Broadway Babies The People Who Made the American Musical

by Mordden, Ethan

• ISBN13: 9780195054255
• ISBN10: 0195054253
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1988-06-23
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Vividly recreating the unique pleasure of experiencing a song-and-dance show, Broadway Babies spotlights the men and women who made a difference in the development of American musical comedy. Mordden's account features such show people as Florenz Ziegfeld, Harold Prince, Bert Lahr, Gwen Verdon, Angela Lansbury, Victor Herbert, Liza Minnelli, and Stephen Sondheim, and such musicals as Sally , Oh Kay! , Anything Goes , Show Boat , Oklahoma! , Follies , Chicago , and countless others. While theatrical historians traditionally have emphasized the role of the authors of musicals, Mordden also examines the personal styles of the directors, choreographers, and producers, in order to demonstrate not only what the musical became but what it was . The volume includes an extensive discography--the first of its kind--which offers a virtually self-contained history of recorded show music.

Author Biography

Ethan Mordden has taught at Yale University and is the author of eighteen books, including The American Theatre, A Guide to Orchestral Music, Opera in the Twentieth Century, and A Guide to Opera Recording.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Broadway, 1900	p. 3
The Score	p. 7
The Urban Ethnic Emergence	p. 22
The Great Glorifier	p. 34
The Heroine	p. 49
The Top Banana	p. 58
The Book	p. 72
The New Style of Score	p. 81
The New Style of Heroine	p. 108
The Jazzmen	p. 121
The Choreographers	p. 130
The Musical Play	p. 138
A Newer Style of Heroine	p. 153
The Superdirectors	p. 165
The State of the Art	p. 182
A Selective Discography	p. 197
Index	p. 239
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