SHAW, George Bernard (1856-1950). Playwright.
Fine series of nine letters to Herbert Marshall, 19 July 1940 to 14 January 1948. Comprising three Typewritten Letters Signed, an autograph answer in red ink to a letter from Marshall, and five postcards, various signed as 'GBS' or in full (twice, in later letters), with three envelopes.
Herbert Marshall (1906-1991) was a theatre producer, film maker, translator and writer on Soviet cinema. In 1940 he staged Thunder Rock, a pacifist play by the American dramatist Robert Ardrey, at the Globe Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue; later that year he became director of the Old Vic. During the Second World War he was an employee of the Soviet Government in the Soviet Film Agency in London, making English versions of Russian films. Before the war he had already been promoting Soviet films in Britain, especially through his own avant-garde film society, the Film Guild of London. He had also spent several years in Russia, where he had been admitted as a student at the State Institute of Cinematography on the strength of his two films about British life, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Hunger Marchers. He had been encouraged to go to Russia by Shaw himself, who told him that it was 'the most interesting country in the world for a young man to finish his education' (H. Marshall, Masters of the Soviet Cinema, 1983, p.60). In the late 1940s Marshall and his wife, the sculptor Fredda Brilliant, spent much of their time in India, where he made films for the Indian government, including the official film biography of Gandhi.

The collection comprises:

   Autograph postcard signed with initials, with autograph address on verso, 19 July 1940, suggesting that the Polish playwright Michal Choromanski could provide Marshall 'with a successor to Thunder Rock'.

  Autograph postcard signed with initials, with autograph address on verso, 5 October 1941, agreeing that Alexander Suvarov could be the subject of a 'star play' and adding that George Arliss 'is the only actor I know who could get away with him'.

  Typed letter signed with initials, 1 page 4to, marked by Shaw in red ink at head 'Very Private Indeed', with original typed envelope, 12 August 1940, giving his frank opinion of Marshall's production of Thunder Rock and of Michael Redgrave's performance:

'... I could not but admire the desperate ingenuity with which you have exercised every producer's trick to persuade the audience that the play is Hamlet and Faust rolled into one, instead of being a very American budget of the pessimistic commonplaces of the eighteen-seventies compèred by an unfortunate actor who has to pretend that he is a leading tragedian when he has absolutely no part at all, bar that of compère. The success of your attempt to keep the audience listening to those two appalling bores.stamps you as one of the great producers of the age. But the show must not be given away; so let this be a dead secret between us. ...'

This letter is printed in Bernard Shaw Theatrics: Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw, ed. Dan H. Laurence, 1995, pages 210-211, no. 155.

  Autograph postcard signed with initials, with autograph address on verso, no date [postmarked 30 August 1940], offering advice on which play Marshall could produce next: 'The difficulty about the two Caesar plays is that they need two stars of the first magnitude for my Caesar and the Bard's Cleopatra.You must keep within your means: better a first rate Box & Cox than a boring Hamlet. ...'

  Autograph postcard signed with initials, with autograph address on verso, no date [postmarked 4 September 1941], citing age and the scarcity of petrol as reasons for not visiting the picture house, and adding that he has 'just completed the new stuff for filming Arms & The Man'.

  Autograph note signed with initials, written on a typed letter signed by Herbert Marshall, 1 page 4to, on headed writing paper of the Anglo-American Film Corporation, 14 October 1942 [Shaw's reply dated 18 October], blankly refusing Marshall's request to make an introduction to a Soviet film: 'No, damn it, I write the play; I don't bang the drum outside the booth. WALK UP BY BERNARD SHAW. How would that look? No, Herbert, no.'

  Autograph note on a postcard, signed with initials, with autograph address on verso, 31 May 1947, refusing another proposal by Marshall ('Nothing doing. Too old').

  Typed letter signed in full ('G. Bernard Shaw'), with a few autograph corrections and additions, 1 page 4to, 16 December 1947, threatening legal action if Marshall goes ahead with an 'utterly illjudged project' about him: 'Every literary and theatrical greenhorn thinks he would make a fortune if only he could get "something by Shaw". But that you should not know better astonishes me.it is my entirely friendly concern for your success and welfare that draws this letter from me. What the devil put such a silly notion into your usually intelligent head?'

  Typed letter signed in full ('G. Bernard Shaw'), with one autograph addition, 1 page 4to, with original typed envelope, 14 January 1948, advising Marshall to abandon the idea of making a documentary about him: 'My life is quite uneventful: I have never killed anyone nor won the Derby; and a documentary film about me would do me the greatest injury in your power and instantly declass you as a film artist. So do as I tell you. Chuck it. This applies a fortiori to Chaplin and Wells. Their adventures are not filmable, being sexual.'

The collection also includes an autograph letter signed by Shaw's 'authorised bibliographer and remembrancer', Dr Fritz Erwin Loewenstein, explaining that Shaw is too busy with 'Pascal and big money' to be involved with Citizens Films but that 'he will always be interested in less sordid enterprises' (23 May 1946); and a typed letter signed by Shaw's secretary, Blanche Patch, providing Gabriel Pascal's address in England and saying that Shaw knows all about Marshall's 'Russian apprenticeship and sets great store by it' (24 July 1941).
[No: 25483]