A CRITICAL COMPANION TO THE

AMERICAN STAGE MUSICAL

Elizabeth L. Wollman is Associate Professor of Music at Baruch College in

New York City, USA . She is the author of The Theater Will Rock: A History of
the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig and Hard Times: The Adult Musical in
1970s New York City, as well as many articles and book chapters.

i
Also available in the Critical Companions series from Bloomsbury Methuen
Drama:

BRITISH MUSICAL THEATRE SINCE 1950

Robert Gordon, Olaf Jubin, and Millie Taylor

BRITISH THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE 1900–1950

Rebecca D’Monté

DISABILITY THEATRE AND MODERN DRAMA: RECASTING

MODERNISM
Kirsty Johnston

MODERN ASIAN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE 1900–2000

Kevin J. Wetmore, Siyuan Liu, and Erin B. Mee

THE PLAYS OF SAMUEL BECKETT

Katherine Weiss

THE THEATRE OF ANTHONY NEILSON

Trish Reid

THE THEATRE OF EUGENE O’NEILL

Kurt Eisen

THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Brenda Murphy

THE THEATRE OF TOM MURPHY: PLAYWRIGHT ADVENTURER

Nicholas Grene

VERSE DRAMA IN ENGLAND, 1900–2015: ART MODERNITY AND

THE NATIONAL STAGE
Irene Morra

For a full listing, please visit www.bloomsbury.com/series/critical-companions/

ii
A CRITICAL COMPANION TO THE
AMERICAN STAGE MUSICAL

Elizabeth L. Wollman

Series Editors: Patrick Lonergan and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

iii
 Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Imprint previously known as Methuen Drama

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

London New York
WC 1B 3 DP NY 10018
UK USA

www.bloomsbury.com

BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published 2017

© Elizabeth L. Wollman and contributors, 2017

Elizabeth L. Wollman has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on

or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN : HB : 978-1-472-51338-0
PB : 978-1-472-51325-0
ePDF : 978-1-472-51388-5
eBook: 978-1-472-51048-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Series: Critical Companions

Cover image: Crazy for You (Shubert Theatre, New York, 1992).
(© Joan Marcus Photography)

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com.
Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events
and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

iv
For my students and my teachers

v
vi
CONTENTS

Acknowledgements x
Introduction xi

1 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of) a Nation: Stage

Entertainment in a New Land 1
The Colonial Era 2
After the Revolution 5
The Bowery and the growing class divide 7
Blackface minstrelsy 9
The Civil War and the decline of minstrelsy 13
Union Square and Tin Pan Alley 15
Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Black Crook 17

2 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age 23

Burlesque 23
Vaudeville (with a side serving of operetta) 25
The Gilded Age: The entertainment industry and consolidation 30
A new theater district in Times Square 32
The Theatrical Syndicate grows more powerful 34
Tin Pan Alley and the theater industry join forces 35
Tricky terminology 37
Harrigan and Hart, Weber and Fields, and George M. Cohan 38
Black performers on Broadway 42

3 The Early Twentieth Century 51

The Ziegfeld Follies 51
The demise of the Syndicate: Enter the Shuberts 54
The First World War and ASCAP 56
A new generation of composers and lyricists 58
The Actors’ Equity strike of 1919 61
The Roaring Twenties 63
Shuffle Along 65
Show Boat 70

vii
Contents

4 The Great Depression to the Second World War 77

Business on Broadway in troubling times 79
Broadway musicals: Boom and bust 82
The show must go on: Depression-Era revues 84
Book musicals gain weight 87
George and Ira Gershwin 88
The Cradle Will Rock 94
Cole Porter and Anything Goes 98
Rodgers and Hart and Pal Joey 101

5 The Second World War to 1960 109

The Second World War and popular culture 109
The war and Broadway 111
Rodgers and Hammerstein and the “birth” of the integrated
musical 112
Social integration through the war years 117
The postwar era 121
Postwar Times Square 123
Rodgers and Hammerstein after the war 125
Postwar musicals not by Rodgers and Hammerstein 128

6 We’ve Surely Got Trouble: The 1960s and 1970s 139

The rise of youth culture and the decline of Tin Pan Alley 140
Broadway courts the new youth culture 142
New competition from beyond Broadway 144
The concept musical 145
Hair: Enter the rock musical 149
The 1970s 151
The Broadway musical in the “Me” Decade 152
New directions and new diversity on Broadway 157
Broadway and the financial crisis 159

7 The Megamusical to Hamilton 163

Broadway in the 1980s 163
Depictions of difference in the 1980s 164
Enter the megamusical 167
The 1990s 172
The renovation of Times Square 173
The musical in the 1990s 176

viii
 Contents

A new century: From the aughts to the teens 178

Broadway in and after crisis 179
Broadway today: Reflections of contemporary media, culture,
and society 180

8 Critical Perspectives 187

Putting It Together: A Step-by-Step Look at Musicals from the
Page to the Stage 187
Robert Meffe
Making Musicals for Serious Pleasure 198
Stacy Wolf
Off Off Off Off Broadway: Musical Development Out of
Town and Regionally 214
Laura MacDonald
Today, Broadway; Tomorrow, the World: The “American”
Musical and Globalization 225
Jessica Sternfeld
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying the Stage Musical 237
Elizabeth Titrington Craft and Joanna Dee Das

Notes 251
Bibliography 261
Index 273

ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for the enthusiasm, support, and advice I have received as I

have worked on this project. My thanks to the members of the Musical
Theater Forum, the Fine and Performing Arts Department at Baruch College,
and the Theater Department at the CUNY Graduate Center. Thanks in
particular to Shane Breaux, Ryan Donovan, John Graziano, Alosha Grinenko,
Stefanie Jones, Jennifer Jones Wilson, Ray Knapp, Brian Murphy, Carol Oja,
Gillian Rodger, David Savran, and Stacy Wolf for answering specific
questions or directing me to particular sources at various points along the
way.
At Baruch, Skip Dietrich, Karen and Bob Freedman, Gil Harel, Leonard
Sussman, Anne Swartz, and Zoë Sheehan-Saldaña lent especial support.
At Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, my thanks to Mark Dudgeon, Susan
Furber, Emily Hockley, Patrick Lonergan, and Kevin Wetmore. I am grateful
for Daniel Gundlach, who is a deft and insightful indexer, and for Merv
Honeywood, who oversaw production of this volume.
My love and appreciation to my extended family and my friends on the
OP. And last but never least, my profound gratitude to Andy, Paulina, and
Pip for being so nice to come home to.

x
INTRODUCTION

As its title might imply, A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical
is meant to serve as a companion to the many other fine books that survey
the history of the American stage musical as it has developed, mostly on, but
also off Broadway and across the United States. To that end, I have written
this book to complement, not compete with, the extant musical theater
histories that almost overwhelmingly trace the history of the Broadway
musical with primary emphasis on the genre’s structure, style, and aesthetic
development. This book emphasizes instead the American stage musical as
an ever-adapting commercial entertainment form that is the product of an
endlessly shifting social, cultural, political, and economic environment.
From the Civil War through the early twenty-first century, the American
stage musical has remained a vibrant, viable entertainment form. Yet it has
not managed to survive devastating economic and political crises, radical
sociocultural shifts, and the rise of far more modern, inexpensive, mass-
mediated popular entertainments by accident, luck, or inherent brilliance.
Rather, like all commercial entertainment forms, the musical theater has by
necessity repeatedly reinvented itself to fit the needs of its ever-changing
audience. Were this not the case, a war or severe economic downturn would
have easily killed it off years ago. Or, even more likely, it would have become
extinct with the advent of film, or the record player, or television, or the
Internet. But the American stage musical lives on and, in recent years, has
even grown in worldwide popularity. This book, then, is more about how the
genre has developed, adapted, and survived than it is a study of the various
stylistic or aesthetic ingredients that make up its canon.
And yet A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical is hardly a
radical departure, nor does it aim to be an alternative history. Like a vast
majority of books about musicals, this one follows chronologically, from the
genre’s earliest influences in the Colonial Era, to its formation in the post-
Civil War years and early twentieth century, to the present. Like other
histories, too, this one examines the ways the American stage musical has
drawn from outside influences, such as blackface minstrelsy, vaudeville, film,
television, jazz, rock music, and hip-hop.

xi
Introduction

Finally, like the others, this book focuses for the most part on musicals
that have run on Broadway. There is good reason for this: plenty of musicals
have been performed across the country (and increasingly across the globe),
but New York’s commercial theater district, located in the Times Square
neighborhood of midtown Manhattan, continues to house the largest
concentration of commercial theaters in the nation. It is also home to the
industry that controls them and exerts strong influence on the genre as it is
developed elsewhere. New York City’s storied theater district, known
informally as “Broadway” due to its proximity to the famous avenue that cuts
up through Times Square, has since the early twentieth century staged
productions that have both mirrored and helped shape American popular
culture. The fact that “Broadway” is synonymous with “the American stage
musical” is no accident—nor can New York City’s influence on the growth
and development of the American stage musical be underestimated.
Where this book departs, however, is in its attempt to take more of a
bird’s-eye view of the genre than most other books do. While most of
Broadway’s “greatest hits,” from Show Boat to Oklahoma! and A Chorus Line
to Hamilton, are detailed, and while a handful of Off Broadway productions
are too, none is necessarily analyzed closely for style, score, or overall
aesthetics. Instead, this book turns its lens on the outside forces—whether
cultural, political, social or economic—that have helped shape the musical
into one of the US ’s premier mainstream commercial entertainment forms.
A book about the American stage musical that does not devote itself to
close readings of landmark Broadway productions might seem an odd
departure from the norm, but this is precisely the point of the book: in the
roughly two decades that musical theater studies has developed as a vibrant,
interdisciplinary field of study, many excellent books about the genre have
been published to meet the demand at colleges and universities across the
world. These books range broadly in style and approach, but most trace
the growth of the Broadway or Broadway-style musical by moving from
one important production, composer and lyricist team, or innovative
producer or director to the next, pausing each time to analyze representative
musical numbers, describe aspects of a show’s structure or style, or unpack
notable scenes.
There are, in short, plenty of studies of the stage musical that focus on the
shows themselves; I have referred to as many as I have been able to get my
hands on in the course of researching and writing this book. I am grateful
for the insights of fine scholars such as Gerald Mast (Can’t Help Singin’: The
American Musical on Stage and Screen, 1987), Gerald Bordman (American

xii
 Introduction

Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, 2001), John Bush Jones (Our Musicals,

Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre, 2003), Ray
Knapp (The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, 2005;
The American Musical and the Formation of Personal Identity, 2006), Larry
Stempel (Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater, 2010), Stacy
Wolf (Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical, 2011),
and James Leve (American Musical Theater, 2016), among others. These
scholars’ surveys have served countless undergraduate and graduate
students; they have served their contemporaries as well. I have learned a
great deal from the books I have turned to while researching this one, and
have no desire to attempt to supplant them. Instead, I hope this book will
contribute to a growing wealth of knowledge about the musical theater by
examining it from different, complementary angles.
In considering the many external factors that have influenced the
development of the American musical, I hope to help fill in gaps, as well as
to address questions that I regularly field in nearly two decades of teaching.
In my experience, most students who take courses on musicals come away
with a strong grasp of the genre’s most important creators, characteristic
structures and stylistic elements. Over the course of a semester, they learn,
for example, about 32-bar song form, the plot of Oklahoma!, what an “I
Want” song is, and the fact that Cats is, for the most part, about cats that sing
and dance. They know who Richard Rodgers and Ethel Merman were, about
the list songs Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim wrote, and about why
George M. Cohan and Lin-Manuel Miranda matter.
Fewer, however, come away with a clear sense of how various forces help
keep the stage musical alive and kicking. I am frequently interrupted during
lectures about Show Boat, George Gershwin, or Rent with questions about
how the theater industry works, why it is centered in New York, what a
preview period is, or how musicals function politically, culturally, or in
competition with other forms of entertainment. In an attempt to answer at
least some of these questions, this book explores the relationship that the
Broadway musical—whether as a fully developed genre or as a series of early
influences—has had with American commerce, society, and (popular)
culture. The body of the text considers the stage musical’s history and
development chronologically, with an eye toward the sociocultural, artistic,
and commercial trends that have influenced and altered it. The contributed
essays at the end of the book provide additional insights about how musicals
are conceived and developed, how they function on the amateur, American
regional, and international levels, and how they are studied by scholars.

xiii
Introduction

No entertainment product exists in a vacuum, and thus, the American

stage musical is neither merely a succession of openings and closings nor a
series of scripts, stars, and scores. I hope this book will help students engage
with larger questions about the American stage musical as an ever-changing
art form that is forever adapting to the needs of the world around it.

xiv
CHAPTER 1
THE BIRTH OF (THE POPULAR CULTURE
OF) A NATION: STAGE ENTERTAINMENT
IN A NEW LAND

Over the course of its hundred-plus years of development, the American

stage musical has grown into an international entertainment commodity.
There are, of course, still always plenty of stage musicals to be found in
New York City’s Times Square, the commercial theater district located
at the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching roughly
from West 42nd Street to West 48th Street.1 Since the early twentieth
century, this legendary rough-and-tumble neighborhood has cradled the
development of the entertainment form that has become known, even as
it has globalized, as—the “Broadway musical.” For over a century, Times
Square has been both spiritual home to the American stage musical and
geographical home to the commercial theater industry in the United
States, which is one of many reasons why the neighborhood is so world-
famous.
The stage musical is distinguished herein from latter-day film, television,
and Internet musicals, all of which are mass-mediated entertainments. Part
of the appeal of stage musicals is their very liveness: they are performed by
actors on a stage before live audiences, who often pay handsomely for the
experience.
Yet the advent of mass media has allowed the American stage musical
to grow well beyond the physical confines of Times Square. Today, many
stage musicals are conceived, developed, and performed not only in Times
Square, but across North America and increasingly in countries around the
globe. It is now possible for audiences to see American stage musicals that
have been translated into local languages and cast with local performers, in
cities as diverse as Seoul, Port-of-Spain, Hamburg, and Minsk. It has become
newly possible for people across the globe to see or hear countless American
stage musicals without ever once having to travel to Times Square. Stage
musicals may not be a true mass medium, but the genre has, over decades,
adapted to emulate more easily mass-mediated forms for its own purposes
and survival.

1
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Nevertheless, the American stage musical remains spiritually—if not

always geographically or physically—tied to a minuscule segment of
Broadway, the 33-mile avenue that runs up the length of Manhattan, through
the Bronx, and into Westchester County. After all, “American stage musical”
is hardly a household term; you might even have been wondering what,
exactly, I have been talking about in these opening paragraphs. Rather,
the expression that instantly connotes the genre is “Broadway musical.” To
call Broadway just another street in New York would be like calling Paris
just another city in Europe or Hollywood just another neighborhood
in Los Angeles. Broadway is not only a physical location but also an
international brand. And a Broadway musical is now a global commodity
(Traub 2005, 239).
Yet well before terms like “international brand” or “global commodity”
entered the vernacular, there were myriad reasons that this single avenue—
really, just a teeny, tiny segment of it—became so closely associated with the
commercial stage in the US . Keep this in mind, though, because we have
miles to go, and a lot of practicing to do, before we can make it to Broadway.
Before we get there, we will need to trace the earliest influences on the
American stage musical, keeping an eye on the birth of the commercial
theater industry in the process.

