ANTHONY PALANGE PAPERS
SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE
The papers include information about Palange’s personal and professional life. Manuscripts comprise the bulk of the collection, in addition to correspondence, muscial scripts, reel-to-reel recordings of the music, newspaper clippings, and event programs. Manuscripts with corresponding video and/or audio-tapes are noted. The tapes are located in Series 6 at the end of the collection. The tapes are arranged chronologically and categorized as either: early/personal, Queen City Players or G/L Magazine.
Programs from the productions of the Gateway Experimental Theater, a Palange project in the late sixties, are also in Series 2, the Production Series. Palange’s G/L Magazine and Queen City Players episodes for Denver Community Television have scripts in Series 1. Information about the creation of the shows is in Series 2. Video tapes are located in Series 6. Palange Enterprises, a subseries of Series 2 contains “how-to” booklets written by Palange that he attempted to sell through advertisements in national publications.
Palange’s censorship lawsuit against Denver Community Television is well documented with transcripts from the trial, depositions and exhibits. Palange’s notes and his book, Unclean Hands, about the legal case are located at the end of Series 3, Palange vs. Denver Community Television.
Information about Palange’s personal life is contained in correspondence with family and friends. Included are report cards, yearbooks and notebooks, newspaper clippings and writings.
Manuscripts are organized alphabetically chronologically within format: musicals, novels, operas, plays, poetry, screenplays, short stories, skits and teleplays. Palange often reused his work. For example, he might transform a play into a screenplay and then produce it years later. Works with the same title despite their format (i.e. play or teleplay) or date are kept together and works with titles that changed over time remain together. Many of the manuscripts used for the Denver Community Television productions by the Queen City Players are under teleplays. Manuscripts with corresponding video or audio tapes in Series 6 are labeled with a symbol.
Palange published the following works: How to Cook Italian in America, Mexican Cooking for Gringos, Cartomancy Booklet: The Philomena Method, The Oracle of the Cards, Jungle Fantasy, I Am My Only Prison, The Light-Bearer, Cindy, The Ultimate Weapon and Jupiter the Thunderer. Other manuscripts in the collection are unpublished as of 2003, except for newspaper columns owned by the publisher. Unpublished works enter the public domain seventy years after the death of the author. Published works between 1964 and 1978 enter the public domain ninety-five years after publication. After 1978, published works enter the public domain seventy years after the author’s death. All published manuscripts are labeled [publication year of publication] after the first mention of the manuscript in the container list.
The series includes programs and newspaper clippings from Palange’s plays created immediately after High School and the Gateway Experimental Theater, which he formed in the late 1960s in New Haven, CT. In the 1990s, Palange created a television series titled G/L Magazine and theatrical productions with the Queen City Players for Denver Public Access Television. Program schedules, production notes, release forms and individual episode information are found in this series. The series is organized chronologically.
The series contains attorney correspondence, motions, judgments, depositions, exhibits and transcripts of court sessions. The series also contains Palange’s reflections on the trial which he compiled into a book, Unclean Hands, as well as notes and newspaper clippings about the trial. FF6, Box 16 is restricted until 2030.
The personal series includes correspondence with friends and family along with information on Palange’s education such as report cards, yearbooks and notebooks. Palange’s ideas and interests are represented with notes, newspaper clippings, and flyers. FF 22 and FF23, Box 20 are restricted until 2030.
The series is organized by personal and early works, Queen City Players Productions and G/L Magazine episodes. Most of the video tapes in the series comprise 3/4 inch master tapes of Palange’s productions. Some of the more recent work is taped using 8mm and digital video tape. Reel to reel audio tapes of Palange’s high school plays are in the beginning of the series.
Folio 1 holds a scrapbook from Palange’s G/L Magazine episode that highlighted Andrew Cunnan, the alleged murderer of Versace. Folio 2 contains newspaper clippings about Palange, an award, a Queen City Players scrapbook and a calendar of G/L Magazine editing schedules.
Photographs depict cast members and theatrical production work. Images of Anthony Palange consist of one adult portrait and several childhood family photographs.
