Crescent Comedy Company Collection of American Melodrama Scripts

The plays were collected by a working theater company manager, B.A. Bergman of Chicago, who retired from show business in 1913. Most of the scripts were secured through agents in Chicago or New York, but in some instances were revised and rewritten to adapt to the size and personnel of the company. Other plays were written by members of the company. In 1935, Bergman gave the collection to Josh Philip Roach in the course of several conferences he had with Roach, who was teaching near Detroit, Michigan at the time. In 1954, Roach completed a doctoral dissertation in theater at the University of Denver, in which he analyzed 20 of these plays. His dissertation was accessioned at the Mary Reed Library as number 286806. Although no documentation has yet been found in the acquisition or donor files, the Mary Reed Library appears to have subsequently bound the collection under accession numbers ..., 288414 (v. 2), 288415 (v. 3), 288416 (v. 4) ... 288416 (c. 7), with a spine title of American Melodramas, originally assigning them to the Locked Case under Dewey call number 812.08 A512. No evidence has been found that they were reclassed when the University changed to the Library of Congress Classification scheme in the early 1970s.