University of Missouri-Kansas City Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections NOT TO BE USED FOR PUBLICATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Biographical Sketch …………………………………………………………………… 2

Scope And Content …………………………………………………………………… 4

Container List …………………………………………………………………… 5

MS280-Dana Suesse Collection 1 University of Missouri-Kansas City Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections NOT TO BE USED FOR PUBLICATION

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Before the age of six, Suesse studied piano and organ, and appeared in midwest vaudeville and concert stages as a pianist and dancer. Even as a child she added her own compositions to her concerts and captivated audiences with improvisations. Suesse and her mother moved to in December 1926. They became active in a myriad of cultural events, and were indelibly enamored of . Unable to sell her salon music, she experimented in the medium known as “jazz” and succeeded in composing popular songs and short instrumentals in the modern manner. In a few years she was able to comfortably support herself and her family as composer of popular tunes as well as larger works, hence the nickname “girl Gershwin” (The New Yorker, December 16, 1933). Suesse had enormous success with songs such as Have You Forgotten, Ho Hum, My Silent Love and You Oughta Be in Pictures.

Throughout the 1930s she performed her compositions in the most important entertainment venues of the east coast, including , Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Boston Symphony Hall and network radio. Her works were conducted by Ferde Grofé, , Erno Rapée, , Alfred Wallenstein, Eugene Goossens, and most importantly, . Thanks to her association with Whiteman, she was known to radio and concert audiences as a pianist as well as a composer. She studied orchestration with Grofé and Hans Spialek, “dean” of the Broadway stage orchestrators of the period.

Naturally ambitious, she also fancied herself as a playwright. In 1947 Dana Suesse and her companion Virginia Faulkner (author of Friends and Romans) collaborated on a comedy which became known as It Takes Two, starring Martha Scott, Hugh Marlowe and Vivian Vance. Richard Aldrich and George Abbott produced it, and RKO pictures financed the show and acquired the film rights. The show was universally “panned” by the Boston and New York critics.

Suesse began studies with on October 20, 1947. With Boulanger, Suesse received “… a rigorous training in harmony, counterpoint and other musical disciplines, much of which I lacked the proper training in during childhood.” On October 11, 1950, Suesse returned to New York.

Nothing thrilled Suesse as much as hearing her own works in the concert hall. In her own mind she was a failure because she was known only for her “minor” program pieces (Jazz Nocturne, Blue Moonlight, American Nocturne, etc.) and her lucrative popular songs. She turned her interests toward writing more plays and musical comedies. Some were produced, such as Sally Benson’s Josephine (1953) and Marcel Archard’s Come Play With Me (1959). She composed the theme and all the incidental music for the original Seven Year Itch (1952), produced by her first husband, Courtney Burr.

As Suesse watched the traditional popular music scene diminish, she witnessed the increased expense and automation of the Broadway show. Like other veteran composers, she attempted writing popular music that would be accepted by a younger audience. The songs written during the Depression were still playing handsomely, but producers thought her newer songs and plays

MS280-Dana Suesse Collection 2 University of Missouri-Kansas City Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections NOT TO BE USED FOR PUBLICATION were old-fashioned. The electronic wall of rock music became too high for her to hurdle. She moved to New London, Connecticut, and married C. Edwin Delinks in 1971. It was during this marriage that she was encouraged to invest in her dormant symphonic career and produce a major concert at . In 1975, Suesse and her husband moved to the Virgin Islands where they remained until Delinks death in 1981.

Delinks death prompted Suesse’s move back to Manhattan, settling at the Gramercy Park Hotel. She discovered that there was a new-found appreciation for writers of popular music. Tributes were being staged in honor of the remaining contributors to old Tin Pan Alley, among them Irving Berlin, Kay Swift and E.Y. Harburg. Interviews were done at her apartment, at symposiums, and at club meetings before her death (October 16, 1987) at the age of 77. A few months earlier, a magazine interview stated she was just “hitting her stride.” Before succumbing to a stroke, she was writing a new musical, putting the finishing touches on Mr. Sycamore, which had been optioned for off-Broadway, and was looking for a New York theatre for a straight play, Nemisis.

Source: Mintun, Peter. Liner notes to “The Night Is Young” Concert Music of Dana Suesse, , Dana Suesse, Robert Barlow, All City Concert Choir, American Symphony Orchestra, . Premier Recordings PRCD 1055. CD. 1996.

MS280-Dana Suesse Collection 3 University of Missouri-Kansas City Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections NOT TO BE USED FOR PUBLICATION

SCOPE AND CONTENT

The Dana Suesse Collection was gifted to LaBudde Special Collections by Peter Mintun in January 2015. A small collection related to Suesse’s life and career, it includes promotional and publicity material, original and photocopied music, as well as scripts for comedies and musicals written by Suesse. Rounding out the collection are two dozen photographs that provide a concise representation of Suesse at different ages of her life.

MS280-Dana Suesse Collection 4 University of Missouri-Kansas City Dr. Kenneth J. LaBudde Department of Special Collections NOT TO BE USED FOR PUBLICATION Box Folder Description CONTAINER LIST

Box Folder Description 1 1 Promotional materials (flyers, clippings, and photocopied clippings) for shows involving Dana Suesse’s music. 2 Articles related to Dana Suesse, personal promotion. All articles in this folder were published during the lifetime of the artist. 3 Articles related to Dana Suesse, published posthumously. 4 Jazz Nocturne and Other Piano Music with Selected Songs, Introduced and Edited by Peter Mintun. Published by Dover in 2013. 5 Photocopies of songs from “Sweet Surrender.” Including: I’m so Happy I Could Cry, Sweet Surrender, Love Makes the World Go ‘Round, and Take This Ring. The latter two are official reference copies made by Warner Bros. and authorized by Helen Tualoney. 6 Photocopies of songs not related to each other. Including: Blue Melody, The Devil Dance, The Girl Without a Name, What’s the Matter With Harry, and You Have to Live a Little. 7 Published Songs. Including: Another Mile, Gone With the Dawn, It Can’t Happen Here, and That Girl. 8 Published Choral Music Score: What About the Pear Tree. 9 Programs: Full Programs for ’s Aquacade, The Last Frontier, Venus on the Half Shell (Inc.) and The Toast of The Town (Inc). Carnegie Hall Dec. 1974. This folder also contains color photocopies covers from a Radio City Music Hall program from 1934 and a Paul Whiteman concert that took place on June 24, 1938. 10 Book: Let the Chips Fall, by Rudy Vallée 11 Scripts: Tonight We Do It without the Net: A Musical Happening. 12 Scripts: The Changing World: A Musical Chronicle 13 Scripts: The Bentleys: A Comedy 14 Scripts: The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower: A Musical. Based on the book by Floyd Miller and James F. Johnson. 2 1 Scripts: Length of Our Days: a play 2 Scripts: The Voice of the Hyena. Originally optioned for Tallulah Bankhead. 3 Scripts: Little White Lie: a Comedy by Dana Suesse based on a story by Dana Suesse and Scott Olsen. 4 Scripts: Obsession: a play. 5 Scripts: Mrs. Mooney: a comedy. 6 Scripts: Polly Adler 7 Scripts: Mr. Sycamore: A New Musical 8 Photographs 1-15 9 Photographs 16-24

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