Restrictions on Access
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
Preferred Citation
Processing Information
UCLA Catalog Record ID
Biography/History
Scope and Content
Organization and Arrangement
Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Title: Newcomb and Grace Condee Theatre Playbill scrapbooks
Identifier/Call Number: LSC.2140
Physical Description:
2.4 Linear Feet
(6 flat boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1913- ca. 1970s
Date (bulk): bulk 1930-1960
Abstract: The collection consists of theatre playbills and programs collected and compiled into six scrapbooks by Newcomb and Grace
Condee.
Physical Location: Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Language of Material: Materials are in English.
Restrictions on Access
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page.
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained
by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue
the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Newcomb and Grace Condee Theatre Playbill Scrapbooks (Collection 2140). UCLA Library Special Collections,
Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Processing Information
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user
interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides
a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive
processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
Processed by Lauren Jung in 2013.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating
existing description of our materials that contains language
that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they
could be described more accurately, by filling out the form
located on our website:
Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special
Collections.
UCLA Catalog Record ID
Biography/History
The grandson of a Forty-Niner in the Gold Fields of the Feather River who later became the first medical doctor in the village
of Riverside, Newcomb Condee was born in that village on June 26, 1898. He was seriously stage-struck from an early age.
At the age of twelve, he sat in the upper balcony at the Mason Opera House in downtown L.A. watching a production of Ben-Hur,
complete with an onstage chariot race (on a treadmill), and thinking he had died and gone to heaven. He got to know his future
wife Grace Lawrence when he cast her as his wife in the Inglewood High School production of The Mastermind, a mildly-risqué
Broadway vehicle that later became an early "talkie" starring Lionel Barrymore. Grace hailed from Park City, Utah, where
her earliest memories was of the great stage actress Maud Adams returning home to Salt Lake City to play Peter Pan, the part
James Barrie wrote for her in London; Grace's parents left her behind and she howled like a banshee. Her father, a Swedish-born
silver miner and anarchist union organizer, opened a boarding house and the first silent movie theater in Inglewood, where
Grace provided accompaniment on piano. Her first date with her future husband involved a Pacific Electric trolley ride Downtown
to see the great English thespian Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet – front-row seats, for which Newcomb paid fifty
cents each. Los Angeles was the biggest theater center west of Broadway in those days, and the place where the motion picture
industry found many of its early stars, among them Mary Pickford and a fine Shakespearean actor turned cowboy star, William
S. Hart. Newcomb might have stuck with the theater himself, but when his father's chicken farm went bust his High School Principal
urged him to attend a "poor boy's school," Stanford University, which in those days had no tuition, only a fee of $23 a quarter.
Finishing his B.A. and J.D. in five years, Newcomb rushed back south to marry his high school sweetheart and hang up a shingle
in his hometown, but continued to see all the theater Los Angeles had to offer. They were Mark Taper Forum subscribers from
its first season, and saw all the big touring shows – from the D'Oyly Carte Light Opera to Peter Brooks' production of Midsummer
Nights' Dream – and traveled abroad to Stratford-Upon-Avon several times to see the Royal Shakespeare Company in its home
theater.
Shakespeare was Newcomb's greatest love. He claimed to have seen over eighty productions of Hamlet and all of the greats,
from Gielgud to Burton. He also loved the work of George Bernard Shaw as well as more middlebrow fare, especially the plays
of Maxwell Anderson. Beginning in 1951 he was able to return to his first love, producing and directing plays at the 2,300-seat
Masonic Lodge Temple on Wilshire Boulevard, and writing his own dramas, including Architects of Freedom, about the writing
of the U.S. Constitution, which won a national award and featured William McKesson, the District Attorney of Los Angeles,
as Benjamin Franklin. Newcomb performed for seventeen years in these amateur productions -- as Shakespeare's Claudius and
as Falstaff (with Grace as Mistress Quickly), as Shaw's Julius Caesar, and as Martin Luther in an historical drama he penned
himself, among other roles. His powerful, resonant baritone was memorable in every show he did. He always said that the great
theme of Shakespeare's theater was the passing of generations, which was his professional interest, too: his three-volume
work California Probate Court Practice can still be purchased online.
Scope and Content
The collection consists of theatre playbills and programs collected and compiled into six scrapbooks by Newcomb and Grace
Condee. The playbills document Los Angeles-area drama and musical productions from theatres such as Biltmore Theater, the
Greek Theater, the Huntington Hartford, the Pasadena Playhouse, the Philharmonic Auditorium, and the Shubert Theater, among
others. A small number of items represent productions from other cities in California, the United States and Europe.
Organization and Arrangement
There is no specific arrangement to the collection.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Theater programs.
Playbills.