The Colonial Era

Named the Wickquasgeck Trail by the Lenape Indians, a well-trod

thoroughfare that initially ran fifteen miles up the length of Manhattan into
the Bronx was used for trade with other tribes and, later, with Dutch, French,
and British settlers. The Dutch, who arrived in New York in the early
seventeenth century under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company,
had several names for the path: Heere Straat (“High Street”), Heere Wegh
(“High Way”) or Breedeweg (“Broadway”). When the British took New
Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the name of the street was Anglicized,
occasionally as “Broadway Street,” but usually just as “Broadway,” which was
the name that stuck.
The only road traversing the island of Manhattan for some hundred years
after the arrival of Europeans, Broadway remained an important locus as
New York grew into a colony. Churches, municipal buildings, taverns, stables,
slaughterhouses, shops, prisons, and a site for public executions sprang up
along the avenue as the city developed northward. Largely absent through

2
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

the seventeenth century, however, was the one commercial enterprise

Broadway would become most famous for: the theater.
There is not a lot of information on theater in the early Colonial Era.
Presumably, the earliest colonists were so busy trying to survive that staging
popular entertainments was pretty low on their list of priorities. If theatrical
events were staged at all, they were probably amateur productions, usually
with religious themes. The first physical structure intended for use as a
theater was erected around 1716 in Williamsburg, Virginia, which had been
settled in 1638. Performances at this venue were typically staged by local
amateurs, or by students attending the nearby College of William and Mary,
which had been established in 1693 (Stempel 2010, 21).
Initially, the northern colonies were stricter than Virginia when it came to
staged entertainments. Dutch Calvinists in New Amsterdam, for example,
considered theater to be sacrilegious. Settlers in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
and Delaware agreed, so all those colonies passed laws prohibiting theatrical
performance. Yet as the Colonial Era progressed, anti-theater laws were
increasingly ignored by both citizens and officials.2 Settlers arrived by the
boatload on a near-daily basis, and as the colonies grew, a growing population
decided that the occasional theatrical production was hardly offensive
enough to complain about.
In 1735, advertisements in the South Carolina Gazette alerted Charleston
residents to performances of the ballad opera Flora, or, Hob in the Well at a
local makeshift theater. The production proved so popular that the city of
Charleston built the Dock Street Theatre, which was the first permanent,
professional theater building in the country. The Dock Street was inaugurated
with an encore production of Flora which, in turn, spurred a national craze
for ballad operas. Enormously popular in England, ballad operas—of which
John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) is perhaps most famous—were satirical
operas in English, featuring songs that were either previously composed or
newly written in popular styles, and thus recognizable by much of the
audience.
As interest in the theater grew across the colonies through the early
1700s, itinerant or “strolling” companies, comprised of actors and musicians,
began to travel from town to town on horse-drawn carts in a huge (and
probably maddeningly slow) loop. These companies would stop in one town,
perform for a few days or weeks, and then move on to another; no American
city yet had the funds or population to support permanent performing
companies. As strolling companies grew more popular, many chose one city
or town to use as a home-base from which they traveled slightly less arduous

3
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

distances (Preston 2008, 4). Because colonists who disapproved of the theater
on religious grounds often tended to be less offended by music, many strolling
companies became expert at combining the two, performing, for example,
segments from opera, instrumental works, dramatic readings, and excerpts
from well-known plays in the course of a single evening (Mates 1962, 6–7).
Because a certain hybridity was established in American theatrical
entertainment from the country’s infancy, the approach to genre as it
developed through the Colonial Era was notably loose. Strolling companies
and their audiences showed little concern for rigid definitions, or for keeping
various styles of performance distinct from one another. Through much of
the eighteenth century, it was not at all unusual for a night at the theater to
include both a “play” and an “afterpiece.” A “play” could refer to a Shakespeare
tragedy, Restoration comedy, opera, ballet, or some combination thereof. An
“afterpiece” was usually a short, upbeat sketch with songs accompanied by
orchestra, which was performed at the end of the evening. Just about every
program in every theater in every colony bridged highbrow and lowbrow
tastes, frequently transforming comedy into tragedy and then back again as
the evening unfolded (Lewis 2003, 8–9).
Colonial New York was established as a center for trade, so through the
late-seventeenth century, the arts initially took a back-seat to the businesses
developing on Wall Street, and the city’s cultural output lagged far behind
that of other east coast cities such as Philadelphia and Boston. Yet a demand
in New York for entertainment grew by the turn of the century (Charyn
2003, 26–7). In 1732, a two-story wooden structure known alternately as the
New Theatre or the Theatre in Nassau Street opened on Nassau between
Maiden Lane and John Street, just west of Broadway. This theater probably
also functioned as a brewery, warehouse, or both. When it was used for live
entertainment, it could seat about 280 people. At first, the space featured
infrequent, and usually amateur, performances. Yet on March 5, 1750, it
hosted New York’s first documented professional theater production:
Shakespeare’s Richard III , performed by a troupe visiting from England
(Frick and LoMonaco 1995, 1165).
By this point, New York was home to approximately 13,000 people—not
yet enough to justify a permanent theater company, but certainly enough to
keep visiting ones busy and well compensated.3 The arrival in New York of
theater impresario David Douglass in the late 1750s led to the establishment
of more theaters in lower Manhattan. Douglass’s Theatre in John Street
(1767), which could seat 750, became a popular venue until it was demolished
in 1798 (ibid., 1167).

4
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

In 1774, the Continental Congress resolved to curtail all activities that

distracted from the goals of the American Revolution, which commenced
the following year. Professional theater activity in the colonies slowed
significantly, and strolling companies were banished (Preston 2008, 5). After
the war, restrictions against professional theater were lifted; President
Washington made a point of attending shows in New York and Philadelphia,
thereby encouraging citizens of the newly independent nation to do the
same (Kenrick 2008, 51). Strolling companies established before the war
came out of exile (Preston 2008, 5), theaters rose across the nation, and for
the first time, permanent theater companies and orchestras did, too. The
opportunities these new venues provided brought many European musicians
and thespians to the new country (Preston 2008, 5).

After the Revolution

The spike in venues across the country was the result of a concerted effort to
define the United States as culturally distinct from the European nations
that had colonized it and that continued to exert strong influence on its
popular arts. More practically, it also reflected a surge in population. Between
1789 and 1840, the population of the country grew from roughly four
million to seventeen million, and with this nearly fourfold increase came an
equally sharp rise in the demand for diversified entertainment.4
New York City’s postwar growth was especially remarkable. The city’s
population, roughly 12,000 at the end of the war, doubled two years later
(Burrows and Wallace 1999, 270). Already the most populous city in the US
by the time of the first census in 1790, New York had about 300,000 citizens
by 1840 (Jackson 1995, 923).5 Manhattan absorbed newcomers by developing
northward, using Broadway as its “commercial and cultural spine” (Kenrick
2008, 51). Yet during the Federalist Era, the hub of the city remained in lower
Manhattan, where a number of new theaters—the Park, Chatham Garden,
and Bowery—were erected around the turn of the century (Frick and
LoMonaco 1995, 1166).
Federalist-Era audiences were larger than Colonial ones, but offerings
remained similar, though the performances were more often by resident and
not traveling companies. In a single night, early-nineteenth-century-
audiences might have been treated to a bill featuring a drama, symphony,
dance piece, and opera, followed by a short musical afterpiece over the
course of four or five hours. American performance venues had yet to be

5
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

devoted to specific genres. There were no opera houses, concert venues or

recital halls, nor was there sufficient demand to justify their creation
(Bordman 2001, 7). As in the Colonial Era, Federalist-Era theater productions
might seem, by contemporary standards, numbingly long and disorganized.
Spectators at the time did not mind, however; they were, after all, in no rush
to get home in time to watch the evening news or late show.
It is perhaps fitting, considering the copious amount of genre mixing,
that the early- to mid-nineteenth century saw a rise in popularity of the
melodrama. Melodramas blended heightened drama and music to tell
“unambiguous tales of right and wrong that appealed directly to the
emotions.” Usually, a lot of action was involved, though there was not as
much attention paid to character development. In melodrama, actors playing
two-dimensional characters did not typically sing; rather, the genre relied on
“action music” that underscored what the characters were saying as they
spoke, as well as to express what they felt or thought when they were not
speaking. Like many other theater genres to become popular in the new
world, melodrama originated in England, but was quickly adapted for
American audiences (Stempel 2010, 39–40). The most popular American
melodramas, the music to which has been lost, included William H. Smith’s
The Drunkard (1844), George L. Aiken’s stage adaptation of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin (1852), and Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859).
Just as genres were mixed on the stages of American theaters, audiences
were comparatively well-blended, too. During the Federalist Era, theaters and
genres were not as strongly associated with class or race as they would become.
For example, because of its size and the fact that it initially had little in the way
of competition, the Park Theatre was in some respects an egalitarian place in
that it admitted anyone who could purchase a ticket. The egalitarianism,
however, only went so far: working-class white men grabbed tickets for the pit
at 50 cents a pop, upperclassmen escorted wives and daughters to private
boxes that cost twice as much to occupy,6 and lowerclassmen, prostitutes and
black patrons paid 25 cents to sit in the balcony (Erenberg 1981, 15).
Regardless of class or background, late-eighteenth-century-American
theater audiences tended to behave more like fans at contemporary sports
events than do most present-day theatergoers (Preston 2008, 6). During any
show in any American city, prostitutes would conduct business in the
balcony, while the men they propositioned shouted at the actors and flung a
highly imaginative variety of food items (along with the occasional handful
of pebbles) at performers they disliked. The upper-class box-holders, often
more interested in seeing and being seen than in what the actors were doing,

6
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

chatted, flirted, and drank (Lott 1993, 6). When spectators in the pit were not
fending off pickpockets, dodging the hot wax dripping from candles in the
chandeliers overhead, or sidestepping the food items (and pebbles) that flew
toward the stage, they shouted requests at the musicians and actors. Less
frequently, they would climb onto the stage to confront the performers
(Burrows and Wallace 1999, 404). The copious amounts of alcohol that were
available during performances only encouraged crowds to grow rowdier as
the evening progressed. By many accounts, the amount of tobacco smoke
generated during a typical performance made the air truly “revolting” (Mates
1962, 68). Fistfights and riots broke out among spectators often enough that
many theater boxes were designed to lock from the inside, and had extra exit
doors that led the wealthiest patrons safely and quickly into the alleyway
(ibid., 66).

The Bowery and the growing class divide

In the early nineteenth century, the Bowery in lower Manhattan became

New York City’s most important entertainment center. A vital commercial
neighborhood that had grown around the city’s main route to Boston, the
Bowery was attractive, if rather smelly because of the many slaughterhouses
and tanneries concentrated there. In the 1820s, a group of local businessmen,
hoping to rid the Bowery of its alienating stench, convinced Henry Astor,
owner of the storied Bull’s Head Tavern and several surrounding abattoirs,
to relocate his establishments to the rural area east of what is now Gramercy
Park. Restaurants, taverns, and theaters were subsequently lured to the
newly empty, newly pleasant-smelling Bowery (Burrows and Wallace 1999,
475).
In 1826, the country’s largest theater to date was erected on the site where
the Bull’s Head had stood. Modeled after a Greek temple, the theater had
3,500 seats, faux marble pillars, gold- and red-painted private boxes, and
gaslight, which was both a major innovation and the reason for the theater’s
remarkable flammability. Dubbed the New York Theatre when it opened and
renamed the Bowery Theatre in 1828 after the first time it caught fire, the
theater was rebuilt after fires in 1836, 1838, and 1845. It finally burned to the
ground for good in 1929 (Wilmeth 2007, 123).
With this namesake theater at its heart, the thriving neighborhood
catered largely if not exclusively to the working-class New Yorkers populating
the adjoining neighborhoods. In its heyday, the Bowery boasted bustling

7
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

oyster bars, brothels, cockfighting pits, taverns, restaurants, and gambling

houses. It also established itself as an important theater center.
Before the mid-nineteenth century, there had been no attempt to
centralize the city’s theaters, which had traditionally cropped up wherever
space allowed and demand justified (Burrows and Wallace 1999, 475–6). But
the Bowery’s many newly empty slaughterhouses and barns were quickly
and easily refurbished as theaters of varying sizes, all of which began offering
different kinds of entertainments (Lewis 2003, 13–14).
When it was not on fire, the Bowery Theatre developed a clientele that
changed slowly with the neighborhood. At first, it appealed to upper-class
patrons with a roster of stars visiting from Europe. These often performed
alone or as lead characters in Shakespeare plays, farces, sentimental domestic
dramas, operas, classical dances, or a combination thereof. Yet the size of
the Bowery worked against it in its failure to draw working-class audiences,
and thus to frequently fill to capacity. Within a few years, programming at
the Bowery was adjusted to include aquatic displays, equestrian events,
novelty acts, and melodramas, which lured a more diversified clientele.
Eventually, programming at the theater gave itself over entirely to working-
class patrons.
The changing face of the Bowery Theatre and the neighborhood
surrounding it relates to profound social changes that occurred in the US
between the mid-1820s and late 1840s. At this point, an “unprecedented
separation and discrete self-definition of classes” took place among members
of the bourgeoisie, middle, and working classes, all of whom began to see
themselves as economically and culturally distinct from one another. The
solidification of the American class structure had direct impact on, and was
reflected in, the development of American popular entertainment (Lott
1993, 69–70). While the country’s elite continued to look to and borrow
from Europe for its entertainment, there arose a working-class culture that
instead began to glorify “American democracy and the average white man,”
and to self-consciously distance itself from anything hinting at old-world,
effete aristocracy (Toll 1974, 3–4). Through the nineteenth century, the
country saw the increased segregation not just of audiences, but of actors
and theatrical styles (Levine 1988, 56–7). The growing class divide was only
exacerbated by the 1849 Astor Place riots, which reflected the extent to
which upper-and lower-class taste cultures had diverged by mid-century.
In 1847, a group of wealthy Manhattanites decided to raise money for a
new opera house on Lafayette Street between Astor Place and East 8th Street.
Designed exclusively for the upper classes, the Astor Opera House made

8
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

most seats available by subscription only. The venue imposed a dress code
demanding that patrons be clean-shaven and very expensively dressed
(Burrows and Wallace 1999, 724, 762).
In May 1849, the British actor William Macready headlined at the
Astor in Macbeth. Macready had a strong upper-class fan base in America,
but also a public rivalry with the emotive New York-born actor Edwin
Forrest, whose fervent patriotism and outspokenness had made him a
working-class hero and one of the Bowery’s first celebrities (Levine 1988,
63). On the first night that Macready appeared at the Opera House, his very
presence generated such hostility among Forrest’s working-class fans that
the city’s new mayor, Caleb Smith Woodhull, ordered 350 members of the
city’s militia and 250 policemen to guard the Astor for subsequent
performances.
Infuriated by the excessive response, some 10,000 people amassed outside
the theater for the next performance (Burrows and Wallace 1999, 763).
When the crowd on the street began throwing bricks and stones, the military,
for the first time in American history, fired into the crowd (Bernstein 1990,
149). When the ensuing riot ended, eighteen people were dead; four more
would succumb to their injuries in the following week. Over 150 people
were injured, and 117 people, a vast majority of them working-class men,
were arrested (Burrows and Wallace 1999, 764).
Order was quickly restored, but New York City and its theaters were
permanently changed. So was the face of the burgeoning entertainment
industry, which had long approached the population of the country as one
unified mass. After the Astor Place riots, American entertainment and its
audiences became increasingly fragmented (Toll 1976, 21–3). The Astor
Opera House, now tarnished in the eyes of many New Yorkers, was sold and
eventually demolished. The upper classes moved further uptown to the
newly affluent Union Square for their theatrical entertainment, while the
Bowery continued to cultivate a working-class clientele.

Blackface minstrelsy

It was in the Bowery, New York’s own “lower-class world of rough amusement,”
that the country’s first homegrown pop-culture craze developed (Bernstein
1990, 150). Spectacular, complicated, and both overtly and insidiously racist,
blackface minstrelsy helped set the tone for much American popular culture
to follow. A direct influence on the American stage musical, blackface

9
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

minstrelsy at its height reflected the nation’s growing high- and low-culture
divide, as well as white America’s anxieties about slavery and the impending
Civil War (Lott 1993, 8).
Blackface minstrelsy peaked in popularity between the 1840s and 1890s.
The genre was preceded by British characterizations of “negroes,” who were
typically not depicted with the help of makeup (Lewis 2003, 66), and by solo
“Ethiopian delineators” in the US , who often did use makeup. Ethiopian
delineators were frequent presences in late-eighteenth-century circuses and
traveling shows, where they appeared either as characters in or between the
acts of plays (Kenrick 2008, 52). Perhaps the most famous Ethiopian
delineator in the US was Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, who became all
the rage in the early 1830s with his “Jump Jim Crow” act.
Born in lower Manhattan in 1808, young Rice traveled the country as a
stagehand and blackface bit-player. At some point during his travels in 1828,
he allegedly observed an old, crippled black man singing and dancing while
cleaning a stable (Mates 1985, 77). Rice practiced the shuffling dance steps
and the little hop and twist he claimed he learned from the man, quickened
the pace, and took to the stage in shabby clothing and blackface (Toll 1976,
82). As he traveled from city to city, Rice honed his act and developed an
increasingly complex character.
Because his signature song, “Jump Jim Crow,” was in simple verse-chorus
form, it could easily be extended to accommodate topical and geographically
specific references. The song’s chorus described the dance Rice performed as
he sang:

So I wheel about
I turn about
I do just so
And ebery time I wheel about
I jump Jim Crow

Stanzas, regularly added or switched, often included social or political

commentary, local inside jokes, shout-outs and regional references, and
frequent boasts about strength, smarts, or sexual prowess (Mates 1985, 77).
Rice appeared at the Bowery Theatre in December 1832 on a bill that
featured the actor (and father to John Wilkes) Junius Brutus Booth. The
crowd was so taken by Rice’s act that they would not let him off the stage,
instead demanding he jump Jim Crow some 20 times (Lewis 2003, 10). The
Bowery appearance helped catapult Rice to national and then international

10
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

fame. Between 1832 and the mid-1840s, Rice performed on the best
American stages, and made his London debut in 1836. He also contributed
to the rise in popularity of white entertainers in blackface, many of whom
claimed that their exaggerated performances reflected accurate, authentic
portrayals of black people they observed. This went over well with white
spectators, a majority of whom lacked the cultural expertise or sensitivity to
have even the vaguest notion about whether what they were seeing onstage
was accurate or not (Toll 1976, 81–3).
The American craze for solo Ethiopian delineators continued until four
such New York-based performers united in frustration over a lack of steady
work in the lean years following the Panic of 1837 (ibid., 137). In late 1842 or
early 1843, Billy Whitlock, Richard Pelham, Dan Emmett, and Frank Brower
devised an evening’s worth of entertainment in hopes that by bonding
together they could lure more spectators (Toll 1974, 30). As they honed their
act of “oddities, peculiarities, eccentricities, and comicalities of that Sable
Genus of Humanity,” they began calling themselves the Virginia Minstrels
(Bordman 2001, 11). The name of the southern state boosted their claims to
authenticity; the term “minstrels” capitalized on the contemporaneous
popularity of a touring European group called the Tyrolese Minstrel Family
(Toll 1976, 84).
The plan worked, and the Virginia Minstrels became a box-office draw.
The group’s rapid rise to fame resulted in bookings in Boston and New York,
and a tour of England in summer 1843. Following their trip abroad, the four
men went separate ways (Hamm 1979, 127–8). Yet the brevity of their
collaboration belied their cultural impact: the Virginia Minstrels had devised
an enormously popular new entertainment form.
Blackface minstrelsy took off across the United States with unprecedented
speed and intensity. By autumn 1843, virtually every major city in the
country had at least one resident minstrel troupe; itinerant troupes and solo
performers toured smaller cities and towns (Hamm 1979, 130). A mere three
years after the Virginia Minstrels debuted in the Bowery, New York City
alone boasted ten resident blackface minstrel troupes. By the early 1850s,
that number had doubled (Kenrick 2008, 53).
There was no one standard format for minstrel shows, but many were
organized into a distinctive three-part form that Edwin Pearce Christy
(1815–62), founder of the Buffalo-based Christy’s Minstrels, took credit for
(Knapp 2006, 53). In part one, sometimes called the “concert,” the entire
troupe sat in a semicircle with the tambourine player (“Tambo”) at one end
and the bones or percussion player (“Bones”) at the other. Often skilled

