(ENTERTAINMENT) Scrapbook of actor pianist Reginald Beane

Sale 2598 - Lot 240

Price Realized: $ 3,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(ENTERTAINMENT.) Scrapbook of actor-pianist Reginald Beane. 3 photographs, 28 partial telegraph messages, 4 letters, 5 tickets, a typed CV, and many dozens of newspaper and program clippings mounted on 28 scrapbook leaves. Folio, original string-bound boards, front board detached; leaves worn and most edges reinforced with tape, several items detached or missing. Various places, 1939-1944

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Reginald "Sonny" Beane (1918-1985) was born in Bermuda and came to New York with his mother soon after his birth. He went on to a distinguished career as an actor and pianist, with the early years well-documented in this album. Beane was cast in the Pulitzer Prize-winning first play by distinguished author William Saroyan, "The Time of Your Life," in 1939. Beane had a key supporting role as a "colored boy who plays a mean and melancholy Boogie-Woogie piano," and performed 4 of his original compositions as part of the show. Included here are numerous clippings of reviews and programs, as well as two pages of clipped congratulatory telegrams from Ethel Waters, Frances Williams, and the playwright, who cabled "Your work enhances the values in my play very much and I am deeply grateful." Also included are a Letter Signed by Saroyan dated 8 February 1940, praising Beane at greater length and adding "I'm sure some day there will be an even better part in one of my plays for you to play, and if you are free we'll hope the play won't flop." A postcard from Saroyan repeats the sentiment. A photograph shows Beane at his piano in a 1940 Chicago performance of the play.

A 1939 photograph shows Beane with the pioneering Black conductor Eva Jessye, and another depicts a July 1941 banquet in honor of Jessye, where they are joined by singers Georgette Harvey and Abbie Mitchell, and more. Three later 1941 and 1942 telegrams from Ethel Waters invite him to Los Angeles for "a vaudeville engagement"--the play "Mamba's Daughters" in which she starred. His typed list of credits runs from 1934 to 1941, with other highlights including a stint as assistant choral director and accompanist in "Porgy and Bess." A 1943 letter from the principal of an Oakland, CA junior high school thanks Beane for his visit, which inspired "our nearly 500 Negro students." A 1944 promotional card shows Beane on the bill with actor Canada Lee and trumpeter Erskine Hawkins at a benefit concert in Atlanta. This album is a remarkable slice of show-biz life from a talented performer who crossed paths with many of the biggest names of his era.