Tag Archives: Triangle Club

“He Decided to Conquer the Place that Had Conquered Him”: Peter Putnam ’42 *50’s Princeton, Part II

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In Part I of this two-part series, I told the story of how Peter Putnam ’42 *50 lost his sight in a suicide attempt and fought for the right to return to Princeton University and finish his degree. In this second installment, I detail the life Putnam lived as a student, an employee, and an alum of Princeton University after his return.

Peter Putnam ’42 re-entered Princeton University over the initial objections of the administration, bringing along with him a new companion, Minnie, the first of many guide dogs. (Undergraduates quickly dubbed Minnie “the first co-ed in Princeton history.”) Though Putnam would be known as part of the Class of 1942 in perpetuity, he was a junior when he came back in his original graduation year.

Whether he set out to prove his detractors wrong or it simply happened, Putnam defied their low expectations at every turn. Putnam participated in campus life, with some limitations. He did not, for example, eat with his peers at Commons, his academic record notes tersely, “because of physical disability.” Based on his later writings about not being granted entry to many places in Princeton because of his need for a service dog, it’s possible he wasn’t permitted in the dining hall because Minnie was not allowed to go along. However, he threw himself into opportunities that were available, earning local celebrity for reasons far beyond his constant canine companion. As the Princeton Alumni Weekly put it in 1957, “he decided to conquer the place that had conquered him.”

Triangle Club elected Putnam its president in 1942. He supervised the last of Triangle’s productions during World War II, a show that might not have been possible without him. “Time and Again,” unlike most other Triangle Shows before it, had no Christmas tour, and was only performed locally. Triangle membership that year included students on accelerated programs who had little time for extracurriculars. Putnam ended up writing most of the script himself, playing the role of a World War I veteran in the first scene, and handling the administrative tasks for the show like managing the budget and securing permissions from various stakeholders to stage the production.

Illustrations from the Nassau Sovereign, November 12, 1942, including a reference to “Boss Putnam.”

The song “Here I Sit with the Physically Unfit” from “Time and Again,” written by William K. Zinsser ’44, may give us insight into how ableism would have pervaded Putnam’s experiences at Princeton, even in spaces that seemed otherwise welcoming. In the lyrics, a woman seeking a man to love at a time when most were away at war complains about her options. After the woman notes “I’m left to be protected/By the rejected/But I’m feeling tepid/T’ward the decrepit,” she goes on to list a variety of disabilities that she finds unappealing, including blindness.

I’m left behind

With the lame and the halt and the blind back here

Ev’ryone who isn’t knock-kneed is flying a Lockheed

Ev’ryone without myopia is in Ethiopia

But I must be sweet

To the guys who have got flat feet back here. Continue reading →

This Week in Princeton History for November 1-7

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In this week’s installment of our recurring series, some alumni are not pleased that students are cross-dressing for the theater, Abraham Lincoln is the most popular candidate for president on campus, and more.

November 1, 1798—Using the “ride and tie” method and sharing one horse, Jacob Lindley and James Carnahan arrive in Princeton to begin their studies, having covered 35-40 miles per day alternately walking and riding five to ten miles each through the mountains from southwestern Pennsylvania.

November 3, 1980—Peter Chin ’81, Jacques Duranceau ’81, and Brett Hudelson ’83 take first place in team kumite at the National Karate Championships.

November 4, 1908—The Princeton Alumni Weekly writes disapprovingly of male students in Triangle Club cross-dressing to play female parts: “Certainly it does not leave with the audience an impression of that manly quality they like to ascribe to our students, a quality developed by sound minds and sound bodies.”

Richard Sanders Barbee ’07 as “Vivian Dasher” in Triangle Club’s “The Mummy Monarch,” ca. 1907. Photo from 1909 Bric-a-Brac.

November 6, 1860—Students hold their own mock election for president in Nassau Hall, although most cannot vote legally due to age and residency requirements. Abraham Lincoln of the generally antislavery Republican party receives the plurality of the votes, but not a majority. The results are as follows:

  • Abraham Lincoln (Republican)—90
  • John Bell (Constitutional Union)—75
  • John Breckinridge (Southern Democratic)—75
  • Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democratic)—9

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

Fact check: We always strive for accuracy, but if you believe you see an error, please contact us.

This Week in Princeton History for May 17-23

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In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, the Asian American Students Association denounces anti-Asian and antisemitic prejudices on campus, local residents band with students to take revenge on a traveling show, and more.

May 17, 1942—Philosophy professor Theodore M. Greene condemns tutoring as “immoral and unpatriotic.”