11
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

physical comedians as well as musicians, the performers playing Tambo and

Bones typically applied heavy dialect, exaggerated gestures, and rapid-fire
punning to amuse the audience. Tambo and Bones served as comic foibles
for the comparatively pompous Interlocutor, who often sat in the center of
the company and served as the MC .
The second section, the “olio,” was akin to the modern-day talent show. It
offered spectators a lineup of unrelated performances: circus stunts,
acrobatic and magic acts, comedy bits, songs, dances, and skits. The olio
often took place downstage before a dropped curtain so the stage could be
set for the final act: a one-act sketch with songs and dances, which borrowed
its name, the “afterpiece,” from Colonial-Era entertainments. In pre-Civil
War minstrel shows, the afterpiece often featured idealized depictions of
plantation life, and portrayed slaves as dimwitted dependents who were
cared for by wise and benevolent white masters (Toll 1976, 89).
Virulently racist though it was, minstrelsy allowed white male
performers—and, by extension, their audiences—to transgress, often in ways
that had less to do with race than with class and gender. The instruments
associated with minstrelsy—bones, fiddle, banjo, tambourine—might have
been strongly associated with African American culture, but minstrel music
was overwhelmingly rooted in European styles. Minstrel shows allowed
performers and audiences to reinforce their hard-won position in the nation’s
cultural hierarchy, if very often by exploiting people occupying the lower
hierarchical rungs. The genre also allowed white male performers to behave
in ways that were often perceived offstage as effeminate or socially taboo:
singing tear-jerking sentimental songs, dancing, cross-dressing. Blackface
thus helped cultivate “an environment acceptable to middle-and lower-class
white men for music-making and dance that was, if not fully masculine,
nevertheless capable of being embodied only by men” (Knapp 2006, 52).
It is no coincidence that minstrelsy was at its most popular in the US
before the Civil War, at a time when debates about slavery dominated the
national discourse. The emergence of blackface minstrelsy offered many
white spectators a means of processing conflicting concerns about slavery
on the one hand, and the prospect of absorbing an enormously disadvantaged,
newly freed ethnic group on the other (Toll 1976, 84).
Of course, then as now, many spectators probably did not think
particularly critically about what any entertainment genre represented along
sexual, racial, religious, or cultural lines. Minstrel shows were, for a lot of
people, surely little more than innovative, amusing entertainments. But
the form helped solidify, for some, the belief that blacks were inferior to

12
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

whites; still others likely believed that minstrelsy was educational, and its
gross caricatures accurate and authentic. Whether for or against slavery,
some audience members surely were reassured by pre-war depictions of
fantastical plantations, where “dancing darkies” (rarely referred to as “slaves”)
partied and picnicked, lived like so many “overgrown children,” and were
“protected by loving masters and mistresses who acted like doting parents”
(Toll 1976, 100). Blackface minstrelsy, in short, offered a curious blend of
“respect and fear, affection and hate, need and scorn, caring and exploitation”
that resulted in a similarly curious blend of guilt, admiration, and curiosity
among audiences (Lewis 2003, 70).

The Civil War and the decline of minstrelsy

Months before the outbreak of the Civil War, the newly formed Confederacy
severed ties with the North, which plunged into financial crisis. Panic set in
through 1860 as debts went unpaid, merchandise intended for southern
states sat in warehouses, and the worth of commodities plummeted. By
summer 1861, newspapers were estimating northern losses at nearly a half-
billion dollars (Burrows and Wallace 1999, 873).
The Confederacy’s advantage, of course, did not last long. Once the slave trade
collapsed, the southern states were decimated while the Union’s redirected
economy boomed like never before (Burrows and Wallace 1999, 873–5). Formerly
reliant on the Mississippi River, trade instead became dependent on the nation’s
railroads, which grew and improved everywhere but the South through the
1860s. Wheat, grain, and cattle brought east from the western territories and then
shipped to Europe bolstered the Union, as did demand for weapons, ships,
uniforms, and medical supplies. The publishing and communications industries
grew exponentially as the public demanded news about the war and soldiers
craved diversions—printed music, reading material, and photographs (dirty and
otherwise)—during lulls at the front (Hamm 1979, 231).
In times of crisis, the demand for entertainment often surges, and the
Civil War Era proved no different. Union theaters were sluggish during the
first year of conflict (Mates 1985, 31), but the booming economy and desire
for distraction from current events led to some of the longest-running, most
commercially successful shows the country had yet seen. The shows
audiences flocked to see, however, were not especially innovative. Just as the
Civil War years “brought no new musical styles to American song,” relying
instead on the comforting, even mindless familiarity of forms that had long

13
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

been popular (Hamm 1979, 248), Civil War-era stages were usually home to
old favorites: Shakespeare plays, comedies, and melodramas (Bordman 2001,
16). Blackface minstrelsy remained popular, too, though a newly somber
tone crept in, reflecting the “unprecedented suffering and anguish” of
Americans at war (Toll 1974, 105–7).
After the war, the South lay in ruins while the North continued to enjoy
unprecedented prosperity. Railroad lines now spanned the US ; it is no
coincidence that the ceremonial “Golden Spike” completing the first
transcontinental railroad was driven in May 1869, a mere four years after the
war had ended. The increased mobility across the country—combined with
emancipation, reconstruction, the rapid rise of industry, the continued
influx of immigrants, and a postwar spike in migration—resulted in
profound changes to American culture and entertainment.
The fragmentation of the entertainment market reflected the country’s
broader cultural diversity and economic health. Yet it also led to the decline
of minstrelsy, which was forced to compete with other, fresher forms of
popular entertainment. Established minstrel troupes, too, suddenly had to
face competition from within: a rising number of newly freed blacks
got their toeholds in entertainment by becoming minstrel performers in
the postwar years. As they joined the ranks, black minstrels emphasized
their authenticity. Earlier minstrels had merely posed as black, but the
new brand of minstrels were, they asserted, the real deal. Their claims
worked: white critics wrote enthusiastically about the legitimacy of black
minstrel troupes (Toll 1976, 113), and audiences were similarly impressed.
By the late nineteenth century, black minstrels were less the exception than
the rule.
Blackface minstrelsy permitted black performers a means of entry into
the country’s entertainment industry in numbers that would have otherwise
been unthinkable at the time. Yet the genre forced them to perpetuate—and
surely, in many cases, to internalize—highly deprecating portrayals of black
American life (Woll 1989, 2). The same went for audiences: the genre grew
so popular with black spectators after the Civil War that by the late nineteenth
century many theater owners waived their own seating policies, which
restricted blacks to the balcony, when minstrel troupes came through town
(Toll 1974, 227).
The increase in minstrels, along with the genre’s continued popularity,
resulted in larger troupes. Early minstrel troupes were typically small: the
Virginia Minstrels, after all, featured but four performers. But postwar
troupes offered anywhere from fifteen to over 100 players. Troupe managers,

14
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

eager to compete with newer entertainment forms, also began offering more
visual spectacle in their minstrel shows: larger production numbers, more
expensive sets, more lavish costuming (Preston 2008, 21). While these new
super-sized productions were popular with audiences, they also put added
pressures on minstrelsy’s industrymen, who had to spend more on their
troupes than ever before.
The new scope of minstrelsy accompanied a shift in content. While
popular songs written before and during the Civil War reflected current
events with remarkable accuracy and a great deal of emotion, postwar songs
reflected the nation’s collective desire to look ahead and move beyond the
emotional exhaustion, sorrow, and anxiety that clouded the war years. A vast
majority of American popular songwriters—newly concentrated in the
northern, eastern, and western US —thus showed little interest in depicting
the lives of southerners, whether black or white. Most songwriters steered
clear not just of the South, but of any negative news of the day, in favor of
cheerier, more upbeat, more generalized songs (Hamm 1979, 254).
The stereotypes propagated in prewar blackface minstrelsy continued
largely unchallenged in the postwar years. Yet after the war, minstrelsy, like
popular song, shifted emphasis away from the South and the plantation.
Postwar troupes began to focus instead on urban settings. White minstrels,
in particular, began to depict ethnic groups other than blacks, if in similarly
broad, stereotypical ways: pigtail-wearing, bucktoothed Asians; whiskey-
guzzling, belligerent Irishmen; wurst-gobbling, beer-swilling Germans (Toll
1976, 105). In these cases, the use of blackface was less a means for specific
imitation as it was a long-familiar stage convention.
In an attempt to avoid competition with newer entertainment forms that
became faddish in big cities, minstrel troupes took advantage of the country’s
new transportation system by touring. Troupes crossed the country by train,
playing in small towns and rural areas. While the various approaches that
postwar minstrel troupes took to remain viable helped prolong the genre,
the entertainment form expanded, changed, and influenced other forms so
much that it lost its uniqueness and faded in popularity by the turn of the
century (ibid.).

Union Square and Tin Pan Alley

In booming late-nineteenth-century New York City, the sheet music and

theater industries grew rapidly and symbiotically, exerting influence on the

15
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

new entertainment genres that supplanted minstrelsy. By this point, the city’s
population had grown large enough to support a dizzying assortment of
theater styles, and many venues could afford to become newly specific with
their programming. Variety theaters, burlesque houses, opera houses, dance
venues, and circus arenas cropped up across the city in response to ever-
growing demand (Mates 1985, 33). While the Bowery had long been home
to a number of important entertainment venues, New York City did not have
a truly consolidated theater district—nor did the country have a cohesive
entertainment industry—until the mid- to late nineteenth century. Yet as
New York grew, the ways that theater was made, produced, and consumed
changed significantly, both locally and nationally.
The establishment of a district specifically given over to the theater and
its industry is due in part to the development of the city’s transit system.
Mass transit first commenced in New York in the late 1800s, when elevated
lines were constructed along Broadway, which remained a major artery. The
elevated lines made points along the long and storied avenue easier to access
for the city’s increasingly far-flung residents. The aptly named Union Square,
where Broadway and Fourth Avenue converged at 14th Street, became one
such point. Through the 1870s, Union Square became a thriving retail area,
as well as the city’s first theater district, or “rialto.”
What distinguished Union Square’s theater district from the independent
cluster of venues still crowding the Bowery was both its new, close connection
to the rapidly developing commercial theater industry, and its increasingly
tight relationships with other, related entertainment businesses. Union
Square became not just the home to a cluster of new theaters, but also to
businesses that developed alongside, served, and benefited them: variety
houses, talent agencies, printing companies, costume shops, Steinway’s piano
store, Samuel French’s play publishing company, Napoleon Sarony’s
photography studio, hotels, restaurants, and bars (Traub 2005, 8).
The neighborhood also became home to the first Tin Pan Alley-style
sheet-music firm in 1875, when T.B. Harms’s company moved to an office
at Broadway and 12th Street (Jasen 2003, 171–3). Prior to this point, the
music industry, like the theater industry, was unconsolidated. Independent
music publishers were spread out all over the country, with the highest
concentration in cities such as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
and Cincinnati. Yet T.B. Harms managed to distinguish itself by
publishing such an enviable string of hit songs through the 1880s that
other companies began imitating its business practices—and joining it in
Union Square.

16
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

By the late 1890s, most of the song publishers in the increasingly crowded
Union Square relocated uptown, to 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth
Avenues. That block was nicknamed “Tin Pan Alley” shortly thereafter,
ostensibly because of the racket the district’s many composers and song-
pluggers made as they banged away at pianos during business hours in an
attempt to compose and sell the newest hit songs to passersby (Hamm 1979,
284–5). The term “Tin Pan Alley” became synonymous with the American
sheet-music industry, especially once the many newly consolidated Manhattan-
based publishing houses began to corner the market (Stempel 2010, 145).

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Black Crook

During the Civil War era, the rise in popularity of “Tom shows,” or dramatized
versions of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, resulted in the
country’s first blockbuster stage productions (Frick and LoMonaco 1995,
1167). When, a decade later, The Black Crook opened in New York to even
more extraordinary commercial success, the theater industry’s obsession with
long-running productions was born.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin first appeared serially in the
abolitionist paper The National Era in 1851, and was published as a novel
the following year. Proof that it “had a profound and polarizing impact”
on the country in the lead-up to the war is perhaps reflected in the myriad
theatrical adaptations of the story, many with music, which began appearing
on American stages following the release of the book (Stempel 2010, 36).
One of the earliest and most successful productions was by playwright
George Aiken. His adaptation, mentioned earlier in this chapter as an
example of popular melodrama, ran for an unprecedented 100 nights in
Troy, New York in 1852. It premiered in New York City in July 1853 (Lott
1993, 220–1). There, it surpassed even the most optimistic of expectations by
running for over 300 performances at a time when long runs were simply
unheard of (Stempel 2010, 37). The show’s unusual success hardly went
unnoticed: competing versions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin blanketed the northeast
through the remainder of the 1850s (Lott 1993, 222).
Aiken’s blockbuster production was so long—30 scenes and eight tableaux
over six acts—that it required the elimination of an afterpiece, thus
influencing the rise of the “one-play entertainment” (Stempel 2010, 39).
While a few managers remained certain that the monstrous success of Aiken’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a fluke, even the most dogged skeptics were convinced

17
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

by the power of the long run when, in the following decade, The Black Crook
arrived in New York for a very long visit (Frick and LoMonaco 1995, 1167).
The Black Crook, which opened at Niblo’s Garden on Broadway and
Prince Street in 1866, has often, “according to critical consensus and
traditional thinking,” been designated the first American stage musical as we
understand the genre today (Mast 1987, 7). Yet this “first” status has been
frequently challenged, since The Black Crook was hardly structurally or
aesthetically groundbreaking. The show combined a number of forms that
had long been popular in the US : dance, melodrama, opera, and
extravaganza—the last term a descriptor for shows primarily emphasizing
visual spectacle (Preston 2008, 18).
Yet The Black Crook distinguished itself by becoming a monstrous
commercial hit, which seems the primary reason so many people assume it
was the very first musical. It does not hurt that in its passage from page to
stage, The Black Crook underwent a series of dramatic setbacks and
coincidences, which make the show’s designation as a happy accident—a
hastily concocted stone soup that just happened to result in the birth of a
new mass entertainment genre—all the more tantalizing.
The story goes something like this: A little-known (and reputedly lousy)
playwright named Charles M. Barras (1826–73) wrote The Black Crook, a
melodrama, after seeing Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz in Cincinnati
in 1857 (Knapp 2006, 20). The show was booked into Niblo’s by its manager,
William Wheatley, less because Wheatley thought it was any good—or even
notably different from the Weber original—than because it struck him as
just the kind of piece he could break down and rebuild into something more
engaging (Stempel 2010, 43).
Meanwhile, two young entrepreneurs, Henry Jarrett and Henry Palmer,
had been planning to import “a visual feast of female dancers in a multi-
media production with the most modern special effects.” The two Henrys
scoured Europe for dancers willing to travel to New York to perform in a
spectacle called La Biche au Bois, which had been a hit in London (Allen
1991, 108). While abroad, they bought 300 costumes and 110 tons of scenery,
which they shipped back to the United States, presumably along with the
dancers they hired (Lewis 2003, 198). Once back in the states, they booked
the Academy of Music on Irving Place to stage their show.
As luck would have it (less for two doomed firemen than for William
Wheatley), Niblo’s production of The Black Crook was still in the planning
stages when the Academy of Music, recently outfitted with a sprinkler
system, nevertheless burned down in May 1866 (“The Great Fire,” 1886, 8).