Dates
- 1940-2012
Language of Materials
Material is in English.
Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open for research.
Box 16 (FF6), Box 21 (FF22 and FF23) are restricted until 2030.
Copyright
All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from material in the collection should be discussed with the appropriate librarian or archivist. Permission for publication may be given on behalf of the Denver Public Library as the owner of the physical item. It is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained by the customer. The Library does not assume any responsibility for infringement of copyright or publication rights of the manuscript held by the writer, heirs, donors, or executors. Reproduction restrictions are decided on a case-by-case basis.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Anthony Palange, Jr. was born September 17, 1942 in New Haven, Connecticut. His parents, Anthony Sr. and Thomasina Fusco had five children: Angelo, Thomas, Philomena, Darlene and Anthony, the oldest. Palange attended Hillhouse High School in New Haven and then transferred to East Haven High School where he graduated in June 1960.
By age sixteen, he completed his first novel titled Seasons. After high school, Palange, with his friend Anthony Santamauro, wrote and produced musicals. Palange also entered the Army from which he was honorably discharged in August 1964.
In 1967, Palange moved to California with aspirations to write for television. He almost sold two teleplays to the television series Voyage at the Bottom of the Sea and The Invaders, but ABC cancelled both series before his work could be produced. At the suggestion of his agent, Bess Barrows of the Barrows and Brand Agency, Palange returned to Connecticut to attend creative writing classes at the Herbert Berghoff Studio in New York City and at New Haven College. He also majored in communications at the University of New Haven in West Haven, Connecticut. In 1968 and 1969, Palange co-founded the Gateway Experimental Theater in New Haven, Connecticut to produce his plays.
After school, Palange worked for the Penn Central Railroad Company as a payroll and reports clerk from January 1969 to October 1970. He then worked for the town of East Haven as a tax office clerk from October 1971 to April 1973. Southern New England Telephone Company in Connecticut employed Palange from November 1974 until October 1979.
In 1979 and 1980, Im-Ho-Tep Productions hired Palange to write a screenplay titled Huntress, a deal that soured by the mid-1980s. Palange moved to Denver, Colorado where he found a job at Mountain Bell in March 1981. He experienced health problems and resigned in June 1984.
In the early 1990s, Palange started a gay and lesbian acting troupe in Denver named the Queen City Players. The Queen City Players performed many of Palange’s plays for broadcast on Public Access Television and on stage. He also produced G/L Magazine on Public Access Television, a show that dealt with gay and lesbian issues in Denver and Colorado.
In 1993, Palange filed a complaint against Denver Community Television (DCTV), Richard Kennehan and the City and County of Denver for censoring G/L Magazine Numbers 9 and 10. Despite the fact that Denver Community Television aired Jungle Fantasy three times in June 1992, Denver Community Television deemed a clip from it, used in another show, as inappropriate outside of its original context. The American Civil Liberties Union took Palange’s case, arguing that DCTV had violated Palange’s first amendment rights. Palange won the case.
In addition to his productions, Palange wrote a column for Ground Zero News in Colorado Springs on gay related happenings in Denver in the 1990s. He also wrote short stories and skits, plays, screenplays, operas, and novels. Apollo Books published Palange’s The Ultimate Weapon in 1971, a Vietnam War era novel. He self-published Jupiter the Thunderer in 2000.
Mr. Palange died June 3, 2013 at his home in Denver and was buried in Colorado.
Extent
31 Boxes
2 folios
1 PhotoBoxes
14 AVBoxes
1 OVBox
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift, Anthony Palange and Jim Zimmerman, June 1993, April 1996, April 1997, March 1999, September 2001, January 2003, October 2012, September 2013. The Gill Foundation provided funding for processing this collection.
General
Catalog record based on preliminary inventory.
- Correspondence. Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- G/L Magazine -- Archives.
- Gay authors -- Colorado -- Denver. Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Male authors, American -- Colorado -- Denver. Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Manuscripts for publication. Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Palange, Anthony, -- 1942- -- Archives.
- Personal papers. Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Videocassettes. Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the Denver Public Library, Western History and Genealogy Repository