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The Shubert name has been synonymous with Broadway for almost as long as Broadway entertainment itself. In The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows: The Untold Tale of Ziegfeld's Rivals, author Jonas Westover investigates beyond the Shuberts' business empire into their early revues and the centrifugal role they played in developing American theatre as an art form.
The Shubert name has been synonymous with Broadway for almost as long as Broadway entertainment itself. With seventeen Broadway theatres including the Ambassador, the Music Box, and the Winter Garden, The Shubert Organization perpetuates brothers Lee and Jacob Shubert's business legacy. In The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows: The Untold Tale of Ziegfeld's Rivals, author Jonas Westover investigates beyond the Shuberts' business empire into their early revues and the centrifugal role they played in developing American theatre as an art form. The Shubert-produced revues, titled Passing Shows, were terrifically popular in the teens and twenties, consistently competing with Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies for the greatest numbers of stars, biggest spectacles, and ultimately the largest audiences. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows is the first-ever book to unpack the colorful history of the productions, delving into their stars, costumes, stagecraft, and orchestration in unprecedented detail. Providing a fresh and exciting window into American theatrical history, Westover traces the fascinating history of the Shuberts' revue series, presented annually from 1912-1924, and covers more broadly the glorious days of early Broadway. In addition to its compelling history of Broadway's Golden Age, The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows also provides a revisionary argument about the overarching history of the revue. Bolstered by a rich collection of documents in the Shubert Theater Archive, Westover argues against the popular misconception that the Shubert's competitor, producer Florenz Ziegfield - responsible for the better-known Follies - was the sole proprietor of Broadway audiences. As Westover proves, not only were the Passing Shows as popular as the Follies but also a key component in a history of the revue that is vastly more complex than previous scholarship has shown. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows brings to fruition years of original research and invaluable insights into the gilded formation of present day Broadway.
With the founding of the Shubert Organization some ninety years ago, the Shubert brothers set the stage for Broadway as we know it today. Indeed, their name has become virtually synonymous with the Great White Way. The heart of Manhattan's theatre district--Forty-forth and Forty-fifth Streets between Broadway and Eighth Avenue--is lined with monuments to their extraordinary careers, including the Imperial, Majestic, Booth, Plymouth, and Broadhurst theatres and, of course, Shubert Alley itself. Legendary for their eccentric behavior and their uncanny ability to turn a profit even during the industry's toughest times, the Shuberts are part and parcel of Broadway's colorful lore. In The Shuberts of Broadway, Brooks McNamara combs the holdings of the newly created Shubert Archive--a remarkable collection of some four million papers, playbills, architectural plans, photographs, press clips, scripts, costume designs, letters, and other Shubert memorabilia--to re-create the lives of Sam, Lee, and J. J. Shubert. In lively prose and more than 200 fully captioned illustrations, McNamara follows the Shuberts from their early years, when the teen-aged Sam became head of the box office at the Wieting Theatre in downtown Syracuse, through the building of their empire and the Broadway boom of the 1920s (when the Shuberts owned or operated 104 theatres and booked nearly a thousand more), and on to their last days, when their producing careers ended amid controversy. We see the often-stormy relations among the frail, charismatic Sam (who died in a train crash in 1905), the aloof Lee (dubbed "The Wooden Indian"), and their mercurial brother J.J., and their collective, continual battle against the Syndicate that dominated the theatre scene. Here we learn the real stories behind the popular entertainment that rolled off their theatrical assembly line and earned them fame: La Belle Paree, which featured Al Jolson at the Winter Garden; The Passing Show, a "girlie" revue that was full of such talents as Ed Wynn, Fred and Adele Astaire, George Jessel, and a chorus girl named Lucille Le Sueur, who later became known as Joan Crawford; Blossom Time, one of operetta's greatest hits; and The Student Prince, a theatrical bonanza composed by the great Sigmund Romberg. Filled with real-life plots, intrigues, and characters that capture the imagination, the story of the Shuberts is every bit as entertaining as the Broadway they helped to create.
Mr. Broadway was completed just one month before Gerald Schoenfeld's death in 2008 at the age of 84. Bringing the reader backstage, the long-term chairman of the Shubert Organization shares his triumphs and failures, sings praise, and settles scores. He recounts nightmarish tales of the Shuberts, themselves – the meanness of Lee, the madness of JJ, the turmoil surrounding John's personal life, and the drunken ineptitude of Lawrence Shubert Lawrence, Jr., the man who succeeded them and nearly brought the Shubert legacy to an ignominious end. An active participant in that legacy for over 50 years, Schoenfeld describes how he and his partner, Bernie Jacobs, saved the Shubert Organization, bringing some of Broadway's greatest hits to the stage – from A Chorus Line, Equus, and Amadeus to Pippin, Les Misérables, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Godspell, Ain't Misbehavin', Dreamgirls, Dancin', Sunday in the Park with George, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Heidi Chronicles, The Gin Game, Miss Saigon, and Chess.
