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258.
An original poster for the first LA production of “The Beard”, Warner Playhouse, 755 N. Cienega Blvd., January 24, 1968.
Printed offset litho in red and grey-scale on cream card stock. 36.2x22cm. Design by Wallace Berman, illustrated with a photograph of Shirley Berman holding a pair of old boots. SIGNED by Wallace Berman in pencil in the lower right corner.
Slightly age-toned, with miniscule lower corner wear, o/w Near Fine. (Support the Revolution, p.168/American Aleph, p.62).
The run at the Warner Playhouse was famously disrupted by the repeated arrests of both actors. In a contemporary letter to Stan Brakhage, McClure wrote that “... we went to Los Angeles, where we lost Billie Dixon from the cast and worked with a young woman named Alexandra Hay, as Harlow. We had Dennis Hopper in it but there was a lot of hassle keeping Dennis because of his confrontations with the producer. At last, we got Richie Bright again as The Kid, and had Alexandra Hay, a young starlet, as Harlow… Then the LA Times took it up, running two editorials against the play, while it was in rehearsal, while we were preparing for opening - two editorials against the play and other actions and threats from the FLO, the Forces of Law and Order. We knew we were going to have major trouble, and when the play opened it was arrested 14 performances in a row. The police would come in at the end of the play, walk backstage, arrest Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid, after they’d had a standing ovation from the audience, lead them out back onstage to the police car again, and the audience gave them a second standing ovation before they went off overnight to the jail, where we were being bailed out by a liberal, moneyed person. Then the theater was burned down by vandalism and we went to another theater. Eventually the play was found not guilty of obscenity...” (The Flame is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978, p.211).
At the beginning of Agnès Varda’s 1969 film, “Lions Love (…and Lies)”, McClure’s friend, Jim Morrison (then working with McClure on a screenplay version of “The Beard”), can be glimpsed in the audience for one of the LA performances.
Price:
£1,800.00