18
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

Stuck with a cast of dancers, costumes, and tons of scenery, the venueless
Henrys approached Wheatley in hopes of forming a partnership. About
$50,000 worth of alterations needed to be done to Niblo’s Garden to
accommodate the elaborate set and extra castmembers, but Wheatley agreed
anyway—and decided to use the now-enormous cast and cost of production
to his advantage.
In the months leading up to the September 1866 premiere, Wheatley took
every opportunity to inform the press about how dazzling and expensive
The Black Crook was going to be. He detailed the “profusion of trapdoors, a
deep pit for a water tank, large plate-glass mirrors,” and the complicated
system of wires required to make the dancers fly. He noted as well that the
backstage area had to be entirely rebuilt at no small expense (Lewis 2003,
198). Wheatley’s emphasis on the expense and resultant visual pleasures of
The Black Crook was shrewd and, he likely realized, necessary, since Barras’s
play itself was “the least original element in the mix” (Stempel 2010, 43).
Set in a seventeenth-century German village, The Black Crook focused on
the young lovers Rodolphe and Amina. Their devotion to one another enrages
the evil Count Wolfenstein, who wants Amina for himself. Wolfenstein causes
Rodolphe to fall prey to Hertzog, a crookbacked sorcerer (and the titular
character), whose Faustian pact with the devil results in eternal life as long as
Hertzog gives Satan a new soul each New Year’s eve. As Rodolphe is being led
to his horrible fate, he saves a dove from the jaws of a snake. The dove turns
out to be the fairy queen, Stalacta, who rewards Rodolphe by taking him to
her magic land under the sea. As luck would have it, this land is filled with
state-of-the-art scenery and fairies dressed in scanty costumes (Allen, 1991,
109–11). At the conclusion of the five-and-a-half-hour spectacle—which
included subplots, comic asides, and scenes depicting “fishes swimming, a sea
monster, a boat sinking, child-fairies asleep in shells, [and] gems glittering on
the foreshore”—Count Wolfenstein is defeated, Hertzog is condemned to hell,
and Rodolphe and Amina are reunited (Lewis 2003, 200). A final sequence
with musical underscoring—a melodramatic spectacle to end the
melodramatic spectacle—featured the transformation of a “subterranean
gallery” into Stalacta’s underwater fairyland (Stempel 2010, 47).
After a week-long delay due to technical problems—which Wheatley
dutifully and dramatically reported to the press—The Black Crook opened
on September 12, 1866. Critics were unmoved by Barras’s play; one dismissed
it as “trashy” and another called it “rubbish.” Yet the critic for The New York
Times acknowledged that The Black Crook was a triumph of brilliant
spectacle: “No similar exhibition had been made in an American stage

19
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

that we remember, certainly none where such a combination of youth,

grace, beauty and élan was found,” he wrote, before concluding that The
Black Crook was the singular spectacular event of the time (quoted in
Bordman 2001, 20).
The Black Crook ran for 475 performances over the course of sixteen
months, taking in over a million dollars at the box office and spawning
countless imitations, tours, and revivals in the process. Wheatley continued
to fuel the buzz about the show once it opened by “welcoming publicity in
any form that might win for the piece not just fame but notoriety” (Stempel
2010, 49). A sermon delivered in November 1866 by the Reverend Charles B.
Smyth, which warned against the sexual nature of The Black Crook, was
hastily printed in the New York Herald, thereby helping to sell more tickets
(Lewis, 198). When free publicity waned, Wheatley inserted new musical
numbers, scenes, and spectacles into the production. The fact that The Black
Crook so carefully blended the highbrow (ballet, an old-world setting) with
the low (stage gimmickry, broad humor, scanty costumes) did not hurt its
appeal; rather, it allowed the show to cultivate a “proper” bourgeois audience
while simultaneously coming off as just risqué and naughty enough to
warrant a visit—or several (Stempel 2010, 49).
While not structurally or stylistically revolutionary, and while earlier
historians might have been a bit hasty to claim that it was the first musical,
The Black Crook was nevertheless a landmark production. It helped
cement “a convention of visual opulence and inventiveness” that remains an
important aspect of stage musicals, and solidified a fascination with long-
running productions (Mast 1987, 13). Just as importantly, in combination
with the earlier success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Black Crook redirected the
burgeoning commercial theater industry from one focused primarily on
stock companies to one that favored combination companies.
Stock companies—self-contained groups of actors and artisans who
worked together on repertory productions staged at affiliated venues—were
the norm from before the Revolution through the Civil War. But the new
obsession with long-running shows, combined with the booming economy,
the demand for new forms of theatrical entertainment, and the consolidation
of the theater industry, led to the breakdown of the stock company system.
Following the success of The Black Crook, theater owners, managers, and
producers began to maximize profits by keeping productions open for as
long as spectators would pay to see them. This new approach was additionally
appealing because cross-country transportation had improved so rapidly in
the nineteenth century. Because of the country’s new railways, long-running

20
 The Birth of (the Popular Culture of ) a Nation

shows could now be sent out on tour, either after the original production
closed or even during its run. This marked shift in the approach to American
theater-making coincided with the development of new forms of musical
stage entertainments—vaudeville and burlesque—and the continued
development of the commercial theater industry, which will be detailed in
the next chapter.

21
22
CHAPTER 2
THE CIVIL WAR ERA TO THE
GILDED AGE

During the late nineteenth century, two popular entertainment styles

emerged in the US , both of which surpassed blackface minstrelsy in
popularity by absorbing and revamping many aspects of the genre (including
its racism). Burlesque and vaudeville were the children of blackface
minstrelsy, but they diverged from each other structurally and stylistically.
They also appealed to different audiences, which were divided both by sex
and class. For their differences, however, burlesque and vaudeville were
shaped not only by the minstrel tradition, but by newly powerful businesses
operating in or near the country’s burgeoning center for commercial theater:
Union Square.

Burlesque

At least as it developed in Europe, burlesque was a live entertainment form

that combined song, dance, and dialogue to parody other theatrical forms.1
The practice dates back at least to the sixteenth century in countries including
Italy, Spain, and England. In the US , many theatrical forms poked fun at
social conventions, parodied other art forms or performance genres, and
featured broad, punning humor. But it was not until Lydia Thompson and
Her British Blondes arrived in New York in 1868 that a relatively new
and distinctly American form of burlesque emerged (Green 1995, 168).
Thompson and her all-female troupe lampooned entertainment forms
associated with high culture: drama, opera, and famous works of literature.
The brand of burlesque her troupe introduced to America combined visual
spectacle—which had only grown in popularity following the success of The
Black Crook a mere two years prior—with broad physical humor, punning,
malapropism, and frequent, sly asides aimed at the audience. Musical
numbers often featured traditional or popular melodies that audiences
would have recognized, set with new lyrics or newly layered with sly double
entendre. Dance numbers, too, poked fun at various folk and classical styles.

23
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Admirers of Thompson were quick to imitate her, but also to bring in

material that spoke specifically to American culture. As it developed in the
US , then, burlesque borrowed liberally from minstrelsy. The lengthy,
involved sketches that Thompson’s troupe typically performed in their first
act failed to catch on in the US , so the structure of blackface minstrelsy was
instead applied to American burlesque.
The first female burlesque troupes, in imitation of minstrel shows, relied
on male performers to serve as interlocutors and endmen during the
opening act. Eventually, however, those characters were dropped. The
traditional semicircle used in the first act of minstrel shows was replaced by
a big production number performed by the female cast, punctuated by songs,
skits, and the occasional tableau vivant, or silent, motionless recreation of a
famous painting or historical scene (Allen 1991, 165). An olio section for
specialty acts followed, and an afterpiece, in the style of an extravagant
production number, rounded out the evening. Sometimes, a short dance or
other physical display was tacked on at the very end of a performance (Green
1995, 168).
What distinguished burlesque from competing forms was its emphasis
on the bodies of female performers. Such emphasis was remarkably tame by
contemporary standards: when not dressed as the men they regularly
impersonated onstage, female burlesquers tended to appear in nothing more
risqué than knee-length skirts and tights. American burlesque was not, at
this point, associated with the striptease, hootchie-cootchie dance, or bump-
and-grind; those were added much later, when burlesque was declining in
popularity and its industry was scrambling to keep it alive. When it was new
to the country and growing in popularity, burlesque featured female
performers who went against middle-class conventions of sexuality, gender
and class, but who were not truly aberrant while doing so (Friedman 2000,
65). As with The Black Crook, then, burlesque’s subversiveness proved
appealing to bourgeois audiences who were willing to transgress a little bit,
but always within appropriate boundaries.
American burlesque did not transform itself on its own, nor was its
emulation of minstrelsy purely an artistic choice. Rather, American burlesque
was shaped by entrepreneurs such as the producer Michael B. Leavitt (1843–
1945), a former minstrel performer with a taste for the extravagant. Leavitt
is often mentioned not only as chiefly responsible for Americanizing
burlesque, but was also one of the first in the business to send burlesque
troupes on national tour by train (Green 1995, 168). Quick to recognize the
similarities between minstrelsy and burlesque, Leavitt wasted no time

24
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

combining the two (Lewis 2003, 68). In 1870, he introduced the all-female
Mme. Rentz’s Female Minstrels. Later called the Rentz-Santley Novelty and
Burlesque Company, this troupe spawned at least eleven other female
minstrel companies within the year (Toll 1974, 138).
Tame though it was by contemporary standards, burlesque nevertheless
caused concern among religious and anti-vice organizations. Opposition to
the form only grew more vociferous through the 1880s and 1890s, as
burlesque became increasingly associated with working-class men.
Meanwhile, another form that had also long been associated with working-
class men, “variety,” was rapidly being reshaped as a middle-class, family-
friendly, popular entertainment that became known instead as “vaudeville.”

Vaudeville (with a side serving of operetta)

As a structure for performance, “variety” simply refers to a bill built of many

different acts: singers, dancers, animal trainers, acrobats, comedians, magicians,
musicians (Stempel 2010, 56–7). Because they are so easy to throw together,
variety shows were and continue to be an integral part of American life.
Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—and probably long
before—variety shows appeared in summer gardens, dime museums, on
riverboats and trains, in circuses, and as parts of minstrel and burlesque shows.
At present, they continue to appear on television (Saturday Night Live and
other sketch shows derive from them), in schools, camps, and at any venue
that occasionally hosts a talent show or open mic night (Mates 1985, 154).
During the mid-nineteenth century, variety shows became integral to
concert-saloon culture. Concert saloons, also sometimes known as concert
halls, cropped up across the country in the 1840s. In their heyday, they
boasted free or very low admission. Once inside, audiences were entertained
by a succession of highly varied, occasionally crass or “blue” acts. As they
watched the show, spectators were encouraged to buy drinks, tobacco, and
food by “waiter girls,” some of whom doubled as prostitutes. Meanwhile,
prostitutes who did not bother to double as waitresses also worked the room.
Concert saloons became associated with rowdy, working-class men, and
by association, so too did the variety acts performed in them (Mates 1985,
154). Yet the venues were of little concern to the upper classes until slumming
young men started frequenting them in increasing numbers, at which point
their moneyed parents began to complain. In New York, newspapers and
moral reformers began painting concert saloons as “vile houses” that were

25
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

suddenly far more dangerous than they had been when they were solely
associated with the working class (Stempel 2010, 60–1).
In response to the righteous indignation that erupted over the concert
saloon, the New York State legislature passed an act in 1862 stating that
alcohol could not be served in venues featuring live entertainment, and that
women could not serve refreshments to customers during performances in
said venues (Zellers 1968, 583). An even stricter law, passed a decade later,
required performance venues to purchase a $500 license from the mayor,
who was free to decline the request at his discretion (McNamara 2002, 23).
Most concert saloon owners initially responded to these laws by becoming
adept at subterfuge, while most police officers turned a blind eye. But as the
laws tightened, concert saloons transformed into venues that emphasized
entertainment while deterring drunken or disorderly audience behavior:
cabarets, cocktail lounges, and nightclubs. While the more rundown of such
venues were still considered disreputable among the upper classes, and
while even the finest remained strongly associated with a male clientele,
some nevertheless began sponsoring “special cleaned-up ladies’ matinees,
temporarily banishing the alcohol and cigars for a few hours” (Trav 2005,
67). The attempt to attract women to venues that were typically male-
affiliated was nothing new. After all, it was in the best interest of theater
managers to constantly appeal to new audience members. Yet the most
effective reformer of the time was undoubtedly Tony Pastor (1837–1908),
subsequently known as “the father of vaudeville” (Stempel 2010, 62).
As a child, Pastor sang at temperance meetings before joining a minstrel
troupe and then apprenticing with John J. Nathan’s circus, where he sang,
clowned, danced, rode horses, and eventually became ringmaster (Rodger
2010, 42).2 During the Civil War, Pastor worked as a concert saloon balladeer.
In 1865, in partnership with the Philadelphia-based minstrel Sam Sharpley,
he secured the Bowery Minstrel Hall at 201 Bowery and renamed it Tony
Pastor’s Opera House (“ ‘Tony’ Pastor Dead” 1908, 7). His first company
featured a small orchestra, a few dancers and singers, and a comic who
worked in blackface. Pastor, too, often emerged from behind the scenes to
take the stage, where he honed a reputation as a warm, jovial “man of a
million songs” (Mates 1985, 156–7).
After a decade at the Opera House, Pastor moved uptown to the
Metropolitan Theater on Broadway in what is now Soho. He permitted
drinking in this establishment, but only in a saloon that was separate from the
auditorium (Traub 2005, 9). He began hosting regular “ladies’ matinees” at the
Metropolitan, and cultivated a loyal female audience by giving away bags of

26
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

flour or small clocks as souvenirs at performances (“Tony Pastor and His

Sixty Years” 1908, SM 3). In the many interviews he granted, Pastor repeatedly
insisted that his primary goal was to divorce the variety show from the rowdy,
crass concert saloon with which it had become so connected (Traub 2005, 9).
Yet Pastor’s signature brand of “respectable” variety entertainment was not
fully realized until he made his final leap uptown. In 1881, he secured the
theater in the Tammany Society Building, just east of Union Square on 14th
Street. The theater’s location—in the heart of the rialto and at the base of the
middle-class shopping district then known as Ladies’ Mile—allowed him to
cultivate his reputation as a purveyor of quality family entertainment (Stempel
2010, 65), which he accomplished without alienating working-class devotees
of variety (Snyder 1989, 22). At the Union Square venue, tickets for non-
reserved seats were cheap. Newsboys, Bowery boys, and black patrons were
always welcome, so long as the last sat, as per citywide custom, in the balcony.
Pastor’s reserved seats, however, were the most expensive of any variety
house in town, at $1.50 a pop (Rodger 2010, 235n.6). In exchange for shelling
out top dollar, affluent audience members were promised great seats, quality
entertainment, and a spotlessly clean, exceptionally well-managed house. A
typical show at Pastor’s included musicians, minstrels, dancers, singers,
magicians, animal acts, comics, and Pastor himself. Arguably more important
than the lineup was the atmosphere Pastor cultivated. Even as his evening
shows developed a reputation for middle-class respectability, Pastor
continued to offer ladies’ matinees and, later, ones especially for children. He
frequently offered appropriate door prizes and souvenirs to his clients:
flowers, dolls, toys, food, sewing patterns, dresses (Traub 2005, 10). He
habitually walked around his venue before showtimes, warmly greeting
audience members as they arrived. No one who worked for him was allowed
to work “blue” or use coarse or suggestive language. Smoking and drinking
were prohibited in his theater, though there was a bar within spitting distance
of the venue for those who could not get through a show without drinking
(or spitting). Beloved by audiences, Pastor also gave a number of theater
denizens their big break: the actress and singer Lillian Russell, the “Dutch”
comic Lew Fields (later of the comedy duo Weber and Fields), and the song
plugger Izzy Baline (later Irving Berlin) all worked for him.
Pastor and his company toured every year, but only briefly, since his
duties as theater manager kept him tied to New York. Thus, while his Union
Square venue was a smashing success, Pastor never became famous across
the country. He also proved inept at what would today be called “branding,”
since he was careful to set his theater apart in practice, but never in name.

27
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Ironically for one who strove to feminize his clientele, Pastor vehemently
rejected the term “vaudeville” as too “sissified” for his tastes (“ ‘Tony’ Pastor
Dead” 1908, 7), and refused to apply it to his shows.
On the other hand, Benjamin Franklin (B.F.) Keith (1846–1914) and
Edward Franklin (E.F.) Albee II (1857–1930) understood the importance of
a new label as a means of distancing their product from variety shows. Pastor
polished variety as a performance genre, but Keith and Albee set it in motion
as “the basis for a large-scale system of purpose-built theaters, peripatetic
performers, and booking agents” (Allen 1991, 180).
The New Hampshire-born Keith and Maine-born Albee both grew up in
show business. Unlike Pastor, they cut their teeth not as performers but as
animal feeders, tent boys, and shills for cheap trinkets or tickets. In 1883,
Keith opened his own dime museum in Boston, which featured attractions
including “a baby midget and a mermaid,” a very large pig, “a chicken with a
human face,” and the comedian Lew Fields (who had newly partnered with
Joe Weber). Keith referred to his shows not as variety but as “vaudeville,” and
began offering continuous performances between 10:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.,
the better to pack in as many spectators as possible over the course of each
day. Keith eventually partnered with Albee, whom he remembered from their
circus days. In a continued quest for respectable audiences to patronize their
not-especially-respectable acts, Keith and Albee decided to offer “a pirated
version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado five times a day, with vaudeville
acts between performances,” all for 10 cents a seat (Snyder 1989, 27).
Their offering of operetta amid variety acts was hardly unprecedented.
After all, opera segments were regularly included in theatrical productions
in early America, and snippets of opera and operetta had long been part of
variety acts, burlesque, and minstrel productions. Yet Keith and Albee’s
choice of this particular operetta was an attempt at capitalizing on a
contemporary Gilbert and Sullivan craze, which had begun with the
American premiere of H.M.S. Pinafore at the Boston Museum on November
25, 1878, a mere two years after the American centennial.
By this point, Americans could appreciate the cultural differences that
had developed between the United States and England, but could also feel
some degree of communal pride in British entertainments, since so many
citizens still traced their roots directly back to the UK (Knapp 2006, 32).
This simultaneous sense of distance and familiarity helped make Pinafore
into an enormous hit, which spread rapidly across the US .
America’s embrace of Pinafore was immediate and profound. A
production opened in San Francisco mere weeks after the Boston premiere;

