Stage by Stage: The making of the Theatre Museum by Jean Scott Rogers & Donald Sinden
AN EXTREMELY COLLECTIBLE COPY BEING INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY BOTH THE AUTHOR AND DONALD SINDEN THUS: "For Jenny with love and happy memories Jean" and "For Jennifer with love Donald"; Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1985 1st ed, 72pp., text generally in decent order albeit with a hint of browning to page edges, very small creases to the top & bottom corners of many of the pages and the indentation of a paper clip on the side of pages xiii/xiv where various correspondence was
originally attached*, edge wear to covers/corners/top & bottom of spine, especially on the right hand side of the front cover where the
cellophane is just coming loose & the corners are rather rubbed. Both front & rear have some marks & scratches. *The enclosed correspondence is quite substantial relating to the sad death and Thanksgiving Service of the author (who died in 2000) and belonged to the "Jennifer" to whom the book was inscribed.
Jean Scott Rogers (18 January 1908–2000) was a British writer and film and television screenwriter perhaps best known for her film Corridors of Blood (1958) and for her work for the Children's Film Foundation. In April 1939 she was the stage manager for the pageant 'Music for the People' held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Rogers was appointed to the war-time staff of the Royal Society of Arts as acting assistant secretary in 1940. In 1943 she was the acting secretary and acting assistant editor of the RSA Journal but resigned in 1947 in order to join the Rank Organisation as a producer's personal assistant, working on Trottie True (1949) among others. She resigned from Rank in 1957 to work as a freelance film and ITV scriptwriter until 1964. She was the administrator of the campaign to launch the Theatre Museum (1965-1977) and in 1985 published a history of the process by which the museum was set up. Among her films are: One Way Out (original story, 1955); Corridors of Blood (1962), starring Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee; The Flood (1963); Valley of the Kings (1964) and Jackals in the Desert (1964), the latter three for the Children's Film Foundation. Her writing for television includes three episodes of Family Solicitor (1961); Journey of a Lifetime (1961), and 70 episodes of Emergency – Ward 10 (1957 - 1964). Her papers from 1921 to 1956 are held by The Women's Library at the London School of Economics. Rogers was an acquaintance and correspondent with the Australian writer Patrick White and her collection of 96 letters from him are held by the National Library of Australia.
Sir Donald Alfred Sinden CBE FRSA (9 October 1923 – 12 September 2014 was an English actor. Sinden featured in the 1953 film Mogambo, and achieved early fame as a Rank Organisation film star in the 1950s in films including Doctor in the House (1954), Simba (1955), Eyewitness (1956) and Doctor at Large (1957). He then became highly regarded as an award- winning Shakespearean and West End theatre actor and television sitcom star, winning the 1977 Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for King Lear, and starring in the sitcoms Two's Company (1975–79) and Never the Twain (1981–91).
The Theatre Museum in the Covent Garden district of London, England, was the United Kingdom's national museum of the performing arts. It was a branch of the UK's national museum of applied arts, the Victoria and Albert Museum. It opened in 1974 and closed in 2007, being replaced by new galleries at the V&A's main site in South Kensington. The Theatre Museum told the story of the performing arts in Britain from the 16th Century to the present. It covered all the live performing arts including drama, dance, opera, musical theatre, circus, puppetry, music hall and live art. It claimed to have the largest collections of documents and artefacts on these subjects in the world. Costumes, designs, manuscripts, books, video recordings, including the National Video Archive of Performance, posters and paintings were used to reconstruct the details of past performances and the lives of performers, past and contemporary. The museum received its main funding from the British government via the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and admission was free.
Will ship by Royal Mail 1st Class Signed for, well packaged.
(£5.39/pb/zainab)