May 21, 1990—The Asian American Students Association denounces harmful portrayals of Chinese and Jewish people in Triangle Club’s “Easy Street” and expresses concerns about the motivations in choosing these groups for mockery. “In the future, we hope that the same ‘consideration’ shown to ‘other minorities’ will be accorded to Asian Americans as well.”

Playbill for Triangle Club’s “Easy Street,” 1989. Triangle Club Records (AC122), Box 281. Lyrics to “Chinese Jewish Cowboy” were particularly troubling to some audience members, with lines like “they told me I filled all their quotas/Yes, I’m a demographic planner’s dream . . ./Well who needs a real resume/When looks can deceive/Who would ever believe/That he’d get into Princeton, oy veh!” and “Where never is heard a discouraging word/When you’re Chinese, or Jewish, or gay.”

May 22, 1874—James McCosh explains why he doesn’t believe higher education should be publicly supported and should instead rely on private donations, which he believes encourages greater freedom of thought: “Would Professor White have a college a mixture of Protestantism and Popery, and partly Christian and partly Atheistic? Now, sir, we have these colleges, and let them go on; let us call forth the liberality of the people, and I believe you will get that liberality.”

May 23, 1851—Students and local residents of Princeton, disappointed in Barnum’s traveling menagerie and museum, call it a “humbug,” join forces, seize one of its wagons, and throw it into the D & R canal.

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

Fact check: We always strive for accuracy, but if you believe you see an error, please contact us.

Yellowface in Princeton University’s 20th-Century Triangle Club

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Recently, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about the history of racism at Princeton University. As we’ve worked to help those trying to research this topic, we realized that we’ve highlighted some types of racism more than others on this blog. In order to help researchers locate materials that may assist them in constructing a fuller picture of the history of white supremacy at Princeton, today’s post considers some examples of racism against Asians through the lens of yellowface in Triangle Club performances in the first half of 20th century.

Yellowface is a form of minstrelsy that mocks East Asians. It rose in popularity in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was closely linked to anti-Black prejudice. As Krystyn R. Moon has explained, both blackface minstrelsy and yellowface are uniquely American phenomena, and yellowface drew on the tropes of blackface (including physical caricature, hybridized musical styles, and deliberate mockery of accents and dialects) to convey messages about nonwhite inferiority. Blackface primed audiences to understand the underlying meaning of yellowface. Yellowface became one of many ways Americans expressed strong anti-Asian (especially anti-Chinese) sentiment in this period and emphasized the idea that Asians could never become Americans.

As was the case nationwide, blackface minstrelsy seems to have predated yellowface at Princeton. This image is taken from the 1889 Bric-a-Brac.

Alongside the examples of redface and blackface in the University Archives, we also find incidents of yellowface in Princeton’s past. White students frequently played roles of non-white characters in the Triangle Club prior to World War II. Though the most common non-white characters they played were Native Americans, there were also a handful of East Asian characters in Triangle productions. These show evidence of the minstrelsy inherent in yellowface. Continue reading →

This Week in Princeton History for December 23-29

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In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, Triangle Club performs in Cincinnati, the Board of Trustees decide to meet in Princeton for the first time, and more.

December 23, 1953—Campus proctors catch Ovel Withers, a former Princeton V-12 student and Harvard graduate student, who has been committing serial burglary across the Ivy League.

December 24, 1912—On it’s longest annual tour to date, the Triangle Club performs “Once in a Hundred Years” in Cincinnati.

Publicity photo for Princeton University Triangle Club’s “Once in a Hundred Years,” 1912. Triangle Club Records (AC122), Box 256.

December 25, 1752—The Board of Trustees of the College of New Jersey decides to hold their next meeting in Princeton rather than in Elizabeth.

December 27, 1898—Franklin Woolman D’Olier (Class of 1898) sees a boy struggling after falling through the ice in the Delaware River near Burlington, New Jersey, and rescues him. For this he will be awarded a medal from the Life Saving and Benevolent Association of New York.

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

Fact check: We always strive for accuracy, but if you believe you see an error, please contact us.

This Week in Princeton History for December 16-22

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In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, New Jersey’s governor pardons the marching band’s drum major, Jimmy Stewart’s singing gets positive reviews, and more.

December 16, 1981—Drum Major Stephen Teager ’82 will not appear in Princeton Municipal Court today as planned, thanks to an 11th-hour pardon by Gov. Brendan T. Byrne ’49. Teager would have faced charges of parading without a permit for causing congestion on Witherspoon Street when he led the marching band in a victory parade on November 23. “There’s no question I was guilty,” Teager says. The penalties could have earned Teager a fine of $1,100 and a jail sentence of up to 210 days.

