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Kermit Sheets Collection, 1915-1998

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Sheets, Louis Kermit
Title
Kermit Sheets Collection
Dates
1915-1998 (inclusive)
Quantity
16 cubic feet, (26 boxes)
Collection Number
OLPb006SHE
Summary
Kermit Sheets was an artist, actor, and playwright who served as a conscientious objector during World War II and worked in San Francisco after the war. The collection includes: poetry, short stories, novels, and play drafts; correspondence; photographs; and other forms of documentation of the Civilian Public Service Fine Arts program and the post-war arts and theater in San Francisco.
Repository
Lewis & Clark College, Special Collections and Archives

Aubrey R. Watzek Library
615 S. Palatine Hill Rd.
Portland, OR
97219
Telephone: 5037687758
Fax: 5037687282
archives@lclark.edu
Access Restrictions

This collection has no restrictions and is open for research.

Languages
English
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Biographical Note

Louis Kermit Sheets was a pacifist artist, printer, actor, director, and stage designer who contributed greatly to the early development of the San Francisco Renaissance in the late 1940s. He was born in California's Imperial Valley on August 14, 1915, grew up in Fresno, and graduated from Chapman College in 1936. Between January 1942 and January 1946 he served as a conscientious objector in CPS camp 21 (Cascade Locks at Wyeth on the Columbia River) and camp 56 (Waldport on the Oregon Coast). At Wyeth he co-edited The Illiteratijournal and the camp newsletter The Columbian, and wrote and performed in the satirical play Mikado in CPS. At Waldport he and his co-editor Kemper Nomland joined William Everson's Fine Arts Group, where he was closely involved in the printing of the Untide Press and was a key member of the high quality theater group in the camp.

Many of the camp theater personnel settled in San Francisco in 1946, founding the Interplayers in association with Adrian Wilson, Joyce Lancaster Wilson and other colleagues from the Waldport camp. At the same time, in collaboration with poet James Broughton, he founded the Centaur Press, publishing poetry and drama by Broughton, Anais Nin, Robert Duncan, Glen Coffield, Madeline Gleason, and Muriel Rukeyser. In the early 1950s he acted in Broughton's films The Pleasure Garden (winner of a Cannes Festival Award) and Loony Tom the Happy Lover. Returning from Europe in 1955, he became managing director of The Playhouse, until the early 1960s, mounting many successful productions, including Helen Adam’s long-running San Francisco’s Burning (December 1961- June 1962) with music by Warner Jepson. In 1965 he married Jane Steckle, who died in 1999. From 1970 to 1980 he was director of the Center at the Lighthouse for the Blind. After retirement he spent much of the 1980s in writing novels and short stories and traveling with Jane. He died on April 6, 2006 in San Francisco.

The collection has been assembled with generous assistance from Norma Miller, and early participant as actor and director in the Interplayers and Playhouse companies, and a lifelong friend of Kermit Sheets.

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Content Description

The collection consists of drafts and final typescripts of poetry, short stories, novels, and plays; of published materials, notably of the Centaur Press; of correspondence and documentation relating particularly to Civilian Public Service (1941 onwards), to the Centaur Press (1949 onwards), to Broughton and Farallone Films (1950-1952), and to the three theater groups The Interplayers, The Playhouse, and the Center at The Lighthouse for the Blind (1947-1981). Also numerous photographs relating to the CPS camps and to theater productions, and family and personal photographs from foreign travel.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

Permission to publish, exhibit, broadcast, or quote from materials in the Watzek Library Archives & Special Collections requires written permission of the Head of Archives & Special Collections.

Preferred Citation

The Kermit Sheets Collections OLPb006SHE, Lewis & Clark College Aubrey Watzek Library Archives & Special Collections, Portland, Oregon.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Arranged in a single topical series.

Location of Collection

Special Collections

Acquisition Information

Given to Lewis & Clark College by Kermit Sheets in 2005.

Processing Note

Processed in April, 2006. All materials relocated to acid-free containers.

Separated Materials

Lewis & Clark College Special Collections also has other collections related to World War II Civilian Public Service camps including the H. Vail Deale papers, the William Stafford collection, and a collection of general Civilian Public Service materials. For more information vistit the Lewis & Clark College Special Collections at http://www.lclark.edu/%7Earchives/specialcollections/

Bibliography

For more information about Kermit Sheets and the World War II Civilian Public Service Camps see: Eshelman, William R. No Silence! A Library Life. Metuchen, NY: Scarecrow, 1997.Wilson, Adrian. Two Against the Tide: Selected Letters 1941-1948. Austin, TX: W. Thomas Taylor, 1990.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.

Paul Merchant
2006

CC Attribution
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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