Review by Choice Review
The title is misleading if one thinks of deaths on stage as portrayed in drama. The book is about deceased stage people: actors and actresses, playwrights, film stars, directors, managers, etc. This work is paradoxical. It is wonderfully overwhelming in its completeness for the theater scholar looking for the most obscure or erudite and in its uselessness for the undergraduate student looking for something about a departed director or film star. Basic information about anyone whom an undergraduate can think of researching will be much more accessible through many other readily available indexes; and it is the most basic information that is provided here on well-known people: birth, death, spouse/s, obituaries in any or all of nine national US newspapers, well-known or fundamental biographies or autobiographies. On the other hand, there are huge numbers of obscure performance-oriented people in these 1,354 pages about whom there is nearly nothing known. For the scholar looking for specifics about an animal impersonator who died in Rochester in 1896 it may provide three obituaries. A basic use problem with this work is that it is strictly a cross-referenced personal name index. The animal impersonator is lost unless one knows his name. Adding to the paradox, obscurity seems to provide the basis upon which the work is predicated: "The unique feature of this book lies in its conception of obscure lives as necessary, colorful complements to more celebrated ones. Its method is to provide basic biographical facts, citations of obituaries and death notices in selected Anglo-American newspapers [Clipper, Dramatic Mirror, New York Times, and Variety (New York); The Times, Era, and Stage (London); Boston Transcript; Los Angeles Times], and references to book-length biographies and autobiographies in English of theatrical artists who died between 1850 and 1990" (introduction). This is a wonderful work but one without a very large audience. Recommended only for very large, very comprehensive collections with a defined theatrical minutia clientele.-R. G. Stephen, Rider College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Several thousand actors, playwrights, producers, directors, opera stars, composers, designers, and others associated with stage and screen who died between 1850 and 1990 are listed here with sources of biographical information about them. They were arbitrarily selected by the compiler, a professor of theater, from Anglo-American trade newspapers and books. For each person, the stage name is the main entry. Entries usually include real name, names of parents and spouse, birth and death dates and places, and the type of work done (screenwriter, dancer, etc.). This is followed by a list of obituaries from as many as nine newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Variety, and several London publications. If there are any book-length biographies or autobiographies of the person, they are listed. Cross-references link real names with stage names, when necessary. Stage Deaths is a companion to the compiler's Stage Lives (1985). That work covers the theater from 500 B.C. to the present and indexes about 150 collective biographies. It also lists several thousand individual biographies. Because the time spans covered are so different, many people appear in only one of these titles. Even those who are found in both books have very different entries in each. For example, in Stage Lives there are three biographies listed for Charlie Chaplin; in Stage Deaths there are four obituaries and 17 biographies. Libraries with comprehensive theater and film collections will find Stage Deaths a useful index to biographical information, especially for minor figures who aren't found in standard biographical sources. (Reviewed Oct. 15, 1991)
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