28
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

another opened in Philadelphia in January 1879. By August 1879, Boston

alone had hosted some 241 different productions of Pinafore (Mates 1985,
71). The show was comparatively late to hit New York City, where it premiered
in January 1879. But once there, it refused to leave: by May of that year,
different versions of Pinafore had played in at least eleven theaters, with
anywhere between three and eight productions competing with each other
at any given time. Versions of Pinafore were offered, as well, for specific
audiences: there was “an all-black Pinafore, an all-children’s company, and
German, Yiddish and other foreign language productions in ethnic and
immigrant enclaves” across the country (Jones 2003, 6–7).
The many versions of Pinafore speak as much to the demands of an
increasingly diverse audience as to the fact that there were no copyright
agreements between the US and England at the time. Pinafore’s success
also points to the significance of a light, funny, well-written and composed
show featuring “book, lyrics, and music formed to combine an integral
whole.” Finally, it demonstrates the importance to live entertainment of
social commentary that can be easily interpreted—and, as importantly,
misinterpreted—by a broad spectatorship (Bordman 2001, 49).
Like many Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, H.M.S. Pinafore adhered to
“the prevailing standards of respectability” while simultaneously critiquing
them, which allowed audiences to read the show in a wide variety of ways
(Knapp 2006, 33). Yet regardless of the messages Americans took from
Pinafore, the operetta’s success resulted in swift, widespread imitation.
Subsequent Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were (and remain) popular with
audiences in the US ; the Pinafore craze also influenced a new generation of
American operettists through the 1890s. These included Reginald De Koven,
John Philip Sousa, Victor Herbert, and H.B. Smith (Stempel 2010, 116–17).
Keith and Albee’s decision to offer The Mikado between variety acts was
thus shrewd on several levels. The inclusion of the operetta signaled that
theirs was no tawdry, low-class venue, but one eager to appeal to the middle
class. This would have been a particularly important message to convey,
since in the 1870s most dime museums were associated with lower and
working classes. Keith and Albee’s sequencing of performances, as well,
turned out to be a hugely successful business model. The continuous
performance, in which a bill was repeated all day long and the curtain was
never lowered (Allen 1991, 181), proved so successful that the partners
relocated to a legitimate theater in the nearby Adams House Hotel in 1886
(Snyder 1989, 27). Later that year, they also leased the newly renovated 900-
seat Bijou Theater (Allen 1991, 182–3). Keith and Albee’s success in Boston

29
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

allowed them to expand over the next decade (Snyder 1989, 28). Between
1888 and 1893, they opened vaudeville theaters in Providence, Philadelphia,
and on Union Square. These venues thrived—even despite the Panic of 1893,
which afflicted the country through the late 1890s—largely because their
continuous performance model allowed them to keep ticket prices low. No
matter what, patrons could grab tickets for anywhere between 15 cents and
a dollar (Lewis 2003, 317).
Keith, in particular, took his role as reformer very seriously. Like Pastor,
he forbade his acts to work “blue” or use coarse language. But he also actively
trained audiences about how to behave properly in his theaters, and in this
respect his influence continues today. In all Keith–Albee houses, prominent
signs and flyers encouraged “cleanliness and order” on the stage and in the
auditorium. Men were told to “kindly avoid the stamping of feet and
pounding of canes,” to remove their hats, and to refrain from smoking,
talking, shouting, whistling, or verbally disrupting performances (Levine
1988, 196–7). Loud snacks were actively discouraged. When Keith observed
audiences being unruly, he would lecture them sternly from the stage
(Wollman 2006, 68).
By the mid-1890s, vaudeville entrepreneurs had begun to recognize a
competitive advantage in “linking their own theaters or small circuits with
others,” which allowed them to hire particular acts for longer periods (Allen
1991, 190). The Vaudeville Managers Association (VMA ), founded in 1900,
united 62 of the 67 most successful vaudeville houses in the US . It was
headed by Keith and Albee, who had not only shaped the vaudeville industry
but had become the most powerful men in it (Snyder 1995, 1226).
Renamed the United Booking Office (UBO ) in 1906, the organization
mediated between performers and theater managers, and controlled most of
the vaudeville houses east of Chicago; the Orpheum Circuit, established by
Gustav Walter and later expanded by Martin Beck, controlled most venues
between Chicago and the Pacific Ocean. Such was the power of the UBO
that any act declining a proffered salary or playing in an unrepresented
house seriously jeopardized their careers (Traub 2005, 26–7).

The Gilded Age: The entertainment industry and consolidation

As vaudeville grew—and grew more middlebrow—through the late-nineteenth

century, burlesque cemented its position as a purveyor of titillation for the
working classes (Allen 1991, 179). Like vaudeville, burlesque’s industry

30
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

consolidated by the turn of the century, but not nearly as successfully. Burlesque
had no Albee and Keith equivalent, and thus no dominant force that could
quell the internal competition that inevitably arose (ibid., 191).
The burlesque industry developed into two circuits, known as wheels.
The central office of each wheel sent traveling companies to burlesque
theaters across the country. Entrepreneurs excluded from the wheels learned
to compete on the local level with “stock” shows that were often far more
risqué than those the wheels provided. As the wheels and stock companies
competed, burlesque became so focused on figuring out new and creative
ways to exploit female sexuality that it eventually cannibalized itself. External
pressure from moral reformers did not help matters; burlesque began a
decline that would culminate in the early to mid-twentieth century (Wollman
2013, 16).
The consolidation of the vaudeville and burlesque industries coincided
roughly with the rise of the Theatrical Syndicate, a group of theater producers
who united in 1896 to control booking in so-called “legitimate” theaters—
those that did not specialize in vaudeville or burlesque—across the US .
Individually or in partnership, the Syndicate’s six members—Charles
Frohman, A.L. Erlanger, Marc Klaw, John Frederick Zimmerman, Samuel F.
Nixon, and Al Hayman—already owned many venues nationwide. As the
Syndicate, they exerted most of their enormous power and influence by
controlling the contracts of the country’s top performers (Marcosson and
Frohman 1916, 186–7). By establishing a monopoly over booking, they
forced less powerful producers and managers to go through them to schedule
acts for their venues (Snyder 1989, 35).
It is no coincidence that these varying live entertainment forms all came
under the control of powerful business consortiums at around the same
time. The consolidation of the burlesque, vaudeville, and legitimate theater
industries occurred during the Gilded Age, a period that “saw the creation
of a modern industrial economy.” A number of ingredients contributed to
the rise of corporations in many fields. The country now had a national
transportation system in the railroad, and the business world also benefited
from the invention of several national communication systems: the radio,
telegraph, and telephone. The era is well-documented for its rapaciousness,
greed, and rampant corruption, all of which certainly applied as much to the
burgeoning performance industries as to the manufacturing, food, oil,
transportation, and steel industries. During the Gilded Age, the country
moved beyond “an agrarian society of small producers” into “an urban
society dominated by industrial corporations.”3

31
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

A new theater district in Times Square

As the late nineteenth century slipped into the early twentieth, New York
City continued to grow in size, population, and diversity, especially after
consolidation on January 1, 1898. Consolidation allowed the five boroughs to
behave as one city instead of a fragmented urban sprawl controlled by some
forty local governments. Following consolidation, New York’s population
leapt in a single bound from around 2 million to 3.4 million (Hammack 1995,
277–8). By 1910, it had grown to nearly 5 million (Kantrowitz 1995, 922).
After consolidation, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx
contributed amply to the life of what became known as the City of Greater
New York. Yet because many of the city’s commercial, political, social, financial,
and cultural institutions had been established (and remain) in Manhattan,
that borough continued to serve as the heart of the metropolis. This was
especially the case in the early days of the city’s transit system. Travel across
the metropolitan area became easier through the early twentieth century, but
the first subway lines, from which all others radiated, only served Manhattan.
Plans for an underground transportation system had been discussed
since the city’s elevated train lines began appearing in the second half of
the nineteenth century. Yet a lack of financial and technological wherewithal,
coupled with bountiful bureaucratic bickering, led to decades of delays. But
finally, in 1894, construction on the first subway line, designed to carry
passengers from the business districts in lower Manhattan to the northern
neighborhoods, was approved.
But where exactly should it go? Running a line from City Hall to East
42nd Street was a given: due to an ordinance barring locomotives south of
42nd Street, a switching yard had long been in operation there anyway, at
Park Avenue and 42nd Street. Since 42nd Street was a broad, well-traveled
crosstown street that already had trolley lines running across it, city officials
eventually agreed that the first subway line would cross the island from east
to west there, before heading north to the Upper West Side.
Yet the western stretch of 42nd Street was hardly well developed or
appealing. The neighborhood there, which extended north to 59th Street, was
something of a no-man’s-land known as Longacre Square. Like London’s
carriage district from which it took its name, Longacre Square housed the
city’s horse and livery trade; its muddy, filthy streets were thus clogged with
“stables, blacksmiths, harness shops, carriage dealers, and the occasional
riding ring,” and littered with broken vehicles. The area stank of manure and
was not yet outfitted with electric streetlamps; the dark, empty streets were

32
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

well-trod by prostitutes and petty thieves who preyed on affluent strangers

with money who traveled to the area in need of repairs (Bianco 2004, 15–17).
Despite its reputation for being smelly, ugly, and filled with criminals,
Longacre Square nevertheless piqued entrepreneurial interest. Affordable
space has long been a much-desired rarity in New York, and by the 1890s
businessmen with investments in theatrical real estate had begun looking
beyond cramped, expensive Union Square for cheaper, open land on which
to build new venues. In January 1893, producers Charles Frohman and
William Harris took a gamble and opened the Empire Theater on Broadway
between 40th and 41st streets. That May, T. Henry French opened the
American Theatre on Eighth Avenue between 41st and 42nd streets (“The
Week at the Theatres,” 13). These venues were followed by others, including
the enormous Olympia Theater, which opened in 1895. Described by its
designer, the impresario (and grandfather of the famous lyricist) Oscar
Hammerstein, as “the grandest amusement temple in the world,” the
Olympia, on Broadway between 44th and 45th streets, was so enormous and
poorly designed that it proved difficult to manage effectively.
Though Hammerstein’s amusement temple was not so grand after all, it
prompted a slow exodus from Union Square. At the turn of the century,
commercial theaters began snaking north up Broadway. By the early
twentieth century, Union Square was no longer the city’s rialto. Longacre
Square began to shed its sketchy reputation as it became home to new
theaters, as well as plenty of cabarets, bars, restaurants, and hotels. In a
holdover from its past, however, the neighborhood never fully shed its well-
earned reputation for sexual commerce (Chesluk 2008, 26).
Longacre Square’s transformation was not lost on The New York Times
publisher Adolph S. Ochs, who was growing tired of running his newspaper
out of increasingly cramped offices in lower Manhattan and had been
scouting around for larger, flashier headquarters. In 1895, one of Ochs’s
competitors, James G. Bennett, moved the New York Herald to a new
building between 35th and 36th streets, and between Sixth Avenue and
Broadway. The Herald had benefited enormously from the publicity, which
only increased once the surrounding neighborhood was dubbed Herald
Square in its honor. Unwilling to be outdone, Ochs secured property on
Broadway between 42nd and 43rd streets, right on top of the site for the new
subway line, in 1902.
The Times Tower and the new subway station below it were built
simultaneously at no small cost. At midnight on December 31, 1903, The
Times celebrated its new home by setting fireworks off from its roof for the

33
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

enjoyment of crowds below. The practice of ringing in each new year stuck; a
giant glass ball was added for the 1906 celebration, cementing a tradition that
continues to date. The city renamed Longacre Square after The Times in 1904,
and in that same year, the first subway line opened (Bianco 2004, 23–7).
For all the fanfare, the Times Tower quickly proved too narrow and
cramped for the purposes of running a newspaper, and Ochs relocated The
New York Times’s offices to a more suitable building on West 43rd Street by
1913. Yet by this point, Times Square had become one of the most important
gathering places in the city (Traub 2005, 21–2).
The explosion of new theaters also had a significant role in cultivating
Times Square’s international reputation as a “crossroads of the world.” By
1900, less than a decade after the first venues had opened there, some thirty
theaters were concentrated near or along Broadway in the neighborhood
(Kenrick 2008, 112). Many more would appear in the next two decades, as
would electric billboards, luxury hotels, and a number of sumptuous
restaurants known collectively as lobster palaces. The fancier theaters and
establishments radiated out from 42nd Street and Broadway, while the many
side streets offered smaller venues, saloons, cheaper hotels and restaurants,
and whorehouses. Collectively, these businesses helped Times Square solidify
its reputation as an accessible, varied entertainment mecca for people from all
walks of life (Traub, 2005, 27).

The Theatrical Syndicate grows more powerful

The theaters in the young neighborhood might have been new, but the
people controlling them were for the most part the same as they were when
the industry was concentrated in Union Square. Business trends established
in the commercial theater industry in the late nineteenth century only
solidified in the early twentieth as demand for live entertainment grew
across the country. Increasingly powerful middlemen controlled performers’
access to venues, and venues’ access to performers. By the early 1900s, the
most powerful middlemen of all, the Theatrical Syndicate, controlled
nearly 2,000 venues across North America and functioned with all the
“megalomania that was rampant in the trust-building frenzy” simultaneously
taking place in the industrial world during the Gilded Age (Hirsch 1998,
25–6, 31). Under control of the Syndicate, company managers, who once
dealt directly with theater managers to arrange tours, had to answer to
Abraham Erlanger and Marc Klaw, the Syndicate’s chief booking agents.

34
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

In exchange for five percent of gross receipts—and, since there was no

real competition, sometimes a little less and sometimes a lot more—the
Syndicate arranged tours that left from New York by train. The organization
dictated which acts were put into the many theaters they controlled.
Since the Syndicate also controlled the contracts of most Broadway
headliners, they could not be crossed without fear of serious, even career-
ending, consequences. This was especially true of the notoriously vindictive
“Napoleon of Broadway,” Abe Erlanger, who took great delight in his
nickname (Travis 1958, 36). Those producers who dared remain independent
from the Syndicate—including Oscar Hammerstein, Harrison Grey Fiske,
and David Belasco—endured harassment and even occasional blacklisting
for their efforts (Bianco 2004, 30).
While the move toward theater consolidation resulted in plenty of
unsavory or even blatantly corrupt business practices, it also resulted in
the standardization of a mass entertainment form that had long been
completely unregulated. Before the rise of the Syndicate, national theater
tours were notoriously disorganized, financially unstable, and wildly
unpredictable.
The arguments for and against theater monopolies, which would
eventually grow larger than anyone at the turn of the twentieth century
could have imagined, have not changed much. The Syndicate was attacked
by enemies as a greedy conglomerate that put commerce before art, treated
theater and company managers as servants, and smothered the creative
freedom of artists. Yet advocates argued that under the control of the
Syndicate, theaters across the country were at the very least given what they
were promised. Audiences, too, were for the first time guaranteed a night at
the theater that was as well-organized and professional in Topeka, Ashtabula,
and Ypsilanti as in New York (Travis 1958, 36–7).

Tin Pan Alley and the theater industry join forces

What the industrialization of the commercial theater almost certainly did

was unite into one marketplace a group of actors, creative personnel,
and producers, all of whom took part in the development of a new genre
built from many pre-existing popular entertainments. Part opera, operetta,
dance, minstrel show, burlesque, extravaganza, and vaudeville routine, the
contemporary American musical took gradual shape on Broadway’s stages
in the dawn of the twentieth century.

35
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Various scholars have argued that specific productions—including The

Black Crook, shows by George M. Cohan, and Jerome Kern and Oscar
Hammerstein II’s 1927 Show Boat—constitute the “first” American musical.
Yet it is probably more accurate to view the contemporary musical as a genre
that evolved from many artistic influences shaped by several mutually
beneficial and increasingly powerful entertainment industries. It was only
natural, after all, that the vaudeville, legitimate theater, and music publishing
industries—the first two concentrated in Times Square, the last a mere half-
mile south, and all three catering to the country’s growing middle class—
would depend on and influence each other as they honed and sold their
specific forms of mass entertainment.
At the turn of the twentieth century, vaudeville had become the most
popular form of entertainment in the country (Lewis 2003, 315). Because
more Americans were exposed to popular song through vaudeville than via
any other live entertainment form, vaudeville’s top entertainers became
highly sought by eager song publishers. After all, then as now, songs
performed live by big stars frequently prompted audiences to buy the songs
for themselves (Hamm 1979, 287). Tin Pan Alley’s publishers thus regularly
visited theaters to gauge the pulse of popular culture. Songs were constantly
pushed on performers, both by publishers and their song pluggers, whose
job it was to publicize new songs. Performers and producers who visited Tin
Pan Alley in search of music for their newest acts were regaled with the latest
songs, not to mention money, expensive gifts, a cut of the profits, and
promises that their names or images would appear on the covers of sheet
music. In exchange for such favors, a theater producer or performer would
interpolate new songs into their acts (ibid., 288–90).
Vaudeville might have been dominant at the time, but it was hardly the
only show in town. Nationwide, vaudeville venues shared clientele with
burlesque houses, concert halls, and legitimate theaters, which offered
productions that were not vaudeville or burlesque shows. In Times Square,
venues served “middle-class and working-class, native and immigrant, male
and female audiences—sometimes under one roof ” (Snyder 1989, 89). On
any given evening, patrons could drop in at one theater to see a vaudeville
show, visit another to see burlesque, and stop at yet another for a Shakespeare
tragedy, domestic comedy, or extravaganza. Bars and cabarets, too, often
featured live music or stage shows. Operettas, whether imported or composed
by Americans, remained popular. And minstrel shows, while almost never on
the finest stages anymore, still appeared frequently, especially in lower-priced
houses (Bordman 2001, 212).

