Mander and Mitchenson

Raymond Mander (15 July 1911 – 27 December 1983) and Joe Mitchenson (4 October 1911 – 7 October 1992) were theatre historians and joint founders of a large collection of theatrical memorabilia.

Both began their careers as actors, but what began as a shared hobby turned into full-time work in running the Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection (MMTC) and writing books, reviews and articles on theatre, opera and ballet. The collection remained their private property until 1977, when they handed it over to a trust. After the deaths of the founders the collection was moved first to the Jerwood Library of the Performing Arts in Greenwich, and, in 2010, to the Theatre Collection of the University of Bristol.

During the founders' lifetimes the collection contributed illustrations to more than four hundred books, and has remained one of the most important resources for authors writing about history of the British theatre.

Biographies Early years Raymond Josiah Gale Mander was born in Clapham, London, the only son of Albert Edwin Mander, an architect and surveyor, and his wife, Edith Christina, née Gale. He was educated at Battersea Grammar School and became an actor when he left school, making his debut at Bedford in Harold Neilson's touring Shakespeare company. In the West End he appeared in a spectacular production of Henry V at Drury Lane in 1938, the year before he first worked with Joe Mitchenson.

Mander and Mitchenson met in February 1939, and later in that year they were both cast in a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Mander as Master Page and Mitchenson as Fenton. They toured with Neilson's company, playing small roles. Mitchenson served in the army, until being invalided out in 1943. He resumed his stage career for a few years, before giving up regular acting in 1948. and when on tour in the 1940s they would take every opportunity to add to it. Mitchenson's obituarist in The Times wrote, "[They] would raid antique shops and second-hand bookshops in search of anything which carried a morsel of theatrical history. It could be a postcard, or a playbill, a painting or a figurine representing some past performance, or, better still, a discarded costume or prop."

The ever-expanding collection was housed in Mitchenson's family house in Sydenham. Their biographer Rupert Rhymes writes: The university made it clear that the collection would be available to everyone: "We run ourselves as a public museum, as well as a university archive, so anyone can make an appointment to come and study something from the collection".

Publications Mander and Mitchenson contributed introductions to four volumes of Noël Coward's collected plays, and numerous articles and reviews to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Theatre Notebook and Books and Bookmen. They contributed illustrations from their collection to more than four hundred publications.

Their own books were:

Hamlet Through the Ages, 1952 (2nd, revised edition 1955) Theatrical Companion to Shaw, 1954 Theatrical Companion to Maugham, 1955 The Artist and the Theatre, 1955 Theatrical Companion to Coward, 1957 A Picture History of British Theatre, 1957 The Gay Twenties, 1958 (with J. C. Trewin) A Picture History of Opera, 1959 (with Philip Hope-Wallace) The Turbulent Thirties, 1960 (with J. C. Trewin) The Theatres of London, 1961, illustrated by Timothy Birdsall (2nd, revised edition, paperback, 1963; 3rd revised edition 1975)

A Picture History of Gilbert and Sullivan, 1962 British Music Hall: A Story in Pictures, 1965 (2nd edition, revised and enlarged 1974) Lost Theatres of London, 1968 (2nd edition, revised and enlarged, 1976) Musical Comedy: A Story in Pictures, 1969 Revue: A Story in Pictures, 1971 Pantomime: A Story in Pictures, 1973 The Wagner Companion, 1977 Victorian and Edwardian Entertainment from Old Photographs, 1978 Guide to the W. Somerset Maugham Theatrical Paintings, 1980 Source: Who Was Who.