Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1971 - 29

(Editor), Ralph Pendleton, Middletown,
Connecticut, 1958,183.

VI. Additional Entries.

The lightface section numbers at the end
of each item indicate the section
in the Bibliographic Portrait to
which the new items are related.

Meyer, Baron de, "The Designing of
Stage Scenery and the Present Chaotic
Condition of the Art in America," Vanity
Fair, VII (November, 1916), 69. Deploring the art of scenic design, in 1916, as
excessive in "pretty decoration," Baron
de Meyer cites the work of Bakst. Urban,
and Jones as innovative and fresh. Jones,
de Meyer feels, is showing the way
American designers should follow. Section III-B.
Jones, Robert Edmond, "A Note on the
Theatre," Provincetown Playbill. 1923-24
Season, No. 1 (Week of January 4,
1924), 3. One of Jones's most evangelistic statements of what theatre could
be. "The Theatre," he wrote, "offers to
the creative artist an undreamed of opportunity, if he can grasp it, to discover
the movements of titanic forces that
urge and guide our time, and to reveal
them to his fellow men in the flux and
flow of life on his stage." Example of
Jones's approach to theatre, which Lee
Simonson once characterized as "the
militant fervor of a missionary." Playbill
available in Harvard Theatre Collection.
Section I.
Brown, John Mason, "Enter the Scenic
Artist: Robert Edmond Jones." UPSTAGE: THE AMERICAN THEATRE IN
PERFORMANCE. New York, 1930. 15861. Evaluating Jones's contributions to
the American Theatre in 1930, Brown
writes: "His is the artist's approach to his
art. He manages to capture in his settings the excitement, the high, the rare,
the conception of greatness indispensable
to the creator in the theatre. What he
puts before us is not a crowded, hurried
commonplace world in which we ordinarily live . . . . It is a world fashioned by
Mr. Jones's invention, but intended for
our dreams; high-tensioned, keyed to a
quickened pulse, glamorous and rare, a
'revelation' and a release of the spiritual
energies of the world made manifest in
us." Section III-B.
Young, Stark, "Jones at Radio City,"
New Republic, 71:17-19 (May 18,1932).
Very soon after Roxy's (S.B. Rothenfal)
announcement of the appointment of
Robert Edmond Jones as artistic director
of the new Radio City Music Hall in
Rockefeller Center in New York, Jones
was criticized by some in his profession
for accepting the position. Coming to
his defense, Young comments on the appointment declaring that he thought it
was an excellent opportunity for Jones

THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

to bring to the projected grandious plans
of this new International Music Hall
"poetry and pomp." Young summarizes
Jones's career up to 1932, citing hisvarious "periods" of achievement. Young
felt that Jones could bring his wit and
grace to enhance the Music Hall extravaganzas. Jones, of course, resigned after
the opening production of the Music Hall
in January, 1933. Section III-B.
____ , "Invisible and Visible," New
Republic, 74: 102-3 (March 8, 1932).
In the second part of a review which includes comments on Katherine Cornell's
production of Sidney Howard's Alien
Corn, Young turns his attention to the
current exhibition of stage designs sponsored by the Architectural League of
New York in the spring of 1932, which
included several designs by Robert Edmond Jones. Commenting on the marionettes that Jones had designed for the
production of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex
in 1931 (of which four were exhibited),
Young criticizes the action of themarionettes, declaring that Jones failed to
achieve his original intention. One of the
very few times that Young wrote anything about Robert Edmond Jones that
was less than laudatory. Section III-A.
____, "Robert Edmond Jones" New
Republic, 112:556 (April 23, 1945).
Young comments on the retrospective exhibition of scene designs of Robert Edmond Jones held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Spring, 1945.
Young declares this the first time an
American museum has held a one man
show of an American theatrical designer.
Young says of Jones's designs that they
have a life of their own in addition to
being expressions of theatrical intent.
Speaking of Jones's designs for Much
Ado About Nothing (a production for
which Jones designed scenery and costumes as well as directed, a production
which the Theatre Guild cancelled in
dress rehearsal), Young said of the production, "It was brought to a full dressing, a completion before the footlights
and then abandoned and thrown overboard, though anyone with any sense
might have known all along that Alfred
Lunt could not read verse or understand
Shakespearian style." Section III-A.
Brown, John Mason, "One Man Show:
Retrospective Exhibition at New York
Museum of Modern Art." Saturday Review of Literature, 28: 18-20 (May 12,
1945). Brown reviews the Jones retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art,
suggesting that Jones's sketches, as fine
as they are, are merely reminders, especially for those who have seen the
productions represented in the exhibit,
of the magic and wonder that Jones created so often during his career. He cites
Laurence
Stalling's
comment
that
Jones's setting for Hamlet in 1922 was
a "cathedral of the mind."

OCTOBER ,1971

Brown recollects his first meeting with
Jones at a Harvard lecture, and that extraordinary luncheon with Jones just
prior to the European wanderjahr Brown
took with Donald Oenslager in 1923.
Brown cites from the credo of theatre
that Jones wrote for both of them as a
going away present. Section III-B.
Gorelik, Mordecai-Robert Edmond Jones,
"Correspondence about NEW THEATRE
FOR OLD, Educational Theatre Journal,
XX (March, 1968), 32-52. Correspondence between Mordecai Gorelik and Robert Edmond Jones, largely between 194041, with a few items dated before 1940
and a few just previous to his death in
1954. Most of the letters concern a
chapter in which Jones's work is discussed and Gorelik's request that Jones
write a foreword to his NEW THEATRES
FOR OLD. Jones's foreword obviously
did not please either Gorelik or his publisher as it was not included. Inasmuch
as
NEW THEATRES FOR OLD has
achieved an importance almost equal to
Jones's THE DRAMATIC IMAGINATION,
this correspondence reveals significant
differences in theatre aesthetics and theory held by these two celebrated American artists of the theatre. Section II.
Jones, Robert Edmond, DRAWINGS FOR
THE THEATRE, with an Introduction by
Donald Oenslager. 2nd. ed .. New York,
1970. A handsome reprint ofthis famous
collection of Jones's designs, originally
published in 1925, and long out of print.
Arthur Hopkins's introduction to the first
edition has been replaced by Donald
Oenslager's excellent historical accou nt
of the activities of the first decade of
Jones's career on Broadway, the period
of activity these drawings fully represent. Section I.
Oenslager,
Donald, "Robert Edmond
Jones," Yale Theatre, III (Fall 1970), 7.
Donald Oenslager describes the luncheon
engagement John Mason Brown and he
had with Jones just prior to their departure on their planned wanderjahr in
Europe in 1923 which prompted Jonesto
write the credo of theatre which he gave
these two young enthusiasts of the theatre as a bon voyage gift with the proviso
that it be read "only after the shores of
our country are behind you." Oenslager
describes how Jones invited the young
men to his stud io where he sat down to
put his thoughts on paper. The one page
note in Jones's handwriting is reproduced.
While Oenslager and Brown were touring Europe, Jones published his credo as
"A Note on the Theatre," in the Provincetown Playbill, 1 (January 4, 1924), as a
program note to the production ofStrindberg's The Spook Sonata which he codirected with James Light for the Experimental Theatre, Inc., headed by Kenneth
Macgowan, Eugene O'Neill, and himself.
Section II.

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