozart, the movie would have three, Salieri, Mozart, and Mozart’s music — the substantial excerpts from his operas and concert works that are seen and heard throughout the film. Where the play was highly theatrical — abstract and Brechtian in its presentation — the movie is a naturalistic period piece with lush, historically detailed costumes and sets.
Where in the play, Salieri narrates his story directly to the theater audience, in the movie, he tells his story to a young priest who has come to hear the old man’s confession. The drama was never meant to be historically accurate — Salieri was not, in fact, responsible for Mozart’s death — but rather, in Shaffer’s words, a “fantasia on the theme of Mozart and Salieri.”
The film script also employs a number of devices that are unique to motion pictures, such as the Griffith-like cross-cutting between Salieri and the dying Mozart completing the composition of Mozart’s Requiem Mass, intercut with Mozart’s wife, Constanze (Elizabeth Berridge), rushing home from Salzburg via carriage to reunite with her husband in Vienna.
Shaffer’s Second Draft screenplay is fairly close to what was ultimately filmed, but clearly tweaked and polished to a significant degree before shooting began. Interestingly, a number of scenes that were shot but omitted from the initial 1984 release were restored to the 2002 Director’s Cut, increasing the film’s length from 161 minutes to three hours.
Among the changes — in the Second Draft screenplay version of the scene where Salieri first encounters Mozart, covertly watching as Mozart pursues little Constanze under a table, Mozart playfully talks backwards to the girl with vulgar phrases like “Sar-i’m-kil” (“Lick my arse”) and “Tish-i’m-tea” (“Eat my sh*t”). Significantly, to make Mozart more sympathetic in this scene, the movie adds two more phrases to his backwards-talking game, “I love you” and “Will you marry me.”
Another significant change occurs in a following scene where Salieri reads “in helpless fascination” Mozart’s score for his “Sinfonia Concertante.” In the movie, we not only hear Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante” on the soundtrack, but a monologue beautifully written by Shaffer in which Salieri analyzes the music as we hear it played.
Many scenes are elaborated in the movie with bits of business, for example, in both the script and the film when Mozart is being scolded by his patron, the Archbishop, for being late to the performance of his “Sinfonia Concertante,” Mozart opens the door of the chamber so that the Archbishop can see the audience outside applauding the composer. In the movie, however, this is staged so that as Mozart bows to the audience, he presents his rear to the Archbishop.
Constanze comes across much more sympathetically in the movie than she does in the screenplay — this appears to be largely a matter of casting and direction; one suspects that Forman likes women more than Shaffer did.
Other scenes are less elaborate in the film than in the screenplay, for example, the scene where Mozart, Constanze, and Mozart’s father attend a masquerade ball — in the screenplay, this scene contains a prolonged sequence involving the exchanging of costumes and wigs which is omitted from the completed film.
The hospital in the screenplay where Old Salieri tells his story becomes in the film a grotesque madhouse like a 19th century version of the asylum in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. It is here that Salieri bestows his final benediction on all the mediocrities in the world like himself who were not blessed with Mozart’s genius:
OLD SALIERI
Mediocrities everywhere — now and to come — I absolve you all! . . .Amen! . . . Amen! . . . Amen!
London: Harold Davison Ltd., [1958]. Vintage original British promotional flyer. There is a hint of creasing in the extreme upper left, just about fine.
An extremely scarce concert flyer for the great Billie Holiday, who had little more than a year left to live. She had been scheduled to do a three week engagement at the Olympia Theatre in Paris, with this concert something extra that her manager had arranged for her.
But the Algerian Crisis happened shortly before her tour was to start; when the French government closed all Parisian concert halls, one ancillary effect was the cancellation of Holiday’s entire European concert itinerary. Hence, this is a flyer for a concert which never happened.
In celebration of Gay Pride 2021, we’re presenting our LGBTQ Cabaret starring Lesley Gore, Peter Allen and Holly Woodlawn. They all performed at Reno Sweeney’s intimate Greenwich Village cabaret, which was named after a character from Cole Porter’s 1934 musical, Anything Goes, and ran for four years at 126 West Thirteenth Street.
[New York]: Reno Sweeney, [1974]. Vintage original 22 x 17″ (56 x 43 cm.) live performance poster, unfolded, fine.
The flamboyant and immensely gifted Peter Allen in a cabaret performance at New York’s Reno Sweeney club. Since his third album, Continental American, is referenced on the poster, we can date it from the year of the album’s release: 1974.
