Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1969 - 3

Obituary: Jean Rosenthal
(The follo\' ing is an excerpt from the eulogy de·
livered on the death, April 25, 1969, of Jean
Rosenthal. The complete text was published in the
USITT Newslener.)

"The small lithe body, the turned up nose
set in the small, round, so often smiling
face; the bright eyes and the short, curly
hair-all these are fixed in our mind's eye
and will not be effaced as long as we live.
That the image is an enchanting and happy
and, even, a gay one, is something that
Jean herself insured by the way she lived,
Two weeks ago for the opening of a work
with which I was associated I received a
telegram "BEST WISHES AND ALL MY
LOVE. I HOPE I AM THERE TO SEE IT.
JEAN." She was (here, of course, not
physically, but no less really-as she has
been and is and will continue to be present
in the work of all those of us who had the
joy and the honor of collaborating with herjust as she will be present this afternoon
and this evening in six Broadway theatres;

with a dozen road companies of shows she
helped to create; as she has been these
past few weeks on the stages of the City
Center, the New York State Theatre, the
Metropolitan Opera; as she will continue to
be for years to come wherever American
theatre and dance and singing are performed in the world and as she will be in
those two dozen or more new theatres all
over the country for which Jean Rosenthal
was consultant and advisor and designer
over the past few years-lhe latest of them
nearing completion less than two blocks
from here in the new Juilliard building at
Lincoln Center.
In fact, her achievement-creatively and
professionally-is so vast and far-flung that
it is idle to try and list it here. Much has
been written about Jean and much more will
be written about her work and its influence
in our society. To us who knew her and
worked with her-what was no less remarkable lhan her creative accomplishment
was the way in which itwasaccomplishedthe personality of the human being and the
artist to whom the American theatre owes
this great body of work."

Jean Rosenthal

John Houseman

Obituary: Walter Gropius

I first knew Walter Gropius during his 78th
year, while I was finishing a dissertation
chapter on Bauhaus theatre and on his Tataltheater project of 1926-27. He was justly
proud of that project's influence on other
ideas and buildings over the 35 years
which followed its first publications as a
lower-case-Iettered manifesto in the German
press,
We compared bibliographies about Bauhaus
theatre work, and I pressed the (for me) obligatory awkward questions about criticisms
of the Tataltheater which had been leveled
by people Iike Gordon Craig and the Dutch
architect Wijdeveld. Through my graduate
student's self-importance at having discovered his beautiful idea 35 years late, he
remained as serenely patient, as open and
straightforwardly helpful-as truly professional as any man I've ever known.
Two or three years later, we met again in
his unas6uming Brattle Street office to discuss a wild scheme for realizing a variation
on the Totaltheater over a plaza in Pittsburgh's Oakland area. At 80, the designer
of the 1924 Adler automobile was full of
enthusiasm for the undertaking, between
work trips to Baghdad and his European

offices. But I failed to generate a matching
excitement within Pittsburgh's power structure, and the plan fizzled.
Few theatre people know that Gropius used
attendance at an international theatre conference as the means to flee Nazi Germany
in 1934, and subsequently to make his
home in this country. (His short talk to that
Rome meeting has never been published in
its entirety in English, and TD&T will print
it in December as his memorial-in the
author's translation.)

Walter Gropius

It would be inappropriate to attempt a memorial biography here: every major architecture journal in the western world will soon
have done so. But I suggest his greatest
contribution to the theatre was his own development, and repeated emphasis during
the Bauhaus years, of the collaborative nature of theatre as an art form. We have yet
to assess just how much infl uence Bauhaus
theatre activities had on the Europe of the
'20's and since.
His best memorial may be found in his own
words of five years ago: "if your contribution has been vital, there will always be
someone to pick up where you left off, and
that W,:// be your claim to immortality. "
Ned A Bowman

~ THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

OCTOBER,1969

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