36
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

Tricky terminology

Part of what makes the birth of the contemporary stage musical so hard to
discuss definitively is the fact that terminology used in describing early-
twentieth-century stage entertainments was not standardized, very loosely
applied, sometimes directly contradictory, and thus enormously confusing
in historic perspective. The term “legitimate theater”—or, as Variety, the
vaudeville trade magazine founded in 1905 still refers to it,“legit”—described
theaters that did not feature burlesque or vaudeville shows. But it was also
used to distinguish different audiences: working-class men watching
excerpts from a Shakespeare play in a saloon would not have been described
in the press as “legit,” for example, while middle-class spectators watching
the same material in a Union Square theater certainly would have been
(Friedman 2000, 96).
Confusing matters further was the fact that most “legit” stages—and there
were thousands across the country by this point—offered a variety of
performance styles, most of which could also be found on vaudeville or
burlesque stages. “Legitimate” venues offered plays into which an ever-
changing lineup of songs and dances might be interpolated; operettas which,
due to loose copyright laws, were never staged the same way twice;
melodramas, extravaganzas, spectacles, and revues; and myriad combinations
thereof. Lines were blurred even further, since many stars from burlesque
and vaudeville regularly crossed over to the legitimate stage and back again.
The term “musical comedy” existed by the turn of the century, as did the
term “farce-comedy,” though these were often treated interchangeably, and
there seemed to be only vague consensus about what, exactly, either term
meant. Both terms were applied inconsistently by critics, producers, and
spectators to shows that might be viewed collectively as immediate
predecessors to the contemporary stage musical. However they were
described, lively productions featuring the scant outline of a plot, into which
songs, dances, spectacles, specialty acts, and performers were dropped,
moved around, replaced, and revisited during runs in New York or on tour
were enormously popular in the late nineteenth century.
A prime example is playwright and producer Charles Hoyt’s A Trip to
Chinatown (1891), which used a zany race through a big city as justification for
an ever-changing lineup of ingredients. The biggest commercial hit of its time,
Chinatown ran a record 659 performances at Madison Square Theater. The
production changed with such frequency, both there and on the road, that it is
unlikely any spectator ever saw the same show twice (Mates 1985, 169–73).

37
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Both on the stage and behind the scenes, theater folk broadened their
specializations as work demanded. Just as many contemporary actors
appear in film, television, on stage, and on the web, so too did early-twentieth
century performers often appear on burlesque, vaudeville, and legitimate
stages. Famous vaudevillians like Lillian Russell, May Irwin, and Fay
Templeton, for example, also performed frequently in operettas. Al Jolson
performed in burlesque, vaudeville, and minstrel shows before becoming a
“legit” Broadway headliner and eventually a huge movie star (Trav 2005,
245–6). Things were no different behind the scenes: composers, lyricists, and
directors benefited from working on a variety of projects, and since so many
entertainment industries were concentrated in the same neighborhoods in
the same city, they often did. Both onstage and off, and whether consciously
or not, early-twentieth-century theater personnel had begun to collectively
formulate “a single genre that could combine the best of all worlds into a
single, unified, coherent whole” (Krasner 2008, 54): the Broadway musical.

Harrigan and Hart, Weber and Fields, and George M. Cohan

Just as minstrel shows had once featured lengthy skits with interpolated
songs and dances as afterpieces, vaudeville shows featured comic sketches
into which songs and dances were inserted. Some performers built a sizeable
enough following to justify developing their signature skits into lengthier
pieces that could fill out an entire evening at the theater. George M. Cohan
(1878–1942) would achieve fame by doing just this when he became a
Broadway headliner, though he was hardly the first to do so.
Before Cohan was born, and before lowly variety had morphed into slickly
marketed vaudeville, the comedy duo Edward “Ned” Harrigan (1844–1911)
and Tony Hart (born Anthony Cannon, 1855–91) helped “bring narrative
continuity to the disparate elements of the variety stage” (Stempel 2010, 68).
Harrigan cut his teeth in the 1860s in music halls and variety houses in San
Francisco. In 1871, in Chicago, he met Cannon, who had performed in
minstrel shows, circuses, and saloons. Eager for a new start, Cannon changed
his name to Hart, and the men headed together to New York.
Harrigan and Hart’s shows consisted largely of comic sketches about
working-class urban life, which usually featured songs by composer David
Braham. In 1873, Harrigan wrote the “Mulligan Guard” routine, a ten-minute
sketch about neighborhood volunteer militias. Such militias were initially
devised to teach local men to shoot and march, but they often served

38
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

primarily as drunken social clubs. The Mulligan Guard bit, and many of
Harrigan and Hart’s subsequent sketches, featured a series of characters—
initially mostly Irish, German, and black, and later also Italian, Chinese, and
Jewish—who represented the diverse working-class neighborhoods of lower
Manhattan (Lewis 2003, 95).
The Mulligan series was so warmly embraced by audiences that Harrigan
and Hart quickly moved beyond the small stages on which they first honed
their act. Initially booked at the Theatre Comique variety house on Broadway
between Broom and Spring streets, they became the venue’s headliners. Their
acts kept growing longer, ultimately displacing other acts on the bill and
eventually allowing the partners to secure their own venues (Stempel 2010, 68).
From 1875 to 1895, Harrigan and Hart wrote, produced and starred in some 35
plays and 90 sketches, and ran four theaters in New York (Mates 1985, 169).
For their popularity and the diversity of their characters, Harrigan and
Hart shows were not especially innovatory for their time, either structurally
or in terms of character development. The highly formulaic Mulligan shows
featured loose narratives, a lot of broad physical comedy, and songs that
usually had little or no relevance to the action taking place onstage (Lewis
2003, 95). Characters were broadly drawn; the black characters, played in
blackface by Hart, hewed especially close to stereotype (Stempel 2010, 70).
Yet Harrigan infused his characters—especially if not exclusively the Irish-
American ones—with a humanity atypical for the late-nineteenth-century
stage. Even as his shows grew popular among middle and upper classes,
Harrigan remained most interested in connecting with the common folk in
the cheap seats (Toll 1976, 189).
Harrigan and Hart’s popularity coincided with the end of the surge in
Irish immigration that began after 1849. Similarly, the thickly accented,
malapropism-heavy “Dutch” act developed by Joe Weber (1867–1942) and
Lew Fields (1867–1941) gained traction during the wave of European Jewish
immigration that began in the 1880s. Both born of Polish-Jewish immigrants
on the Lower East Side, Weber and Fields performed in burlesque houses as
children, and established their own company in 1890. They opened the
Weber and Fields Broadway Music Hall, on Broadway between 29th and
30th streets, in 1896 (Trav 2005, 96). There, they produced and performed in
a series of well-cast, extravagant two-act shows, most of which featured a
vaudeville-style olio in the first act and a burlesque parodying other
productions in the second (Kenrick 2008, 106).
Like Harrigan and Hart, Weber and Fields demonstrated skillful
showmanship onstage, and expert control behind the scenes. Both duos

39
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

embraced contemporary urban life in general, and the immigrant experience

in particular. Perhaps less obviously, both reflected a move away from short
bits typical of vaudeville and burlesque, and toward lengthier, more fully
integrated productions. For all these men, vaudeville was but a stepping
stone—a place to become established and then to leave. In this respect, both
teams set a precedent for performers who were lured by the legitimate
theater’s promise of more status, money, time in the spotlight, and, often,
lighter schedules. In vaudeville, after all, even the most popular acts
performed at least twice a day. Broadway’s schedule, on the other hand, was
usually not nearly as grueling (Trav 2005, 243–5).
George M. Cohan’s move from vaudeville to Broadway resulted from
similar versatility, a tireless work ethic, and brilliant business sense, all of
which allowed him to nudge the American musical comedy a few steps
along in its development. A proud Irish-American actor, dancer, singer,
playwright, composer, producer, theater-owner, manager, and financier,
Cohan shared a number of similarities with Harrigan, who wore almost as
many hats. Yet Cohan’s fast-paced plays, catchy songs, swaggeringly patriotic
persona, and up-by-your-bootstraps philosophy helped cement the
connection between Broadway musicals and Americanness. A self-described
humble song-and-dance man, Cohan was born on July 3, 1878, though he
famously insisted that—as one of his most famous songs went—he had been
“born on the Fourth of July” (Stempel 2010, 137).
Born in Rhode Island to the vaudevillians Jeremiah and Helen
Costigan Cohan, known professionally as Jerry and Nellie, little George
took to the road and the stage before he could walk. Often incorporated into
skits while still an infant, Cohan began writing songs and sending them to
Tin Pan Alley publishers in his teens. The many rejection letters he received
only fueled his determination to have a song accepted (“George M. Cohan,”
1942, 20).
In 1890, Cohan, his parents, and sister Josephine, billing themselves as
The Four Cohans, were contracted at Keith’s Union Square. At this point,
Cohan also finally began selling and publishing his songs. Through the
1890s, The Four Cohans developed a national reputation, and their act
brought in as much as $1,000 a week. By the time he turned 20, George was
writing all of his family’s material (Hamm 1979, 312–13).
By many accounts arrogant, condescending, and argumentative, Cohan
was known to be difficult to work with. Surely, his desire to control all aspects
of his own career related in part to the difficulty he had taking orders from
others. Yet his varied interests, drive, and obvious intelligence ultimately

40
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

served him well, his reputation notwithstanding. As he negotiated the

various facets of the entertainment industry, he focused with increasing
intensity on leaving vaudeville to become a Broadway headliner.
The Four Cohans debuted on Broadway in a show George wrote, directed,
and starred in. An expanded version of one of their vaudeville bits, The
Governor’s Son opened in February 1901 at the Savoy on 34th Street. There,
it confounded critics and underwhelmed audiences, though it saw more
success on the road (Bordman 2001, 201). Cohan’s Running for Office (1903),
at Haverley’s 14th Street Theatre, did not fare much better, though both
shows had ingredients that would become part of Cohan’s winning formula:
catchy song-and-dance numbers, an almost manic pace, and a classic “boy
meets, loses, and gets girl back” story arc (Jones 2003, 19).
Cohan’s musicals were not integrated, and would likely seem very strangely
paced by contemporary standards. Some of his shows, for example, bundled
all the songs into the first and third acts, and featured highly melodramatic
dialogue with underscoring in the second. While some of the jokes, songs,
and dances he included in his shows were tangentially related to the scene at
hand, most seemed “stitched in” from elsewhere (Mast 1987, 34).Yet his shows
offered some important innovations: their breakneck speed, use of colloquial
speech and slang, and fervent, unfailing patriotism (Mates 1985, 178–9).
Cohan’s third attempt on Broadway, Little Johnny Jones (1904), billed
alternately as a “play with music” or a “musical play,” was his first bona-fide
hit in New York (Bordman 2001, 236), though even this show did not catch
on with critics or audiences right away. Some critics found Little Johnny
Jones to be impressively staged and entertaining, but others dismissed it as
harshly as they had his previous Broadway shows. The critic for Life magazine
called it “the apotheosis of stage vulgarity,” its patriotism gimmicky, and its
score cheap and “mawkish.” Only after Cohan took the show on tour, made
ample revisions, and reopened two back-to-back Broadway revivals in May
and November 1905 did Johnny Jones finally connect with audiences.
Yet once Johnny Jones found its footing on Broadway, so did Cohan,
whose drive and experience helped catapult him to superstardom. By the
1910s, Cohan had become a favorite on Broadway as a director, playwright,
composer, manager, theater owner, and headliner. And even his harshest
critics acknowledged his importance (Craft 2014, 93–101).
Almost all Cohan’s shows were bound up with their author’s proud Irish-
American identity, but Little Johnny Jones was the first to feature the fervid “flag-
waving chauvinism” that would become a trademark (Bordman 2001, 236).
When Cohan rose to fame, Irish immigration to the US had begun to slow.

41
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Irish immigrants had made significant economic, political, and social strides.
The growing population of American-born Irish had gained access to white-
collar careers, and thus to middle- and upper-class security. While anti-Irish
sentiment had yet to fully dissipate, newer European immigrant populations
slowly took the place of the Irish as the newest “undesirable Americans” (Craft
2014, 113–14). Cohan’s patriotism arguably encouraged broader acceptance of
Irish immigrants at a time when they had “moved up the ladder of respectability”
but had yet to be “fully accepted as Americans” (Knapp 2006, 105).

Black performers on Broadway

Institutionalized racism prohibited African American performers from

asserting the same kinds of claims to Americanness that Cohan could, but
black artists nevertheless became increasingly visible on Broadway in the
early years of the twentieth century. This was due in part both to the decline
of minstrelsy through the late nineteenth century and the growth in
population of black New Yorkers through the early twentieth as a result of
the Great Migration.4 Racism remained pervasive, both in New York and
across the country, but important strides toward the integration of the
commercial theater nevertheless took place at the dawn of the new century.
Blackface minstrelsy had permitted steady if exceedingly narrow entry by
black artists into the commercial theater as early as 1855. Yet the legitimate
theater remained off-limits to black performers until the end of the
nineteenth century. Before 1895, Broadway audiences were regularly
entertained by white actors in blackface but few if any black artists. This
began to change with the death of minstrelsy and subsequent rise in
popularity of new forms influenced by it.
The popularity of the coon song, for example, began while minstrelsy was on
its last legs. Stylistically comparable to ragtime,5 coon songs about black people
moved beyond the sheet-music industry to influence vaudeville, burlesque,
and Broadway stages through the early twentieth century. The fact that these
denigrating songs were written and performed by black and white artists a like
should come as no surprise: blacks working on the stage and behind the scenes
still had to appeal to predominantly white audiences if they wanted a foothold
in American mass entertainment (Woll 1989, 4).
Coon songs depicted blacks much in the way minstrel songs did: as lazy,
childish, and ignorant, if occasionally also wily or mystically astute. They
reflected, as well, a growing fear of blacks as “devoid of honesty or personal

42
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

honor, given to drunkenness and gambling, utterly without ambition,

sensuous, libidinous, even lascivious,” and thus warranting subordination
and segregation. The recurring intimation in many coon songs of blacks as
dangerous enough to justify suppression coincides with the rise of the post-
Reconstructionist Jim Crow South and the subsequent Great Migration.
Far beyond the confines of the American South, the coon song craze
likely fed a widespread sense of justification for the country’s institutionalized,
second-class treatment of African Americans (Dorman 1998, 455 and 465–
7). A cruel irony about coon songs lies in the fact that black performers
willing to participate in the craze for them could not only thrive commercially,
but could also make new inroads both on tour and on Broadway, in all-black
productions and eventually in integrated ones.
A pioneering figure in the development of all-black musical productions
was John W. Isham. A black man whose fair complexion allowed him to pass
as white, and thus to find jobs that would otherwise have been off-limits to
him, Isham launched his touring production, Isham’s Octoroons, in 1895
(Sampson 2014, 50). A year later, his larger, more ambitious Oriental America
also toured the country, as did Black Patti’s Troubadours (Johnson 1991, 96).
These productions bounced from one second-rate house to the next, where
they were usually performed for segregated audiences (Graziano 2008, 93).
In 1898, two landmark productions opened in New York: Robert Cole
and Billy Johnson’s A Trip to Coontown, and Will Marion Cook and Paul
Laurence Dunbar’s Clorindy, Or the Origin of the Cake Walk. Coontown’s title
referenced the 1891 hit A Trip to Chinatown, but with the exception of its
focus on contemporary urban life, it had little in common with the earlier
show. A comedy with a thin plot about a conman trying to swindle an old
man out of his pension, Coontown emphasized specialty acts, including
contortionists, acrobats, and opera singers. Its story line did little to
distinguish it from other black revues of the period; neither did its score,
which featured numbers with titles like “All I Wants Is Ma Chickens” and “I
Wonder What Is That Coon’s Game” (Jones 2013, 32). Coontown nevertheless
broke ground as the first musical in New York City to be written, directed,
produced, and performed by African Americans (Woll 1989, 12–13).
Cook and Dunbar’s Clorindy, Or the Origin of the Cake Walk is often cited
as the first all-black musical to appear on Broadway, and to some extent this
is true. The show premiered in July 1898 at the enormous Casino Theatre at
39th Street and Broadway. The house was one of the most celebrated
Broadway theatres of its time, not only because it was particularly beautiful
but also because it was the first venue in New York to be lit entirely with

43
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

electricity. Technically, Clorindy’s run was not on Broadway but above it, on
the theater’s roof garden. This might seem a ridiculous distinction, but at the
time, roof gardens were frequent locales for stage shows during the summer,
when theaters got too hot and producers instead offered late-night stage
entertainments—and often food and drink—under the stars (Miller 2013).
Because Clorindy premiered as such an entertainment, it was not
performed the way its creators initially conceived it. Written with a full score
and libretto, the show was shortened significantly and mounted at the Casino
as a brief revue. Despite the fact that the audience demanded ten encores of
the Ernest Hogan’s rendition of “Who Dat Say Chicken in Dis Crowd?” on
opening night, the entire show was over within an hour.
Yet Clorindy’s milestone status is well-deserved, as is evidenced by the
incredible determination it took Will Marion Cook to get anywhere near
Broadway, let alone atop it. Cook shopped Clorindy around relentlessly,
despite constant rejections by white producers, at least one of whom
interrupted Cook mid-audition to tell him that he was a fool to think white
audiences would ever “pay money to hear Negroes sing a Negro opera”(Woll,
8). After weeks of being dismissed daily from the offices of the Casino roof
garden’s manager, Cook finally assembled a cast, rehearsed them, and
launched into the show’s opening number, “Darktown Is Out Tonight,” when
the manager arrived at his office one Monday morning (Toll 1976, 121).
A surprise commercial success, Clorindy went on tour once it closed at
the Casino. Ernest Hogan left the production before the tour began, and was
replaced by the up-and-coming vaudeville team of Bert Williams (1874–
1922) and George Walker (1872–1911). Clorindy did not fare as well on the
road as it did at the Casino, but Williams and Walker would become
enormously influential by the turn of the century.
The duo met in San Francisco where, at some point between 1893 and
1895, they worked together in the desegregated troupe Martin and Selig’s
Mastodon Minstrels. Soon tired of the small, dilapidated venues the troupe
worked in, Williams and Walker bounced from San Francisco to Los Angeles
and Denver to Chicago, where they were cast in a company of John Isham’s
The Octoroons. They were fired a week later, once it was determined that
audiences were not warming to them (Toll 1976, 121–4).
Crushed by the dismissal, Williams and Walker re-evaluated their act.
During his Martin and Selig days, Williams had renounced the use of
blackface after a bad case of stage fright overwhelmed him while he was
wearing it. After being fired from The Octoroons, he decided to try it again
for a show in Detroit. This time, the makeup had a transformative effect: it

