The 34th annual Theatre Library Association Book Awards have been announced, with volumes on commedia dell'arte and Bing Crosby taking home prizes. The awards honor "authors of outstanding performing arts books."

Taking home the George Freedley Memorial Award is "Harlequin Unmasked: The Commedia Dell'Arte and Porcelain Sculpture" (Yale University Press) by Meredith Chilton. The Freedley Honorable Mention goes to Ron Jenkins' "Dario Fo & Franca Rame: Artful Laughter" (Aperture).

"Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams—The Early Years 1903-1940" (Little, Brown & Company) by Gary Giddons has won Theatre Library Association Award for excellence in writing on film and broadcasting. The Theatre Library Association Honorable Mention was awarded to James Sanders' "Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies" (Alfred A. Knopf).

The awards ceremony will take play on May 31 in the Bruno Walter Auditorium of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located at Lincoln Center. Thoroughly Modern Millie lyricist Dick Scanlan will present the prize to Sanders, while cabaret singer Mary Cleere Haran will hand out Giddons' trophy. Jenkins will accept her award from playwright A.R. Gurney and Clare Le Corbeiller, curator emerita of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will bestow the Freedley prize upon Chilton.

—By Robert Simonson