Princeton Triangle Club
The history of the Princeton Triangle Club reflects many major social, cultural, economic, political, literary and theatrical trends in the United States during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
In 1891 the Dramatic Association joined forces with the University Glee Club to present Po-ca-hon-tas, the first show in the Triangle tradition of musicals written and produced by students.
The following year the Club turned to a recent graduate, Post Wheeler '91, in hopes that his magic touch as co-author of The Honorable Julius Caesar could be repeated, and they were pleased with the result.
A Tiger Lily, the first Triangle show to be based on Princeton student life, was part of a double bill with Lend Me Five Shillings, a British farce.
After the 1901 New York performance, Franklin B. Morse 1895 proposed a meeting to organize Triangle alumni, who he believed could help promote the club, build its reputation, arrange the annual tour, collect materials and memorabilia, and generally socialize among themselves.
The following year, President Wilson and the First Lady attended The Pursuit of Priscilla’s Washington matinee performance; the First Family then hosted a reception for Triangle at the White House.
[5] The Evil Eye (1915-16) had a distinguished pair of neophyte authors: Edmund Wilson '16 wrote the book, and F. Scott Fitzgerald '17 was responsible for the lyrics.
The club had been criticized in previous years by Drama professor Donald Clive Stuart who asserted, on the front page of the Princeton University newspaper, that the plays were "too burlesque" and lacked novelty, especially when compared to theatrical culture at other Ivy League schools.
During the early 1920s, New York performances began to be booked at the Metropolitan Opera House, although initially there was some concern whether they could fill such a large theatre and whether the men's voices would be strong enough.
[8] Here began the Golden Period for which the Triangle Club became famous, in terms of its eventual contribution of outstanding talent to the Broadway theatre and Hollywood.
Within a few years the Club would send forth into these professional realms Erik Barnouw '29; C. Norris Houghton, Joshua Logan, and Myron McCormick, all Class of 1931; James Stewart '32;[9] José Ferrer '33; and Nick Foran '34.
The 1935 show, Stags at Bay, featured East of the Sun (and West of the Moon), written by Brooks Bowman, which would become the most popular and longest-lasting national hit ever to come out of the Triangle Club.
Throughout the mid-thirties, Triangle continued to tour in spite of the Depression, but there were rumblings of discontent from both the Graduate Board of the Club and the University administration.
Then, at a Board meeting in September 1943, Graduate Treasurer B. Franklin Bunn '07 announced that there would be no Triangle Club activities for the duration of the war.
The club resolved tricky labor questions by employing union stagehands and music-hirelings, putting the later to work first in Philadelphia, where they were made to earn their fee by playing with the regular orchestra, and then in Washington, where they provided the intermission music.
Despite ongoing debate in the 1950s about the club's obligations to theatrical professionalism, as well as its questionable effect on the University's reputation, Triangle continued to reach a wider audience through greater media exposure.
The entire score of Too Hot for Toddy (1950–51) was recorded, and members of the cast appeared on The Kate Smith Show and Ed Sullivan's The Toast of the Town.
Early in 1960 there was a proposal to produce a motion picture on the Triangle Club, but a Hollywood writers' strike and possible heavy expenses brought an end to this publicity idea.
However, Triangle did embark on its first European tour that summer; the Club performed Breakfast in Bedlam (1959–60) at French and German bases of the American army.
Funny Side Up (1963–64) was billed as the 75th anniversary show in spite of the fact that number seventy was Tour de Farce, produced only two years earlier.
A Different Kick (1968–69) was a Triangle milestone, featuring the first female undergraduate to be cast in a Club show—Sue Jean Lee '70, a junior in the Critical Languages Program.
The social and political commentary of the show, most especially its anti-Vietnam War tones, which reflected the views of the Vietnam Veteran who was president and much of the country, unleashed an unprecedented storm of alumni protest and caused a mass audience walk-out at the Grosse Pointe tour performance.
For the 1981 spring show, Triangle writers returned to the very roots of the club and based their book musical, Bold Type, on Booth Tarkington's novel, A Gentleman from Indiana.
The club's centennial was celebrated in 1991 with a series of campus events throughout the year, including the spring show entitled The Older, the Better, a large Firestone Library exhibition of hundreds of items from the Triangle Archives, and a fall reunion weekend of parties and performances.
This change meant that in 1997-1998 the Club needed to generate two-full length musicals in fifteen months, almost twice the writing load of previous years.
In September 1997, Triangle began a writing workshop to coordinate the efforts of the writers; this program was enormously successful, producing In Lava and War in April 1998 and 101 Damnations in November 1998.
The 1999–2000 season saw the hundredth anniversary of the kickline in The Blair Arch Project (November 1999), as well as Triangle's return to Theatre Intime in May with The Rude Olympics II: American Booty.
The Club continues to receive a high level of regional recognition, with the 2007 Triangle Show A Turnpike Runs Through It appearing in The New York Times.
[13] Booth Tarkington 1893 – * F. Scott Fitzgerald 1917 – Russel Wright '21 and '22 – Charles Arnt '29 – Joshua Logan '31 – James Stewart '32 – José Ferrer '34 – Brooks Bowman '36 – Bo Goldman '53 – Wayne Rogers '56 – Clark Gesner '60 – Jeff Moss '63 – A. Scott Berg '71[14] – David E. Kelley '79 – Cecil Hoffman '84 – Louis Bayard '85 – Brooke Shields '87 – Ellie Kemper '02 – Michael Yang '04[15] – Molly Ephraim '08 see List of Princeton Triangle Club shows
