Spoken Arts Collection
The Spoken Arts Collection documents the works of Spoken Arts, Inc., one of the first companies to record the spoken word.
History of the Collection
On July 5th, 2001, Yale University and the Klein Family signed an agreement to establish the Klein Archive as part of the University’s Historical Sound Recordings (HSR) Collection. In this agreement, Spoken Arts master tapes, a comprehensive collection of all commercially-produced Spoken Arts recordings, as well as the company’s business records became part of the collections of the Yale University Library. Shortly thereafter, all of the master tapes of from recordings sessions were digitized.
The Klein donation not only added a significant number of scholarly spoken word recordings to HSR, it also expanded Library’s capacity to support research and teaching in non-music disciplines. All of the commercially-released materials are now searchable in the Library’s online catalogue. The company archive of non-commercial recordings and business records are available for research and study and may be requested by contacting Mark Bailey, Head of the Historical Sound Recordings Collection (mark.bailey@yale.edu).
History of Spoken Arts, Inc.
In 1956 Dr. Luce and Arthur Klein founded Spoken Arts Inc. and began to offer a unique array of recordings of the spoken word. At the time of it’s founding, only one other company was actively pursuing such recording projects. The Kleins recognized early on the educational potential for recordings of the spoken word, focusing their initial efforts on a limited range of material. The inaugural recordings were very well received by noted critics of the time, including Irving Kolodin of The Saturday Review. As its products gained popularity, the company took on more ambitious projects. Ultimately, Spoken Arts became recognized as one of the most important spoken word recording companies, pointing the way to a thriving books-on-tape industry later in the century.
The breadth of the company’s production was extraordinary; including everything from children’s literature to classic European and American novels, short stories, folk and fairy tales, poetry, drama, essays, humor, and historical speeches. Spoken Arts became quite well-known for its recordings of distinguished authors reading their own works. Writers such as Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, Cynthia Ozick, William Butler Yeats, Nadine Gordimer, Pablo Neruda, Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Cornelia Otis Skinner, S.J. Perelman, Grace Paley, W. H. Auden, Elie Wiesel, and Anaïs Nin are only a few of those represented in the archive.
Although the collection’s strengths lie in a variety of literature studies, Spoken Arts also produced interviews of noted historical figures in science and political history. Those recordings now stand as oral histories from the period and were relatively rare in the spoken word recordings industry at the time. For instance, the collection includes a rare interview with the physicist, Dr. Edward Teller, sometimes referred to as the “father of the hydrogen bomb”. One of the more poignant recordings, now a snapshot of 20th century history is the recording of the noted Australian pediatrician, Dr. Helen Caldicott reading her paper entitled, “Nuclear Holocaust: The Medical Consequences of Nuclear War and Nuclear Power.”
Spoken Arts also offered recordings of the inaugural addresses of John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman and all four inaugural addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. All of these types of recordings proved to be invaluable to the study of American history before the onset of the more fully developed media market of the present.
Adding to its already broad repertoire, Spoken Arts also produced several series of non-English language materials including surveys of French, German and Spanish drama, literature, poetry and music; samplings of Italian and Russian poetry; the Psalms read in both English and Hebrew; and Chinese folk and art songs.
About the Spoken Arts Founders
Luce and Arthur Klein met in the south of France, Luce’s native country, at the the end of World War II soon after Arthur had landed with the 7th Army. Arthur was working as an intelligence officer, decoding German messages. At the time, Luce was doing reconnaissance for the Maquis, working for the French underground as well as finding homes for Jewish children. Luce and Arthur met in a jeep on the road to Lyon, a city that had just been liberated by the Allies. Two years later, they were married in 1946.
Arthur Klein had already earned his B.A, and M.A. at the University of Michigan, where he later earned his PhD in Dramatic Theater Arts. He taught Theater Arts at the University of Michigan, and in 1948 at the University of California at Berkeley where he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Drama.
After the war and marriage, Dr. Klein worked in England and on the continent as an actor and producer/director of plays. He was the first American to be appointed to the directing staff of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, where Laurence Olivier came to watch him perform.
Luce Klein studied at the University in Lyon, France during the war, and then later completed her PhD in Comparative Literature in 1969 at Columbia University in New York. Her book, “Portrait de la Juive dans la littérature française” (Portrait of the Jewish Woman in French Literature) is considered the seminal book on the topic in almost 200 international libraries.
Together, both Luce and Arthur Klein collaborated on writing articles in French and English on Dramatic Arts, translating plays, and directing, acting, and producing several theatrical productions which toured throughout Europe.
In 1956, after living several years abroad, Luce and Arthur Klein founded Spoken Arts, Inc. in New Rochelle, NY. They believed there was a need to preserve the voice of authors, through the recording of their works.
Their first release was “The Art of Ruth Draper”, the legendary actress who was the queen of one-person theater. She paved the way for actresses like Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg.
Photo Credit: Photo by Philippe Halsman used by permission of Irène Halsman