Background
Aline Bernstein was born on December 22, 1882, in New York City, New York, United States, the daughter of Joseph Frankau, an actor, and Rebecca Goldsmith Frankau.
( Splendid view of elegant dresses, expertly rendered by ...)
Splendid view of elegant dresses, expertly rendered by noted theatrical designer, includes finely detailed illustrations of 32 complete costumes and three blouses, shown in color and black-and-white. Here are exquisitely embroidered, full-skirted dresses circa 1700, a high-waisted Empire dress (1820), a magnificent silk dress with an extended bustle and pleated overskirt (1880), more.
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(Excerpt from The Proud Possessors: The Lives, Times, and ...)
Excerpt from The Proud Possessors: The Lives, Times, and Tastes of Some Adventurous American Art Collectors Anders Zorn: Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1894 Courtesy of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Mass. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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(New York 1947 first edition (stated) Knopf. 244p. Hardcov...)
New York 1947 first edition (stated) Knopf. 244p. Hardcover small octavo. VG Light cover toning. No ownership marks. In Good dj, DJ lightly frayed on edges and tips, a bit toned, spine ends a bit worn down. Price not clipped. "The story of a young woman's relations with two men - her elderly husband and the young man."(qtd from dj)
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(The author recounts her experiences growing up in a theat...)
The author recounts her experiences growing up in a theatrical boarding house, and describes New York's theater district during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
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Aline Bernstein was born on December 22, 1882, in New York City, New York, United States, the daughter of Joseph Frankau, an actor, and Rebecca Goldsmith Frankau.
Educated formally in the New York public schools and informally by living in her family's theatrical boarding houses and by traveling with her father, Aline Frankau wanted to become a professional actress; her father, however, encouraged development of her artistic talent. She attended Hunter College and the New York School for Applied Design. Then she studied portrait painting with Robert Henri.
Turning to stage design, Bernstein had to confront and overcome antifeminism in the theater unions, but she triumphed and, after a two-year struggle, was sworn in as the first woman member of the United Scenic Art Union of the American Federation of Labor. She was introduced as "Brother Bernstein. " Bernstein assisted Irene and Alice Lewisohn with dramatic experiments in the Henry Street Settlement; when they launched the Neighborhood Playhouse in 1915, she became the principal set and costume designer until the playhouse closed in 1927. The vehicle that first brought her critical recognition, in 1924, was The Little Clay Cart; she also won praise that same year for her costumes for a Max Reinhardt production of The Miracle. Bernstein's other early Neighborhood Playhouse design successes were The Grand Street Follies and The Dybbuk, for which she designed a 1926 production in Manchester, England, as well.
During the 1920's Bernstein's career blossomed; two other outstanding play production companies - the Theatre Guild and the Civic Repertory Theatre - featured her sets and costumes. Particularly well received were designs for Caprice, Caesar and Cleopatra, Ned McCobb's Daughter, The Game of Love and Death, and The Cherry Orchard.
In the 1930's she gained increasing respect for her designs. Among her more than thirty plays during this decade with the Civic Repertory Theatre, Gilbert Miller, Herman Shumlin, and the Theatre Guild were Camille, The Seagull, Alison's House, Liliom, Animal Kingdom, Grand Hotel, and Reunion in Vienna. One particularly happy designer-playwright association was that with Lillian Hellman, with whom she worked on The Children's Hour, Days to Come, and The Little Foxes.
In 1937 Bernstein was a cofounder and director of the Museum of Costume Art, serving as its president after 1946, when it became the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bernstein also published two works of fiction - Three Blue Suits (1933), a collection of short stories, the last of which is an account of her relationship with Thomas Wolfe, and The Journey Down (1938), an account of a stormy love affair between a young novelist and an older scenic and costume designer.
During the 1940's Bernstein continued her brilliant career, designing for The Male Animal, Harriet, and the George Balanchine ballet The Spellbound Child. In addition, she taught stage and costume design at Vassar College, lectured at Yale and Harvard, and wrote an autobiography, An Actor's Daughter (1941), a best-selling novel, Miss Condon (1947), a children's book, The Martha Washington Doll Book (1945), and several articles on the theater. In October 1949 she began a fortunate collaboration with the director Robert Lewis on Regina, an operatic adaptation of The Little Foxes; their association continued with The Happy Time and An Enemy of the People. Some of the last plays for which she designed were Burning Bright, Let's Make An Opera, and Mary Rose. She died after a long illness in New York City.
(Excerpt from The Proud Possessors: The Lives, Times, and ...)
( Splendid view of elegant dresses, expertly rendered by ...)
(The author recounts her experiences growing up in a theat...)
(New York 1947 first edition (stated) Knopf. 244p. Hardcov...)
(Book by Bernstein, Aline)
Bernstein once said that a person cannot design for the theater without "the passion for it burning in your breast. " She had that passion as well as the skill. Actors admired her because she understood them and created costumes that enhanced character; craftsmen appreciated her because she was herself a skilled artisan, playwrights valued her because her work illuminated theirs; producers sought her out because she was punctual and expert; her fellow designers praised her because she adhered uncompromisingly to high professional standards; and her family and friends loved her because she loved greatly.
On November 19, 1902, Aline was married to Theodore Bernstein, a successful Wall Street businessman. In August 1925 Bernstein met and fell in love with Thomas Wolfe, then an aspiring playwright who was eighteen years her junior. During the next five years they shared studios, lunches, stories of their childhoods, trips abroad, her success and his frustration in the theater, the torturous writing of his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929), quarrels, separations, and reconciliations. Wolfe dedicated the novel "To A. B. " and thanked her for "friendship, material and spiritual relief, and love such as I never had before"; but it was he who broke away. She experienced and came to understand what Wolfe's biographer Andrew Turnbull described as the "cruel and relentless disentanglement from all that bound him. " Bernstein's love of her family, and her success and joy in the theater, contributed to the growing tension in her relationship with Wolfe; but these elements probably sustained her after she survived an attempted suicide in the spring of 1931. Never did Bernstein consider leaving her husband and their two children, and the Bernstein homes in Manhattan and Armonk were happy gathering places for figures in the theater and society.