The Tri­an­gle Club Records at Mudd Man­u­script Library are as rich and col­or­ful as the his­tory of the Tri­an­gle Club itself. Going back to 1883, when the the­ater troupe was founded as the ‘Prince­ton Col­lege Drama Asso­ci­a­tion,’ the col­lec­tion includes a wide range of records, from busi­ness cor­re­spon­dence and pro­duc­tion files (includ­ing scripts and scores) to play­bills and posters, scrap­books, and pho­tographs. In addi­tion, there is a vari­ety of audio­vi­sual record­ings, includ­ing phono­graph records going back to 1924. The date of the old­est film footage in the col­lec­tion, how­ever, was only deter­mined last week, when we were able to view the 16mm films in dig­i­tized format.

The first film shown here opens with a Hearst Metro­tone news­reel, fea­tur­ing Triangle’s famous “chorines” (mem­bers of the all-male cho­rus in drag), in a kick­line for The Golden Dog, Triangle’s pro­duc­tion for 1929–1930. The footage, pre­sum­ably shot before Tri­an­gle started tour­ing in Decem­ber 1929, must have been attrac­tive for Hearst Metro­tone News, which had intro­duced sound to its movie the­ater news­reels only in Sep­tem­ber that year. For the Uni­ver­sity Archives the footage is of par­tic­u­lar inter­est: The Golden Dog was per­formed dur­ing the open­ing night of McCarter The­ater on Feb­ru­ary 21, 1930. Writ­ten and directed by A. Munroe Wade ’30 and Joshua L. Logan ’31 (who became a Broad­way and Hol­ly­wood direc­tor and writer), the musi­cal com­edy was set in Que­bec dur­ing the British siege of  the French and Indian War in 1759. The news­reel opens with John Metz ’30 as Sergeant Pierre DeLouche, joined by the chorines, who are danc­ing to the cho­rus of “Blue Hell” (lyrics by B. van Doren Hedges ’30 and music by Robert W. Hedges ’31). The text and music of the cho­rus can be found at Blue Hell score.pdf.

The footage that fol­lows at 1:55, a trailer for a pro­jected silent movie (“Park Avenue Cow­hand”), was shot for Triangle’s annual pro­duc­tion Take It Away (1936–1937). In this musi­cal com­edy three Tri­an­gle boys are going to Hol­ly­wood to advise Manny Mag­num, pres­i­dent of ‘Pas­teur­ized Pic­tures,’ about a movie ver­sion of Mac­beth. Not know­ing that Tri­an­gle is all-male, Mag­num invites them to bring a female lead for the movie, and the boys decide that one of them, Chester Pipps (Alexan­der Arm­strong ’37), will dou­ble as “Suzette Crepe.” They are found out, how­ever, when Mag­num invites both Chester Pipps and Suzette Crepe to per­form together in ‘Park Avenue Cow­hand.’  The trailer is a clever mon­tage of Pipps and Crepe (both played by Arm­strong when their faces are vis­i­ble), whose faces never appear in the same shot. How­ever, the trailer was never used. It appears in a scene in an early syn­op­sis of the play in which it is shown in a movie the­ater, but does not appear in the final script.

 

Above: Manny Mag­num (Mark Hayes Jr. ’39) with Triangle’s “female lead” Suzette Crepe (Alex Arm­strong ’37). 

 

The footage fea­tured here, found on a silent 16mm film reel that was labeled ‘Old Shots,’ shows kick­lines from var­i­ous Tri­an­gle shows in black and white and in color. The black and white footage, start­ing at 0:56, shows the chorines in Take it Away, dis­cussed above (1936–1937). The sub­se­quent color footage, pre­sum­ably dat­ing from the late 1940s and 1950s, has not been iden­ti­fied. Any Tri­an­gle alum­nus who rec­og­nizes faces, out­fits, chore­og­ra­phy, or gams and can iden­tify these shows, please leave a comment!

These 16mm films are part of the Tri­an­gle Club Records at the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Archives (box 177 and addi­tions).  Mudd Library is thank­ful for the sup­port that the Tri­an­gle Alumni Board pro­vided for dig­i­tiz­ing these films and unlock­ing their con­tents.