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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2007
The history of American popular entertainment is documented in many different ways, ranging from materials such as correspondence, diaries, scrapbooks, company records, oral-history interviews, and autobiographies that directly tell the story of performers, business managers, and behind-the-scenes crew, to material created by others and used for the promotion of the artists. In this second category fall the subjects of this article, two letterpress show printers, Curtiss Show Print of Continental, Ohio, and Hatch Show Print of Nashville, Tennessee. There were many show printers across the country from the late nineteenth through the twentieth centuries, but the majority of these companies have closed, and their type and printing blocks have been discarded or dispersed. Although other printers altered their operations because of changes in technology that allow work to be done in less laborious ways, Curtiss Show Print and Hatch Show Print are still working and using the old equipment and techniques. Both Nyle Stateler, owner of Curtiss Show Print, and Jim Sherraden, manager of Hatch Show Print, realize the historical and research value of their show-print materials, and both have taken steps to save those materials, forging institutional relationships that are commitments for the preservation of their show-print work.
1. Letterpress printing is a process of printing from a raised, inked surface. Lithography was also used for posters, and examples can be found in various arts and performing arts collections. For example, the Cincinnati Art Museum holds the Strobridge Litho. Co. collection, an outstanding example of lithographed circus posters.
2. For instance, much of the artwork for Central Show Printing Company of Mason City, Iowa, is held by a private collector. In the case of Southern Poster, the great Atlanta, Georgia, letterpress company of the mid-twentieth century, the shop was bought out by Yee-Haw Industries, which uses the old type and blocks to create new art. However, others such as Tribune ShowPrint, in operation since 1878, are still in existence. This small, family-owned business continues to use their old presses and type, and has collaborated with Purdue University on letterpress projects.
3. Slout, William Lawrence, Theatre in a Tent: The Development of a Provincial Entertainment (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972), 104Google Scholar.
4. Hatch, Will T., “Sixty Years of Show Posters!” The Inland Printer (October 1939): 27–28, at 28Google Scholar.
5. Nyle Stateler, telephone interview by author, 18 May 2007. Stateler recalled delivering Beers–Barnes posters to southern Ohio and making other deliveries to show-print clients in the region.
6. Sherraden, Jim, Horvath, Elek, and Kingsbury, Paul, Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001), 20–3Google Scholar.
7. Hatch, 27.
8. Sherraden et al., 27.
9. Hoh, LaVahn G. and Rough, William H., Step Right Up: The Adventures of Circus in America (White Hall, Virginia: Betterway Publications, Inc., 1990), 69Google Scholar.
10. Bell, Charles Harris III, “An Ohio Repertoire–Tent Show Family: The Kinsey Komedy Kompany and the Madge Kinsey Players, 1881–1951” (Ph.D. diss., Bowling Green State University, 1978), 35Google Scholar.
11. Ibid., 43.
12. Middleton, Judge Evan P., History of Champaign County, Ohio: Its People, Industries and Institutions (Indianapolis: B.F. Bowen & Co., Inc., 1917), II: 58–60Google Scholar.
13. Bryant, Betty, Here Comes the Showboat! (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994), 72–3Google Scholar.
14. A Curtiss poster for J. C. Lincoln's Mighty Minstrels can be seen in Walker Evans's photograph, “Show Poster in Alabama Town,” January 1936. This photograph is part of the Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Photograph Collection held by the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. [hereafter, FSA/OWI]. Available online through the American Memory Project: memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html (accessed 19 May 2007).
15. Sherraden et al., 38–47.
16. A Hatch poster for Silas Green from New Orleans can be seen in several of Marion Post Wolcott's photograph entitled “Some of the Negroes watching itinerant salesman selling goods from his truck in center of town. On Saturday afternoon. Belzoni, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi” and “Itinerant salesman selling goods from his truck to Negroes in center of town on Saturday afternoon. Belzoni, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi.” October 1939. These photographs are part of the Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Photograph Collection held by the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC. Available online through the American Memory Project: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html (accessed 19 May 2007).
17. Harry Shannon, letter to Bill Curtiss, 13 May 1936.
18. Sherraden et al., 127.
19. “Hatch Today,” Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum, www.countrymusichalloffame.com/site/experience-hatch-today.aspx (accessed 25 May 2007).
20. Beverly Burmeier, “Poster Child: A Nashville Company Keeps Its Letterpress Going.” Preservation Online, www.nationaltrust.org/Magazine/archives/arch_story/051107.htm (accessed 11 May 2007).
21. Jason Felton, “Hatch Show Print: Archival Action Plan,” “Hatch Show Print: Archival Policy,” “Hatch Show Print: General Catalog Guidelines,” and “Hatch Show Print: Digital Archive” (internal reports), 1 September 2006.