The playwright Charles Klein was born in London, England, on 7 January 1867. He was one of four sons of Hermann Klein, a professor of languages, and the former Adelaide Soman. All four brothers had careers in the performing arts: Hermann was a singing teacher and music critic, Alfred became an actor, and Manuel was musical director of the New York Hippodrome and a composer who collaborated on the operetta
Klein immigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen, as he said, "to carve out my own career." He made up his mind to become a dramatist and decided the best way to learn stagecraft was to get experience as an actor. He began in amateur theatricals and later moved to the professional stage, playing the juvenile parts for which his small stature was suited, including the title role in
In 1890 he was given an opportunity to revise a play he was appearing in, and from then on his dramatic output was continual. Many of his works were written in collaboration with other dramatists or adapted from novels. His early plays were mostly comedies, operettas, and farces, but after the turn of the century, he gravitated toward melodrama and strove for more of a social purpose. Among his most successful works were two librettos for operettas by John Philip Sousa,
Between 1912 and 1929 several of the plays were made into silent films;
In addition to writing plays, Klein worked as a play reader and censor for producer
and theater owner Charles Frohman. The pair were sailing on the
Edgett, Edwin Francis.
Wightman, John.
Most of the professional career of playwright Charles Klein is illuminated by this collection of notes, scenarios, manuscripts, and typescripts for sixty-two of his plays, both produced and unproduced. From the successful
Because of the extensiveness of many of these drafts and their widely varying stages of completion, items in the Plays series give a strikingly clear insight into the diligent working methods of Klein. Whatever may be the ultimate value of his work, it is difficult not to admire his conscientiousness: jottings of nascent ideas, multiple scenarios, voluminous notes to himself about effects to be achieved and aspects of character to be brought out, and heavily revised manuscripts and typescripts all attest to an artisan who took his task quite seriously and give an unusually full picture of the artistic goals and priorities of a successful American playwright from the beginning of the twentieth century.
There is evidence throughout the collection that hands other than Klein's made an attempt at some point to arrange the papers. The acquisition originally exhibited very little order, there are typed "inventories" that do not completely correlate with the contents of the collection as it exists at present, and there are occasional small typed notes referring to the degree of completion of attached papers or positing that part of a manuscript may have been missing when a copy was typed. Neither the author of these notes nor what attempts at organization might have accompanied them are known, and it is therefore impossible to be certain what Klein's original arrangement may have been. Consequently, the whole series has been arranged alphabetically by title of play.
Where possible, plays are listed by the titles under which they were ultimately produced, with earlier working titles given in parentheses. Where there is no evidence of a production, the most recent or most prominent title has been chosen and alternatives noted in parentheses. Most manuscripts and typescripts are undated, but within each play they have been arranged in creation order as nearly as possible, based on internal evidence.
Klein was apparently in the habit of having his working notes and scenarios typed up at intervals, and these typed transcriptions are present throughout the collection. In nearly every case the original handwritten manuscripts are also present and the two are filed together.
The collection includes one play (
Although most typescripts are not dated, several of them have a sticker on the front with his wife's name and a London address. One of these copies bears a date stamp for the year 1921, suggesting that some of the typescripts in the collection were made by his widow after his death.
Other than notes, scenarios, manuscripts, and typescripts, there is one actor's side, for the role of Emily Rodman in
The second series, Other Works and Theater-Related Materials, contains the two pages of typed "inventories" mentioned above. Also in this series are membership lists for the Society of American Dramatists and Composers (forerunner of the Dramatists' Guild) and its auxiliary, the Society of Lady Dramatists, with an unsigned letter dated 1909 regarding the executive committee of the joint organizations; notes on the origins of tragedy; and two stories, including a short first-person tale about a physician that is not in Klein's handwriting. The correspondence folder in this series contains one short letter to his typist.
Purchase, 1994 (R13282)
Open for research
Laura Gottesman, 1999; Richard Workman, 2003
Elsewhere in the Ransom Center are three letters from Klein in the Theater Arts manuscripts collection, in which he talks about his work and his involvement with Christian Science.