Aug 13, 2020 - Sale 2544

Sale 2544 - Lot 111

Price Realized: $ 91
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 100 - $ 200
OKLAHOMAN BEHIND OKLAHOMA!
LYNN RIGGS (1899-1954)


Small archive of 5 letters, each Signed, to editor William Kozlenko: Two Autograph Letters * 3 Typed Letters.
The letters, discussing a one-act version of his play, A World Elsewhere. Together 5 pages. 4to or small 4to; one with short closed separations at fold ends. Vp, 1937-39.Vp, 1937-39

Additional Details

22 September 1938: "I like the idea of your theatre very much. The thing that depressed me most last year in New York was the absence of experiment, the complete hardening of theatrical ideas into a usual Broadway mould. Your theatre ought to open up the way to new exploration and a new concept of the theatre--as the Provincetown and the Washington Square Players did in the old days.
". . . I finished a comedy, A World Elsewhere, last February. . . . The few people who have seen it are very excited about the first act. I, myself, don't believe I have ever written a better one. . . .
". . . I find, to my amazement, that nearly all I wanted the play to say is said with gaity and precision in the first act, and that with the slightest manipulation that first act will stand as a complete play. . . ."
Riggs's play, Green Grow the Lilacs (1931) was adapted by Oscar Hammerstein in 1942 and, on March 31, 1943, Oklahoma! premiered at the St. James Theatre on Broadway.