44
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

allowed Williams to devise a buffer between his inner self and his character.
The distance with which he could now view and assess his own stage work
allowed him to cultivate his sad-sack “Jonah Man” character, and to carefully
hone his brilliant comic timing. Walker had always played the comic and
Williams the straight man, but at this point, their roles reversed, as did their
billing: Walker and Williams rose to national prominence as Williams and
Walker (Forbes 2008, 34–5).
They arrived in New York in 1896. After a false start in The Gold
Bug, a failed operetta by Victor Herbert about miscegenation, they were
offered a 36-week run at Koster and Bial’s, an enormous vaudeville house on
34th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, where Macy’s flagship
store now stands. Billing themselves as “Two Real Coons,” they were so well
received that they soon graduated to even more celebrated vaudeville houses:
Tony Pastor’s Music Hall, Oscar Hammerstein’s Olympia Roof Garden, and
B.F. Keith’s in Boston. They were the only two black men invited to tour with
an otherwise all-white vaudeville troupe, and they steadily built a national
reputation as the country’s most “celebrated delineators of darky characters”
(Toll 1976, 124).
While their invitation to perform at Koster and Bial’s was the start of a
brilliant career trajectory, it was also a reflection of just how constricted black
performing artists were at the time (Ndounou 2013, 62). Vaudeville may have
been successfully rebranded as the country’s most “democratic entertainment
for the masses” in the late nineteenth century, but black audiences were typically
not included in said democracy. More often than not, they were ignored by
managers and producers, who catered to the white middle classes who made
up the majority of audiences, and who were allowed to buy the choicest tickets.
Like most performance venues, vaudeville houses usually had strict segregation
policies. Those that would admit blacks seated them only in the rear balcony or
gallery seats. Complaints about such policies fell on deaf ears; black patrons
who could afford better seats were bluntly informed that there were simply
none available for them. Black performers were just as carefully curtailed.
Whites in blackface continued to perform as the butt of jokes in vaudeville,
and houses that hired black performers at all would typically feature just one
black act on any given bill (Forbes 2008, 56–7).
As one such act, Williams and Walker did their best to challenge, or at the
very least to soften, extant stereotypes as they shot to stardom. Yet while they
were beloved by both white and black spectators, they were expected to
appeal primarily to whites, a great many of whom surely did not think
too deeply about the clownish black men singing coon songs for their

45
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

amusement. A series of race riots in New York during the summer of 1900—
during which white mobs swarmed black neighborhoods, attacked passersby,
destroyed property, cried “specifically for the heads of black performers,” and
dragged George Walker from a passing streetcar—served as a powerful,
frightening reminder that even the most loved and respected black celebrities
were viewed as threatening Others as soon as they stepped off the stage
(Sotiropoulos 2006, 42–3).
Yet Williams and Walker earned such adoration when they were on the
stage that they were afforded more power, reach, and influence than most
black performers of the time. Their fame coincided with the growth in
population of blacks in New York and other urban centers; Williams and
Walker took part in the development of a thriving black arts scene in New
York, and became associated with a black intelligentsia concerned with
upward mobility, fair representation, and equality. Williams was shy and
unassuming offstage, but Walker was brash and outspoken, and had a head
for business. He eagerly served as the duo’s public representative, and both
men were happy to serve as role models. “We want our folks, the Negroes, to
like us,” Walker wrote in 1909. “Over and above the money and the prestige
is a love for the race” (quoted in Sotiropoulos 2006, 42).
Under Walker’s management, the Williams and Walker Company
negotiated for better theaters, recording deals, and song-publishing credits.
Walker often spoke out against racism and the unfair treatment of black
artists. The duo helped found or support organizations that helped other
black performers, including a black entertainment baseball league, a black
performers’ fraternal organization, and a black-owned music publishing
company (Smith 1992, 97, 106–7, 124). After their stint in vaudeville, they
teamed with playwright Jesse Shipp on a series of all-black productions to
which they contributed dialogue and songs. In New York and on the road,
shows like The Policy Players (1899) and Sons of Ham (1900) allowed them
to build a relationship with a national, diverse audience. The duo also secured
management by the brothers Benjamin and Jules Hurtig, and their partner,
Harry Seamon. Some of the first white theater managers to work with black
acts, the Hurtigs and Seamon produced shows under the auspices of
Syndicate members Erlanger and Klaw. Their Syndicate ties gave Williams
and Walker access to Broadway theaters (Forbes 2008, 100). Their show In
Dahomey (1903) would become the first all-black full-length musical to play
in (not above) a major Broadway house in season.
In Dahomey began in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1902 before playing
Boston, Philadelphia, and the midwest through 1903. It was conceived with

46
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

a more formal structure and developed plot than any of Williams and
Walker’s previous shows. Billed as a “musical farce,” In Dahomey touched
lightly on the late-nineteenth-century back-to-Africa movement. In the
show, two conmen—the conniving Rareback Pinkerton (Walker) and the
good-natured, dim Shylock Homestead (Walker)—are hired to find some
missing treasure. They soon become embroiled in a second plan “to steal
money from a wealthy old man named Mr. Lightfoot and his group of
African colonizers.” The plot brings many of the characters to Africa, where
they win over the Dahomean king with whiskey. Lightfoot returns to the US ,
but Shylock and Rareback, whom the king has made powerful assistants,
choose to stay (Woll 1989, 36–8).
In Dahomey had a score by Will Marion Cook, lyrics by Paul Laurence
Dunbar, and a book by Jesse Shipp. The show was so well received in Boston
that Hurtig and Seamon more than quadrupled their initial investment of
$15,000. The returns allowed them to negotiate successfully with Erlanger
and Klaw for an unprecedented move to Broadway, where In Dahomey
opened on February 18, 1903.
A Broadway milestone, In Dahomey nevertheless hardly made a dent in
the institutionalized racism pervading the Great White Way. Even before it
opened, concerns about the production plagued the theater industry. In its
review, The New York Times mentioned a “thundercloud” reflected “in the
faces of the established Broadway managers,” resulting from rampant rumors
and deep concern about the possibility that opening night would set off “a
race war.” The Times article conceded that such concerns proved unwarranted,
but argued that this was due largely to the fact that the house was kept strictly
segregated by employees of Erlanger and Klaw, who stood at the entryway of
the theater refusing black patrons—even those offering to “pay more than
the dollar price for the orchestra seats”—entry anywhere but the upper tiers
of the balcony. Thus the only blacks in the orchestra were music director
James Vaughn and the water peddlers. “As the most comfortable chair in the
house costs a dollar, such a result is a triumph intact for all concerned. At
intervals one heard a shrill kiyi of applause from above or a mellow bass roar
that betokened the seventh heaven of delight. All parties were satisfied,” the
critic concluded (“Dahomey on Broadway” 1903, 9).
Dahomey was a hit, but Broadway’s producers and theater owners
nevertheless “desired to maintain the status quo fought to keep black
performers from having access” to their venues. For the remainder of their
partnership, Williams and Walker repeatedly had to “defend their right
to Broadway stages” (Forbes 2008, 103–4), while managers and producers

47
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

just as repeatedly insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary, that black
productions were of no interest to white audiences and were simply too
risky to back.
Nevertheless, through the first decade of the twentieth century, black
productions appeared with more frequency on legitimate stages. Rivalling
Williams and Walker’s shows were those by brothers James Weldon and
J. Rosamond Johnson, along with Robert Cole, whose musicals The Shoo Fly
Regiment (1907) and The Red Moon (1909) appeared at the Bijou and
Majestic, respectively (Graziano 2008, 95–6). Broadway saw its first interracial
musical even earlier: The Southerners (1904) featured whites in blackface and
a “chorus of real live coons” who joined the white cast for a scene; despite the
now-familiar wails of concern among critics, the production was not a hit,
but its short run proceeded without incident (Bordman 2001, 233).
In 1908, Williams and Walker appeared in their most critically praised
Broadway show, Bandanna Land, which would also be their last. Bandanna
Land featured a book by Jesse Shipp and choral music by Will Marion Cook
and Alex Rogers; many songs were interpolated into the show as well. The
musical follows Bud Jenkins (Walker) as he tries to cheat a railroad company
with a land speculation deal, and to swindle Skunkton Bowser (Williams)
out of his inheritance. Jenkins defrauds the railroad company, but Bowser
outwits him in the end (Woll 1989, 46). Bandanna Land was universally
received by critics as joyful and strong, if also condescendingly “natural,”
“authentic,” and “spontaneous” in its southern setting, which was seen as
evocative of the plantation and of old-time minstrelsy (Forbes 2008, 158–9).
While touring with Bandanna Land, Walker began to lisp, stutter, slur,
and forget his lines, all of which are symptoms of late-stage syphilis. He gave
his last performance in Kentucky in February 1909. His colleagues initially
downplayed his condition as exhaustion, but Walker, who never took the
stage again, died in 1911 (Smith 1992, 109–11). Unwittingly, Williams
became a solo performer with Mr. Lode of Koal at the Majestic in 1909.
Walker’s death contributed to a decade-long dearth of black performers
and entertainments on Broadway. The historian Robert Toll attributes the
exclusion to “the worsening position of blacks in the country,” citing among
other factors the rise of the Jim Crow South, the introduction of federal
segregationist policies by President Wilson, rising anxieties among whites as
the Great Migration continued, and a resultant uptick in race riots across the
country (Toll 1976, 128). While these factors might well have influenced
(white) public opinion about race and the direction of popular culture, more
immediate factors also resulted in the period on Broadway that James

48
 The Civil War Era to the Gilded Age

Weldon Johnson, in his book Black Manhattan, called the “term of exile”
(Johnson 1991, 170).
First, a number of innovative black artists who had been active on
Broadway during the first decade of the twentieth century either died or
turned to new interests during the second. Ernest Hogan died in 1909, and
both Robert Cole and George Walker followed him in 1911. Will Marion
Cook turned to choral and orchestral music, and J. Rosamond Johnson
moved to London before returning to the US to run a music school. These
various departures left a vacuum on Broadway that was not quickly filled.
Another reason for the dearth of black artists on Broadway through
the 1910s was the de facto segregation that continued to plague the
commercial theater. Despite laws passed in New York at the turn of the
century to end segregation in public spaces, theaters continued the practice
well into the 1920s. Complaints by black spectators occasionally spurred
attempts at reform by organizations such as the NAACP, or by journalists
writing for black newspapers. But the theater industry made little attempt at
change, and white critics at papers such as The New York Times almost always
argued in favor of segregated seating policies. Even with the increased
presence of black performers, blacks were not made to feel welcome on stage
or in the audience (Woll 1989, 50–53).
Finally, the growing population of black New Yorkers had begun, in the
first decades of the twentieth century, to settle in the northern Manhattan
neighborhood of Harlem, which had been built rapidly and a bit too
optimistically between 1870 and 1910. Overspeculation left realtors with an
abundance of vacant if spacious buildings that were ready to absorb the city’s
new arrivals. Many black performers, writers, editors, artists, and businessmen
relocated there before the First World War. Because segregation was rife in
most downtown establishments, many clubs, cabarets, and theaters were
established in Harlem as its population grew (Sotiropoulos 2006, 200–3).
While there was little in the way of black presence on Broadway in the
1910s, the black performing arts flourished elsewhere in New York. Theater
artists in Harlem enjoyed a growing population of black audiences before
which to hone their craft; up-and-coming performers who would headline
on Broadway during the so-called golden age of black musicals in the 1920s
graced Harlem’s stages as well. In Chicago, too, and on national tours, black
companies performed for black audiences, turning profits despite their lack
of presence on Broadway (Woll 1989, 54–5).
One of the few black artists to remain on Broadway during the so-called
period of exile was Bert Williams. After Mr. Lode of Koal, Williams accepted

49
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

an offer by Flo Ziegfeld to perform in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910 (Forbes

2008, 193–4). When he accepted, Williams became the first black actor to
appear in any of Ziegfeld’s illustrious revues. Yet the decision was fraught:
many of the performers in Ziegfeld’s company threatened to quit upon
learning that they would be sharing the stage with a black man. And even by
Broadway standards, the Follies were selective at best when it came to
admitting black spectators.
Ziegfeld easily dealt with his performers’ threats to quit the show: he simply
told them they were free to leave, since they were expendable and Williams
was not. The second issue, however, went unresolved. Black spectators
continued to follow Williams’s career and celebrate his prominence in a “white
show,” but were more limited than ever in opportunities to see him perform.
Tensions and disappointments resulted: years later, James Weldon Johnson
would refer to Williams’s work with the Follies as a “defection” to “the white
stage” (Johnson 1991, 109). The Ziegfeld Follies was certainly a major milestone
for Williams, who remained with the revue until 1919. But it was never an
entirely comfortable place to work, and he endured racism and segregation,
onstage and off, in his years there (Forbes 2008, 231).
Williams’s decision to work with Ziegfeld was perhaps unsurprising
considering Ziegfeld’s meteoric rise on Broadway as a producer. In the next
chapter, we will examine the impact of Ziegfeld’s Follies, as well as other
musical entertainments produced by him and others during the 1910s,
1920s, and 1930s on Broadway.

50
CHAPTER 3
THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the continuation of major technological

innovations and advances spurred by the Gilded Age resulted in an
extraordinary economic boom. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914
was followed by a long period of especially robust economic prosperity. The
abrupt onset of the Great Depression, however, brought with it a stretch of
crushing economic hardship.
Between the turn of the century and the outbreak of the First World War,
the US economy grew significantly in international importance. Steel
production fueled the development of the airplane and the high-rise building,
a more efficient rail system, and mass production of the automobile (Jones
2003, 13). Across the US , middle-class Americans patronized vaudeville houses
and theaters. They also took in comparatively new forms of live entertainment,
including organized spectator sports such as baseball, American football,
and horse racing. Film, too, gradually became a new item of fascination:
nickelodeons cropped up across the country in the early twentieth century,
contributing to American leisure time, if not yet seriously competing with live
entertainment (Travis 1958, 40).
The early-twentieth-century American stage musical mirrored the
country’s many ups and downs, both aesthetically and commercially. Until
the crash of the stock market in 1929, Broadway boomed. And in darker
times, the American stage musical responded to the needs of the nation, and
continued to establish itself as an important, meaningful, and lasting live
entertainment form.