“Peter Allen (born Peter Richard Woolnough; 10 February 1944 — 18 June 1992) was an Australian singer-songwriter, musician and entertainer, known for his flamboyant stage persona, boundless energy, and lavish costumes. His songs were made popular by many recording artists, including Elkie Brooks, Melissa Manchester and Olivia Newton-John, with one, ‘Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)’ by Christopher Cross, winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1981.
“In addition to recording many albums, he enjoyed a cabaret and concert career, including appearances at the Radio City Music Hall riding a camel. His patriotic song ‘I Still Call Australia Home,’ has been used extensively in advertising campaigns, and was added to the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia registry in 2013.
“Allen was the first husband of Liza Minnelli. They married in 1967, separated in 1969 and were divorced in 1974. He had a long-term partner, model Gregory Connell (1949-1984). They were together from 1974 until Connell’s death in 1984. Peter and Greg died from AIDS-related illnesses eight years apart, with Allen becoming one of the first well-known Australians to die from AIDS. Allen remained ambiguous about his sexuality in that he did not pretend to be straight after divorcing Minnelli, but never publicly came out as gay either.” (Wikipedia)
[New York]: Reno Sweeney, [1974]. Vintage original 22 x 17″ (56 x 43 cm.) live performance poster, unfolded, FINE.
The flamboyant and immensely gifted Peter Allen in a cabaret performance at New York’s Reno Sweeney club. Since his third album, Continental American, is referenced on the poster, we can date it from the year of the album’s release: 1974.
“Peter Allen (born Peter Richard Woolnough; 10 February 1944 — 18 June 1992) was an Australian singer-songwriter, musician and entertainer, known for his flamboyant stage persona, boundless energy, and lavish costumes. His songs were made popular by many recording artists, including Elkie Brooks, Melissa Manchester and Olivia Newton-John, with one, ‘Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)’ by Christopher Cross, winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1981.
“In addition to recording many albums, he enjoyed a cabaret and concert career, including appearances at the Radio City Music Hall riding a camel. His patriotic song ‘I Still Call Australia Home,’ has been used extensively in advertising campaigns, and was added to the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia registry in 2013.
“Allen was the first husband of Liza Minnelli. They married in 1967, separated in 1969 and were divorced in 1974. He had a long-term partner, model Gregory Connell (1949-1984). They were together from 1974 until Connell’s death in 1984. Peter and Greg died from AIDS-related illnesses eight years apart, with Allen becoming one of the first well-known Australians to die from AIDS. Allen remained ambiguous about his sexuality in that he did not pretend to be straight after divorcing Minnelli, but never publicly came out as gay either.” (Wikipedia)
London: London Features International, [ca. 1976-1986]. Collection of eighteen (18) vintage original photos, of which twelve (12) are 8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm.) and six (6) are about 8 x 6″ (20 x 15 cm.). With stamps on back of photo agency London Features International, and many of them also with photographers’ stamps, one with a holograph notation in ink in blank margin. Overall, FINE.
Freddie Mercury, alongside his band Queen, was one of the quintessential stadium rock performers of the 1970s and 1980s. Mercury, who had a number of long-term same sex romantic relationships, died of AIDS in 1991.
“Mercury was noted for his live performances, which were often delivered to stadium audiences around the world. He displayed a highly theatrical style that often evoked a great deal of participation from the crowd. A writer for The Spectator described him as ‘a performer out to tease, shock and ultimately charm his audience with various extravagant versions of himself.’
David Bowie, who performed at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert and recorded the song ‘Under Pressure’ with Queen, praised Mercury’s performance style, saying: ‘Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than the rest… he took it over the edge. And of course, I always admired a man who wears tights. I only saw him in concert once and as they say, he was definitely a man who could hold an audience in the palm of his hand.’
Queen guitarist Brian May wrote that Mercury could make ‘the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected’. Mercury’s main prop on stage was a broken microphone stand, which after accidentally snapping off the heavy base during an early performance, he realized could be used in endless ways.“
Mercury is featured in many of the photos. Some of them spotlight other band members. Many of the photos show the band onstage. One of them documents their famous performance at the 1986 Live Aid concert.
New York: Sol Hurok , 1954. Vintage original 10 x 8″ (25 x 20 cm) black-and-white print still photo. With stamp on verso of Hurok Attractions and date stamped “Feb. 17 1954”, just about fine.
Portrait of the legendary African American concert artist Marian Anderson, who broke the color barrier by being the first Black to sing on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, shortly after this photo was published.
Paul Robeson was a famous African-American athlete, singer, actor, and advocate for the civil rights of people around the world. During the first half of the 20th Century, he rose to international prominence in a time when segregation was legal in the United States, and Black people were being lynched by racist mobs, especially in the South.