Though Meredith Willson is best remembered for The Music Man, there is a great deal more to his career as a composer and lyricist. In The Big Parade, author Dominic McHugh uses newly uncovered letters, manuscripts, and production files to reveal Willson's unusual combination of experiences in his pre-Broadway career that led him to compose The Music Man.
A lively illustrated history that reveals how the movie business has fascinated, scandalized, and socialized the Twin Cities and its people.
Few musicals have had the impact of Lerner and Loewe's timeless classic My Fair Lady. Sitting in the middle of an era dominated by such seminal figures as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, and Leonard Bernstein, My Fair Lady not only enjoyed critical success similar to that of its rivals but also had by far the longest run of a Broadway musical up to that time. From 1956 to 1962, its original production played without a break for 2,717 performances, and the show went on to be adapted into one of the most successful movie musicals of all time in 1964, when it won eight Academy Awards. Internationally, the show also broke records in London, and the original production toured to Russia at the height of the Cold War in an attempt to build goodwill. It remains a staple of the musical theater canon today, an oft-staged show in national, regional, and high school theaters across the country. Using previously-unpublished documents, author Dominic McHugh presents a completely new, behind-the-scenes look at the five-year creation of the show, revealing the tensions and complex relationships that went into its making. McHugh charts the show from the aftermath of the premiere of Shaw's Pygmalion and the playwright's persistent refusal to allow it to be made into a musical, through to the quarrel that led lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe to part ways halfway through writing the show, up to opening night and through to the present. This book is the first to shed light on the many behind-the-scenes creative discussions that took place from casting decisions all the way through the final months of frantic preparation leading to the premiere in March 1956. McHugh also traces sketches for the show, looking particularly at the lines cut during the rehearsal and tryout periods, to demonstrate how Lerner evolved the relationship between Higgins and Eliza in such a way as to maintain the delicate balance of ambiguity that characterizes their association in the published script. He looks too at the movie version, and how the cast album and subsequent revivals have influenced the way in which the show has been received. Overall, this book explores why My Fair Lady continues to resonate with audiences worldwide more than fifty years after its premiere.
Bob Fosse (1927-1987) is recognized as one of the most significant figures in post-World War II American musical theater. With his first Broadway musical, The Pajama Game in 1954, the "Fosse style" was already fully developed, with its trademark hunched shoulders, turned-in stance, and stuttering, staccato jazz movements. Fosse moved decisively into the role of director with Redhead in 1959 and was a key figure in the rise of the director-choreographer in the Broadway musical. He also became the only star director of musicals of his era--a group that included Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion, Michael Kidd, and Harold Prince--to equal his Broadway success in films. Following his unprecedented triple crown of show business awards in 1973 (an Oscar for Cabaret, Emmy for Liza with a Z, and Tony for Pippin), Fosse assumed complete control of virtually every element of his projects. But when at last he had achieved complete autonomy, his final efforts, the film Star 80 and the musical Big Deal, written and directed by Fosse, were rejected by audiences and critics. A fascinating look at the evolution of Fosse as choreographer and director, Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical considers Fosse's career in the context of changes in the Broadway musical theater over four decades. It traces his early dance years and the importance of mentors George Abbott and Jerome Robbins on his work. It examines how each of the important women in his adult life--all dancers--impacted his career and influenced his dance aesthetic. Finally, the book investigates how his evolution as both artist and individual mirrored the social and political climate of his era and allowed him to comfortably ride a wave of cultural changes.
Over half century ago the society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children complained to Mayor Van Wyck, of New York, that Joe Keaton, a vaudeville actor, was brutally mistreating his five-year old son. At each afternoon and evening performance the child, billed as “The Human Mop”, was slammed on the floor, hurled into the wings, and sometimes banged into bass drums. Unable to find a bruise or scratch on the lad, Mayor Van Wyck refused to ban the act. The “Human Mop” bounced on to worldwide fame as Buster Keaton, one of this century’s greatest comedians. In this intimate autobiography Buster Keaton tells his whole personal and professional story, beginning with his colourful and exciting childhood as the undentable tot in the “Three Keatons” whose proudest boast was having the rowdiest, roughest act in vaudeville. Buster has played with all the great ones, from George M. Cohen and Bojangles Robinson and Al Jolson to Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan and Red Skelton, during his sixty years as a star in vaudeville, silent and talking pictures, night clubs and television. Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle got him into the movies and taught him how to throw a custard pie. Buster could not even keep slapstick out of his eleven months as a draftee in our World War I army. He came out to help create the Golden Age of Comedy with his friends Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Arbuckle, Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops. Marital troubles and alcoholism once got Buster down, but could not keep him down. MY WONDERFUL WORLD OF SLAPSTICK was written with the collaboration of Charles Samuels, co-author of His Eye Is On the Sparrow, Ethel Waters’ best-selling autobiography. Buster Keaton’s Life Story will enchant and thrill all those who enjoy looking past the glitter and the grease paint into a magnificent performer’s mind and heart.