Samuel James Hume (June 14, 1885 – September 1, 1962) was an American dramatic director, producer, art museum director, and book dealer. Samuel Hume was born in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in 1885, the son of James B. Hume, a famous Wells Fargo detective. He attended Berkeley High School, graduating in 1904, and then the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

, where he played leading roles in student drama productions and received a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1908. He then traveled in Europe and studied modern European theater practices with Edward Craig in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

. Returning to the U.S., he attended

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

in 1912-14, where he studied in the playwriting workshop of

George Pierce Baker George Pierce Baker (April 4, 1866 – January 6, 1935) was a professor of English at Harvard and Yale and author of ''Dramatic Technique'', a codification of the principles of drama. Biography Baker graduated in the Harvard College class of 188 ...

, earned a master's degree, and organized the first exhibition of stagecraft in the U.S. The exhibition was presented in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

, New York,

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

, and

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

. From 1916 to 1918 Hume was director of the newly formed Arts and Crafts Theater in Detroit, Michigan, part of the

Little Theatre Movement As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theater as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. The Little Theatre Movement served to provide experimental centers for the dr ...

. He brought Sheldon Cheney, an old friend from Berkeley, to Detroit to launch ''Theater Arts'' magazine out of the Arts and Crafts Theater. In 1918 Hume returned to California to become assistant professor of dramatic literature and art at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...

where, in addition, he directed the

Greek Theatre Ancient Greek theatre was a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece from 700 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and religious place during this period, was its centre, where the theatre was ...

until 1924. In 1924–1925 he commissioned and produced ''Lexington,'' a left-leaning play by Sidney Coe Howard, in

Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs ...

. He then went to Europe and collaborated with Parisian architect and set designer Walter René Fuerst on the book ''Twentieth Century Stage Decoration''. In 1927 in Paris he met and married Portia Bell, a fellow Berkeley graduate who was studying sculpture with Antoine Bourdelle. This was a second marriage for both. After returning to Berkeley, the couple hired John Hudson Thomas to design a home in the Berkeley hills modeled after a medieval French cloister. It was named a Berkeley Landmark in 1985 and has been known as Hume Cloister or Hume Castle. Its 30-year owners placed it on the market for $5 million in April 2016."Magnificent Hume Castle in Berkeley hits market at $5 million"
''San Francisco Chronicle'', April 7, 2016. Samuel Hume was the director of the Berkeley Art Association and its Berkeley Art Museum from 1928 to 1932. At the same time he held the title of Director of Avocational Activities in the State of California Department of Education. In that role, he was quoted as saying that experience of the arts could help reduce juvenile delinquency. From about 1928 to 1936 he served as executive secretary for the California Council on Oriental Relations, advocating for immigration reform. He established At the Sign of the Palindrome, a rare book business specializing in books on art and theater and also selling art reproductions, first in his home and in a shop in downtown Berkeley in 1949. He coauthored ''Twentieth Century Stage Decoration'' (1928) and ''Theater and School'' (6 editions, 1932–47). Portia Bell Hume became a psychiatrist, taught at the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It con ...

and Berkeley, and established psychiatry clinics in both cities.

Research resources

Guide to the Samuel J. and Portia Bell Hume Papers
at

The Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

*"The Hume Cloister: A Commemorative Brochure Presented by the Berkeley Historical Society," 1999.
"Exhibition of Stagecraft," ''Harvard Crimson,'' October 6, 1914
*Ed Herny, Shelley Rideout and Katie Wadell, ''Berkeley Bohemia: Artists and Visionaries of the Early 20th Century'' (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2008), pp. 89–94.

References

External links

Samuel J. Hume Collection, 1946-1956
California State Library, California History Room. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hume, Samuel James American theatre managers and producers Harvard University alumni Businesspeople from San Francisco UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design alumni 1885 births 1962 deaths People from Berkeley, California American booksellers Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California) alumni University of California, San Francisco faculty 20th-century American businesspeople