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I Am a Camera
I Am a Camera
	Julie Harris as Sally Bowles; Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, May 1952
Written by	John Van Druten, Adapted from the Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
Characters	Christopher Isherwood ; Fraulein Schneider ; Fritz Wendel ; Sally Bowles ; Natalia Landauer ; Clive Mortimer ; Mrs. Watson-Courtneidge
Date premiered	November 28, 1951
Place premiered	Empire Theatre, New York City
Subject	An English writer living in Berlin before the rise of the Hitler regime
Genre	Drama
Setting	A room in Fraulein Schneider's flat in Berlin 1930

I Am a Camera is a 1951 Broadway play by John Van Druten^[1]^[2] adapted from Christopher Isherwood's 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin, which is part of The Berlin Stories. The title is a quotation taken from the novel's first page: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."^[3] The original production was staged by John Van Druten, with scenic and lighting design by Boris Aronson and costumes by Ellen Goldsborough.^[1] It opened at the Empire Theatre in New York City on November 28, 1951 and ran for 214 performances before closing on July 12, 1952.^[4]

The production was a critically acclaimed success for both Julie Harris as the insouciant Sally Bowles, winning her the first of five Tony Awards of her career for Best Leading Actress in a play, and for Marian Winters, who won both the Theatre World Award and Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Play. The play also won for John Van Druten the New York Drama Critics' Circle for Best American Play (1952).^[4] It also earned the famous review by Walter Kerr, "Me no Leica".^[5]^[6]

Original Broadway Cast (1951)

Christopher Isherwood – William Prince
Fraulein Schneider – Olga Fabian
Fritz Wendel – Martin Brooks
Sally Bowles – Julie Harris
Natalia Landauer – Marian Winters
Clive Mortimer – Edward Andrews
Mrs. Watson-Courtneidge – Catherine Willard

Adaptations

Film – I Am a Camera (1955) – screenplay by John Collier, music by Malcolm Arnold, starring Julie Harris, Laurence Harvey, and Shelley Winters.
Broadway Musical – Cabaret (1966) – directed by Hal Prince, book by Joe Masteroff, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, starring Jill Haworth, Bert Convy, Lotte Lenya, Jack Gilford, and Joel Grey.
Film Musical – Cabaret (1972) – directed by Bob Fosse, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, starring Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, and Michael York.

References

^ ^a ^b Van Druten, John (1951). I Am a Camera. Random House, Inc.
^ Van Druten, John (1998). I Am a Camera. Dramatists Play Service, Inc. ISBN 0822205459.
^ Isherwood, Christopher (1963). The Berlin Stories: the Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin. New Directions. ISBN 0811200701.
^ ^a ^b Playbill Vault. "I Am a Camera on Broadway". Retrieved October 27, 2013.
^ Botto, Louis."Quotable Critics" Playbill, May 28, 2008
^ Friedman, M. (1989). "Commercial expressions in American humor: an analysis of selected popular-cultural works of the postwar era". Humor – International Journal of Humor Research. 2 (3): 265–284. doi:10.1515/humr.1989.2.3.265. ISSN 1613-3722. S2CID 145418943.