Editorial cartoon depicting the arrest of Stephen Teager ’82, Princeton Alumni Weekly ,December 14, 1981.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Great Writer, but a Not-So-Great Student

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By Iliyah Coles ’22

Many people know about the success of the infamous writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some know that he attended Princeton University and even based his first novel, This Side of Paradise, on the Ivy League school. However, what many people don’t know is that Fitzgerald was not a star student. In fact, he wasn’t even an average student. F. Scott Fitzgerald was perhaps, in terms of academics, one of the worst students in his class. That could be one of the reasons why he decided to drop out during his junior year of college and join the army.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (named after his well-known, patriotic cousin) initially entered Princeton University with the Class of 1917. Fitzgerald had not done well academically in high school. His thoughts seemed to be always elsewhere, mostly on the girls that he spent time with. According to a 1966 article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, when Fitzgerald applied to Princeton, the admissions board looked at Fitzgerald’s troubling grades and asked him why they should let him in. Fitzgerald then responded by stating that it was his seventeenth birthday. It is possible that Fitzgerald’s charming personality played a role in his acceptance. Fitzgerald himself stated in Ten Years of Princeton ’17, “Priggishness sits ill on Princeton.” Perhaps this is why he was granted admittance despite his questionable grades in high school.

Nevertheless, Fitzgerald entered the class of 1917 and arrived with big dreams. Fitzgerald became fixated with the social scenes on campus like clubs and sports. He even tried out for the football team during his freshman year, but he was cut on the first day of tryouts because he was so slim, as is indicated by a 1956 PAW article. After his football dreams were crushed, Fitzgerald focused on getting into one of the eating clubs (a substitute for Greek life at the university) and Triangle Club (the university’s biggest theater group). Fitzgerald was able to achieve these two goals and, due to his dedication to them, he found success and happiness in both. It is evident that Fitzgerald was really great at the social aspect of college, but that’s just about the only aspect he was great at.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. Photo from 1917 Nassau Herald.

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This Week in Princeton History for April 15-21

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In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, classes resume while war rages on,  Harvard raises money for Princeton, and more.

April 16, 1778—The Board of Trustees votes to attempt to resume classes, despite the war that interrupted them in the first place still being waged.

April 19, 1880—Sophomore Alfred M. Terriberry dies from drinking contaminated water. Several other students who drank from the same well are also ill. In response, Princeton officials promise to regularly check the purity of the wells supplying water to student lodging.

April 20, 2002—Three buses of Princeton residents, including undergraduate and graduate students from Princeton University, arrive in Washington, D.C. to join with at least 50,000 others in a rally to support the rights of Palestinians.

April 21, 1925—Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club gives the entire proceeds for its performance of “Laugh it Off” in Newark to their Princeton counterparts in support of the proposed Triangle Club Theater (later named McCarter Theater).

The star of “Laugh It Off” was Harvard’s H. E. Carillo ’26. Photo from Daily Princetonian Photographic Weekly.

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

Fact check: We always strive for accuracy, but if you believe you see an error, please contact us.

This Week in Princeton History for February 18-24

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In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, hazing makes national headlines, McCarter Theater opens, and more.

February 18, 1878—During a particularly severe outbreak of hazing, a gunfight breaks out on Nassau Street between freshmen and sophomores, with one student being shot in the thigh. Coverage in the national Police Gazette will follow.

Full-page ad from the Daily Princetonian.

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Demystifying Mudd: Reprocessing

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By Nicky Steidel ’18

This summer I have worked on reprocessing the Triangle Club Records, representing just one slice of the the holdings in Mudd Library.   

Triangle Club prides itself on being the “the oldest touring collegiate original musical comedy organization in the nation” and boasts a whole cast of well-known alumni, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jimmy Stewart, José Ferrer, and Brooke Shields, among others. Historically, Triangle has garnered both praise and notoriety for its punchlines, kicklines, and male cross-dressing, although of course female students have participated since “A Different Kick” in 1968.

Mudd’s collection reflects Triangle’s longevity. It contains materials from 1883 until the present day in a variety of formats. I’ve handled everything from bound scores from the late 19th century to U-matic tapes (the forgotten predecessor of the VHS tape) to old shellac records (be careful with them, because they’ll shatter!) to a variety of musical theater ephemera (costume jewelry, set designs, even a seal embosser). Continue reading →