University of Arizona

                                             Special Collections will be closed December 20, 2023 through January 1, 2024 in observance of the University Holiday break.

Kathryn Beals Papers

Kathryn Beals was born on August 1907 and raised in San Francisco, California. Between 1927 and 1928 she spent 15 months touring the United States with the Peters-Wright vaudeville dance troupe, The Wright Dancers. During this time she exchanged letters and photos with her mother, father, uncle, and sister, Carol. When she was not performing or rehearsing she visited tourist sites including Niagara Falls, Coney Island, and Washington, D.C. In the collection there are photos of these trips. The collection includes some of the theater programs on which she appears for presentations in Boston, New York, and Houston. She also attended plays, musicals, movies. She attended the openings of musicals like Funny Face with Fred and Adele Astaire to which we have the theater program. The letters were kept by her mother and later entrusted to her sister. Don Langley later wrote the book Vaudeville Days with these letters.

During her vaudeville days she suffered a knee injury that would affect her for the rest of her life. In 1929 she married Rolland Langley. Ten months later she gave birth to the first of her three children. In 1943 she contracted an illness similar to polio and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. On October 27, 1976 she passed away.

This collection contains correspondence, photos, a film, newspaper clippings, and ephemera of Kathryn Beals from the years 1927 to 1928 and two letters to her sister from acquaintances upon Kathryn’s death in 1976. From 1927 to 1928 she toured with the Peters-Wright vaudeville dance troupe. During this time she wrote diligently to her close family members about the cities, theaters, sites, famous people she met, and daily experiences she had away from home. The letters are organized chronologically. There is also a typed version of most of the correspondence.