Souvenir Album Ben-Hur Scenes of the Play; Klaw & Erlanger's Production of Gen. Lew Wallace's "Ben-Hur

Buffalo: The Courier Company, 1900. First Edition. Wraps of Light Card. Ribbon tying through stab binding. Very Good. Before the blockkbuster epic movies, most notably the Silent version starring Ramon Novarro and the 1959 Charlton Heston sound remake, there was a stage spectacle produced by the leading producers of the day, Klaw and Erlanger, the team which nearly successfully had a monopoly stranglehold on American theaters in the early 20th Century. All the versions were based on the 1880 Lew Wallace novel. This, the first dramatization, opened at the Broadway Theatre in 1899 and became a huge hit, in no small part due to its special effects and extraordinary production values, including the use of real horses to stage the chariot race. Among the notable stars of this version were William Hart, who became a big time Western star in Silent movies, Oblong, 25 by 30 cm. Unpaginated. 40 leaves, with content entirely on rectos excepting rear wrap, in which the content is only on verso. Following the title page, a glossy leaf quotes the bible and contains some bars of music written for the drama. Another similar leaf appears near the end. Otherwise, the pattern is an alternation between text and photo leaves. The text leaves are of a thinner wax paper stock acts as a tissue guard. And the text consists of direct quotations from the play, it would seem. Sometimes the text is in verse such as one can expect from epics about the Roman Empire. The photo leaves generally consist of large b/w photo from the production, or occasionally two smaller photos, and these photos are surrounded by line drawings that are decorative and in some way inform the photo, although the connection between the two isn't always immediately apparent to us. One photo is partially colored, we would add. Almost all the photos are extraordinarily vivid -- one can truly feel as if one is in the audience. They also in many ways manifest how foreign such a production is from a modern stage drama. Light wear. Last leaf with a few edge chips. Mostly clean.