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Collection Data
- Description
- As a literary agent, Bertha Case worked with a variety of authors, playwrights, and performers, including María Irene Fornés, Anthony Quinn, and Ira Wallach. Case also served as the literary representative of the estates of German playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill. This collection primarily documents Case's career through correspondence with clients, publishers, and producers; the collection also contains contracts, press clippings, performance programs, and photographs.
- Names
- Case, Bertha (Creator)
- Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956
- Brecht, Stefan, 1924-2009
- Quinn, Anthony, 1915-2001
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1932 - 1985
- Library locations
- Billy Rose Theatre Division
- Shelf locator: *T-Mss 2012-029
- Topics
- Authors
- Dramatists
- Literary agents
- Theatrical agents
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: Known professionally as an authors' and artists' representative, Bertha Case worked to promote and establish the literary works of a variety of authors, playwrights, and performers. According to her 1984 obituary in The New York Times, Case worked in the literary and film industries for Hollywood's A. S. Lyons Agency and New York's M.C.A. agency before establishing her own agency in New York in the 1950s.
Notably, Case acted as the literary representative of the estates of German playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill.
Source: "Bertha Case," The New York Times, December 13, 1984. Accessed July 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/13/obituaries/bertha-case.html.
- Content: The Bertha Case papers document the literary agent's career in New York City, mostly from 1963 through her death in December 1984. The vast majority of the collection consists of client files, which contain correspondence with clients, publishers, and producers demonstrating the agent's fondness for, and championing of, the individuals with whom she worked. The client files remain as they were organized by Case; in addition to correspondence, the files may also contain contracts, screenplays, royalty statements, photographs, press clippings, reviews, drafted writings, and poems, including works by Clarissa Aikens, María Irene Fornés, and Melba Thomas. Other notable clients include Lotte Lenya, Anthony Quinn, James Schevill, and Ira Wallach.
As the American literary representative for the Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill estates, many of the client files in this collection concern their works and royalties, specifically regarding Brecht. Not all correspondence relating to Brecht's estate is filed under his name. Researchers interested in the Brecht and Weill literary estates should review files of known collaborators and translators, as well as files containing titles of their works.
Separate from the client files, the Bertha Case papers include three folders of professional correspondence, royalty statements, and a telephone message book relating to Case's clientele. Correspondence consists of one folder of letters received after Case's death in December 1984 while the other two, titled by correspondent, concern inquiries into the Brecht estate.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 2.52 linear feet (6 boxes)
- Type of Resource
- Text
- Identifiers
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b19685511
- MSS Unit ID: 18836
- Other local Identifier: *T-Mss 2012-029
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): ee68ade0-9cdf-013d-0137-0242ac110002