The Ziegfeld Follies

Through the second decade of the twentieth century, as the burlesque

industry steadily declined, venues for vaudeville and legitimate productions
rose in Times Square to meet the ever-growing demands of a flourishing
population. For the first time in its history, Broadway opened over forty new
musicals in the 1911–12 season.1 The quality of these shows was not always
as impressive as the quantity; in what has long since become a trend, critics

51
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

at the time responded to the glut of unmemorable productions by bewailing

the sad state of the musical theater and loudly predicting its demise
(Bordman 2001, 310–11). Nonetheless, the sheer number of shows staged on
Broadway in a single season reflected the growth in size and importance of
Times Square as a hub for live entertainment.
There is perhaps no producer whose drive, love of spectacle, and
unquenchable passion for beautiful women in skimpy costumes were better
suited to early-twentieth-century Times Square than Flo Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld’s
Follies were some of the most influential and emulated productions
Broadway had yet seen, and their influence continues to resonate every time
contemporary chorines in sequined outfits lock their arms and kick up their
shapely legs during a big, flashy, song-and-dance number.
The son of a classically-trained German pianist who owned and operated
a successful Chicago music school, Ziegfeld inherited his father’s refined
demeanor and polished charm. Expected to take over the family business,
Flo grew to hate the sound of classical music and to reject his parent’s
quaint, old-fashioned approach to the world. Instead, he embraced his own
“Barnum-like aptitude for promotion and flimflam” (Traub 2005, 31). When
his father was tapped to help judge the keyboard awards at the 1893
Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the younger Ziegfeld traveled to New
York to help secure talent. There, he met, bought out the contract of, and
became manager to the body-builder Eugene Sandow. Sandow has gone
down in history not for his ability to play piano, but for his willingness to
pose and flex for audiences while clad in little more than a loincloth. Through
1895, Ziegfeld toured Sandow across the US and Europe, where the muscle-
man preened for fascinated crowds (Bianco 2004, 67).
On the London leg of the tour, Ziegfeld discovered the singer and actress
Anna Held, who became his next client and also his lover (Bianco 2004, 67).
Back in New York, where the couple settled at the turn of the century,
Ziegfeld made his name by producing Broadway musicals starring Held,
whom he promoted with publicity stunts. These included a press release
claiming that she took daily milk baths, and a leaked rumor that her waist
was as tiny as it was because she had had some of her ribs removed.
In the summer of 1907, Ziegfeld produced the first in a series of rooftop
diversions, which he based on popular Parisian revues and dubbed the
Follies in homage to the well-respected Folies Bergère. The first edition, which
ran a fast and furious forty minutes, appeared on the roof garden of Erlanger
and Klaw’s New York Theater, which was renamed the Jardin de Paris in
honor of the production. The Follies, officially retitled the Ziegfeld Follies in

52
 The Early Twentieth Century

1911, remained at the Jardin until 1913, when it was relocated to Erlanger
and Klaw’s New Amsterdam Theater (Traub 2005, 31–4).
The Ziegfeld Follies benefited from its creator’s work ethic, obsession with
beautiful women, taste for spectacle, and willingness to pay handsomely for
the best designers, directors, choreographers, composers, and performers
of the day. Ziegfeld’s insistence on quality and his ability to gauge public
demand paid off exceptionally well: he began his Follies as a side project, but
after the first edition, which cost $13,000 and netted almost $100,000, he
turned his full attention to developing the series. By 1909, the Follies “typified
what became standard Ziegfeld fare—fast-paced, lavish productions that
focused on beauty, spectacle, and topical humor,” and that borrowed liberally
from musical comedy, vaudeville, opera, and burlesque. This blend of high-
and low-culture entertainment was repackaged and sold to middle-class
audiences (Toll 1976, 303).
Because of its enormous size and cost, not to mention its commercial
success, the Ziegfeld Follies became an industry in and of itself by the second
decade of the twentieth century. Ziegfeld oversaw every aspect of each new
edition of the Follies. Typically, he would open a new edition in New York in
spring or summer; this would go on tour in the fall, whereupon he would
begin planning the next edition. Beautiful women in elaborate costumes—
some of which were enormous, heavy, and incredibly ornate, others of which
were feather-light and scandalously sheer—became trademarks. So did
rapid-fire pacing, state-of-the-art sets, and some of the best comedians in
the business. At the peak of popularity, between 1907 and 1925, the Ziegfeld
Follies featured comedians like Bert Williams, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor,
Leon Errol, Ed Wynn, W.C. Fields, and Will Rogers.2 Other celebrities
involved at various points included Bob Hope, Josephine Baker, Irving
Berlin, Eva Tanguay, Ray Bolger, Marilyn Miller, and Sophie Tucker.
No hugely successful production on Broadway goes un-imitated, so the
Ziegfeld Follies had plenty of competition. Between the 1910s and 1920s,
rival revues included the Shubert brothers’ The Passing Show (1912–24),
George White’s Scandals (1919–39), Earl Carroll’s Vanities (1923–32), Lew
Leslie’s Blackbirds (1926–30 and 1939), and The Greenwich Village Follies
(1919–28). All of these revues had distinct personalities: some were racy;
some focused specifically on dance, comedy, or music; some, like Blackbirds,
were showcases for black performers. Yet the Follies, which essentially
consolidated everything that had come before it into one funny, zippy,
scantily-clad, highly entertaining package, remained most famous of all (Toll
1976, 305).

53
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

While brilliant and innovative in his own right, Ziegfeld benefited in part
from a years-long war taking place in the commercial theater industry
through the first decades of the twentieth century. The Theatrical Syndicate’s
monopolistic stranglehold was, for the first time, being challenged on
Broadway and on the road by three entrepreneurial brothers who seemed to
have emerged from nowhere (actually, they were from Syracuse, New York).
As they rose to power, Lee, Sam, and Jacob J. Shubert were frequently locked
in heated, nasty, and often astoundingly childish competition with the
Syndicate, as both groups scrambled to destroy one another by building and
acquiring theaters, competing for audiences, and out-producing each other.
As the up-and-coming producer of a hit series that premiered on the roof of
a prime Syndicate house, Ziegfeld caught the attention and fueled the hotly
competitive spirits of the Shuberts, whose Passing Show series was an attempt
to unseat him as king of the Broadway revue and, they hoped, hurt the
Syndicate in the process.

The demise of the Syndicate: Enter the Shuberts

Lee (1871–1953), Sam (1878–1905), and Jacob J. (1879–1963) Shubert were

hardly the first businessmen to challenge the Syndicate. Earlier producers
such as David Belasco and Oscar Hammerstein had managed to survive
the monopoly with their independent, if never nearly as powerful, careers
intact. Yet while the Syndicate had managed to create and sustain a
nationally consolidated theater industry, the Shuberts were younger,
savvier, and hungrier, if never quite as innovative. Much to the chagrin
of their supporters, once they overtook the Syndicate, they merely imitated
the very monopoly they had set out to destroy in the first place: “They
devised nothing new in the way of circuits, booking offices, theatrical
systems. They followed a model; they enlarged its scale; they did not alter its
proportions” (Bernheim [1932] 1964, 67). Nevertheless, the Shuberts’ legacy
remains, as do many of the Broadway theaters they built in their ascent: the
Ambassador, Barrymore, Booth, Schoenfeld, Imperial, Shubert, and Winter
Garden.3
The fact that three unknown young men were, over time, able to beat
the large and powerful Syndicate at its own game seems the stuff of folklore.
But the Shuberts were quick to take advantage of the larger organization’s
very significant weaknesses. The Syndicate was a formidable, pioneering
organization, but it was never a particularly organized or well-balanced one,

54
 The Early Twentieth Century

and its lack of cohesion contributed to its downfall. Loosely structured as a

pool, or informal combination, which tended more toward verbal than
written agreements and relied almost entirely on a trust that was usually
unfounded, the Syndicate quickly proved dangerously porous, backhanded,
and corrupt. Some of its partners were less savvy and more easily bribed
than others, and most of its members got into the habit of making secret
deals with outside parties or pursuing private ventures that did not represent
the group as a whole. The Shubert brothers figured out and took advantage
of these weaknesses from early in their careers.
Three of the seven children of Eastern European immigrants who
settled in Syracuse, New York, in the late nineteenth century, Sam, Lee, and
J.J. had little in the way of formal education due to their family’s crushing
poverty and their father’s alcoholism. At some point in the late 1880s,
Sam found work as a program boy at the Grand Opera house; by the age
of eleven he was treasurer of a competing venue. At the turn of the
century Sam brought his brothers into the business, took control of several
road companies, and leased six theaters in upstate New York as well as the
Herald Square Theatre in Manhattan (Travis 1958, 39). Some of the venues
the Shuberts leased were Syndicate owned, but Sam made a practice of
defying Syndicate rules. As often as he could, he bribed middlemen or
circumvented Klaw and Erlanger in order to do business with their kinder
and conveniently more inept partners, Samuel Nixon and Frederick
Zimmerman.
The fact that Abraham Erlanger, by far the most dominant member, was
so thoroughly despised hardly helped the Syndicate generate loyalty or
retain power. As the Shuberts established a greater foothold in the business,
their hatred of Erlanger only grew. Following 26-year-old Sam Shubert’s
death in a grisly 1905 train wreck outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Lee and
J.J. asked Erlanger to honor an agreement he had made with their newly
deceased brother. Erlanger dismissed the outstanding contract by snapping
back that he never honored contracts made with dead men (Hirsch 1998,
36).
Like the Syndicate, the Shuberts frequently resorted to bribery, lying,
double-crossing, and evasion to gain power (Hirsch 1998, 27). But unlike the
Syndicate, they had something powerful to focus on toppling and, after Sam’s
death, personal reasons for doing so. More vigilant, mistrustful, and litigious
than the Syndicate, the Shuberts were also a smaller, closer concern; the
surviving brothers kept a careful watch over one another and their employees
as they grew their empire. While they occasionally made peace with

55
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Syndicate members when a project came along that was mutually beneficial,
they typically made it a practice to hire performers or managers who disliked
or mistrusted the older, established monopoly. They sent bigger, more
spectacular acts to any city where the Syndicate had booked a show. As they
grew, they built connections and fostered heated competition, both in New
York and on the road (Travis 1958, 40).
The Syndicate’s approach was to function on “an economy of shortage”;
its members believed that “fewer theaters insured fuller booking and larger
audiences.” Yet following Sam’s death, the surviving Shuberts began building
as many theaters across the country as they could manage, frequently
appealing to outside patrons and benefactors for money with which to do so.
Further, while the members of the Syndicate were never well-respected as
producing managers, the Shuberts cultivated themselves as impresarios who
had a hand in the shows they put into their theaters (Hirsch 1998, 56). Their
approach eventually led to a glut of theaters that neither concern could fill,
especially as movies began drawing spectators away from live entertainment.
But in the short term, the brothers’ tactics managed to strip the Syndicate of
much of its power on the road.
At its peak early in the first decade of the twentieth century, the Syndicate
began its slow decline around 1907. By 1916 it had shrunk to a third of its
original size: Charles Frohman had died, Charles Hayman had retired, and
Nixon and Zimmerman had dissolved their partnership. Erlanger and Klaw
continued to run the business until Klaw left under bitter circumstances
around 1919 (Bernheim 1932, 1964, 67–8). Erlanger continued to produce
shows until his death in 1930, but was no longer nearly the powerhouse he
had once been. By the time of his death, the Shuberts controlled most venues
on Broadway and a great many across the country.

The First World War and ASCAP

Due in part to the US ’s isolationist, insular stance, American popular

entertainment remained fairly lukewarm in its response to the First World
War. This was certainly the case on Broadway, where most productions
avoided wartime themes—though some revues, including editions of the
Ziegfeld Follies and the Passing Show, featured obligatory grandiose, patriotic
production numbers. There was also a small uptick in musical productions
with war-related scenes or songs after American involvement in the war
began in 1917. Yet the distance most musical productions kept from the

56
 The Early Twentieth Century

war implied that producers usually opted to keep their productions light,
and their audiences free from anxiety about international affairs (Jones
2003, 36–42).
And yet the First World War era was hardly a fallow time for the musical,
which developed and matured considerably through the 1910s. The country’s
isolationism fueled the development of new, homegrown genres. Jazz, in
particular, proved enormously popular and very quickly found its way onto
Broadway’s stages. The establishment of ASCAP (the American Society of
Composers, Authors and Publishers) in 1914 also had a big impact on the
development of the American stage musical: it resulted in a shift away from
interpolated scores and toward cohesive ones written entirely by one
composer and lyricist.
At the onset of the war, a surge in anti-European, and especially anti-
German, sentiment led to the decline in support for “even the most harmless
Austro-Hungarian operetta,” long a staple of the country’s live entertainment
diet (Bordman 2001, 343). The rejection of all things operetta coincided
with the decline of the road tour and, on Broadway, a growing demand
for American-made musicals. The absence of European imports caused a
vacuum that was filled by a new generation of American composers, armed
with new rights and protections that allowed them to make unprecedented
demands of Broadway producers.
ASCAP was founded at the Hotel Claridge in Times Square in February
1914 by a group of composers and music publishers including George
Maxwell, Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml, and Irving Berlin. The performers-
rights organization protected intellectual property and demanded regular
payments in the form of royalties for its members.4 Copyright laws
existed in the US before ASCAP, but protections extended only to the
“purchase and mechanical reproduction of published compositions”—not
to live performances. This meant that any published song could be
interpolated into any show, anywhere, at any time, and that its composer or
lyricist could seek no compensation in exchange. Once ASCAP commenced
and, by January 1917, won a series of legal battles, “all hotels, theaters, dance
halls, cabarets, and restaurants were required to obtain a license from
ASCAP—for a fee—before they could play a piece written by a composer or
published by a publishing house belonging to the organization” (Hamm
1979, 338–9).
The impact of ASCAP, both in shaping the popular tastes of the
country and on the stage musical, was profound. Much like the commercial
theater industry, Tin Pan Alley, and almost all the composers and lyricists

57
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

contributing to both, ASCAP was based in New York. The concentration of

that kind of power in that city resulted in “the urbanization of American
popular song.” Through the first half of the twentieth century, attitudes about
what an American popular song “should be and where it should fit into
American culture were . . . . shaped by the climate and taste of New York.” Tin
Pan Alley style became nationally dominant and “to the extent that Tin Pan
Alley songs reflected American culture in a broader sense, they did so because
the rest of the country was willing to accept a uniquely urban, New York
product, not because New York was absorbing elements of American culture
from west of the Hudson River or south of Atlantic City” (ibid., 377–8). On
the theater front, ASCAP members now received royalties that permitted
more artistic freedom and challenged the power of the producer in controlling
what music went into each show. For the first time, interpolations became
impractical, expensive and, if done on the sly, illegal. Composers and lyricists
could demand to create and to be properly compensated for entire scores.
One result of the birth of ASCAP, then, was the standardization of
particular forms: the AABA or 32-bar form became so prevalent that it is
still sometimes simply referred to as “Tin Pan Alley form.” Another result
was the rise in importance to the American musical of ASCAP-supported
composers and lyricists, whose output extended across the country, moving
beyond theaters and vaudeville houses via sheet music, radios, phonographs,
and eventually the talking picture (ibid., 339).

A new generation of composers and lyricists

Many attempts have been made to explain precisely why different periods in
American entertainment seem “dominated by one or another of the national
or ethnic groups making up the complex web of American society—the
English, the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Africans”—and, more
specifically, why both Tin Pan Alley and the American musical in the first
half of the twentieth century seemed so strongly associated with New York-
based Jewish Americans (ibid., 327). Theories ranging from the burgeoning
industries’ relative lack of prejudice against Jews to the cultural importance
of music in the Diaspora to the spike in population of Eastern European
Jews in New York at the turn of the century have been alternately suggested
and refuted as overgeneralized, unsubstantiated, or reductive (Most 2004, 8).
For whatever reason—most likely a complex mix of social, economic,
political, and cultural factors—the period between the World Wars saw the

58
 The Early Twentieth Century

“first great contribution to American culture by the New York Jewish

community” (Hamm 1979, 327). While they came from backgrounds too
diverse to easily quantify—from affluent, assimilated, educated families to
newly arrived and desperately poor immigrants—and while there were
certainly exceptions, Jewish up-and-comers like Irving Berlin (1888–1989),
Jerome Kern (1885–1945), Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), and George
(1898–1937) and Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) served as the first generation of
composers and lyricists who, thanks to shifting trends in mass entertainment,
supplied many of the scores emanating from the country’s theaters, and
many of the songs disseminated via Tin Pan Alley across the country.
The earliest of this group of composers to establish themselves were Irving
Berlin and Jerome Kern. While contemporaries, these men exerted notably
different influences on American popular culture. The astoundingly prolific
Berlin is known less for his theater scores than for an extraordinary number
of hit songs like “God Bless America,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” and “White
Christmas” (Magee 2012, xi). Kern, who unlike Berlin wore erudition on
his sleeve, wrote primarily for book shows, less often for revues, and “never
wrote popular songs independent of film and theater scores” (Mast 1987,
57).
Poverty so afflicted Berlin’s family that he began working as a small child
shortly after they emigrated from Siberia and settled on the Lower East Side
in 1893. Sporadically educated at best, Berlin quit school for good at age
thirteen after the death of his father. Jobs as a singing waiter and saloon
performer led him to Tin Pan Alley, where he found work as a song-plugger
and then as a staff lyricist. After collaborating in 1907 with the pianist Mike
Nicholson on his first published song, “Marie from Sunny Italy,” for which he
wrote lyrics, Berlin had his first big hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” in 1911.
Less a real ragtime song than a Tin Pan Alley number in march-time with
a little syncopation tossed in for good measure, “Alexander” was soon being
performed on America’s stages by superstars like Al Jolson. In its first year of
publication alone, “Alexander” sold some two million copies in sheet music
form internationally. The newly in-demand Berlin went on to write hundreds
of songs for musicals, vaudeville shows, Hollywood films, and eventually
television (Magee 2012, 3–4).
Kern did not mirror Berlin’s compositional range or longevity, but his
impact on the legitimate theater was more immediate. Most known as the
composer of the 1927 landmark musical Show Boat, Kern was born in New
York into an assimilated, affluent family. After exhibiting a talent for music
in early childhood, he was given piano lessons and sent as a young man to

59
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

the New York College of Music. Following stints studying in Germany and
England, he apprenticed as a Tin Pan Alley shipping clerk and song-plugger,
and then served as a rehearsal pianist for musicals. He published a few songs
that were interpolated into various productions, and eventually became a
resident composer at the tiny Princess Theater on West 39th Street. There, he
collaborated on a series of shows now collectively known as the Princess
musicals (Hamm 1979, 341).
Built in 1913 by producer Ray Comstock, the Shubert brothers, and the
actor and director Holbrook Blinn, the 299-seat Princess was designed to be
a space for up-and-coming playwrights to stage short plays. But the Princess
failed to draw loyal audiences. In 1915, after two years of financial struggle,
agent and producer Elisabeth Marbury was brought in to envision a new
direction for the theater. Under Marbury’s guidance, the theater became
home to “small, intimate, clean musical comedy devoid of all vulgarity and
coarseness” (Stempel 2010, 159).
When it came to musicals, “small” and “intimate” were really all the
Princess could handle, especially on an allotted $7,500 budget, which was
minuscule even for the time. The venue had room for very few props,
performers, musicians, or set pieces, and thus could not compete with large,
moneyed houses built to accommodate enormous sets, complicated stage
effects, and dazzling costumes for huge casts. The Princess musicals, then,
were borne as much of necessity as they were of any real urge to rid Broadway
of perceived vulgarity, which might well have been incorporated had the
theater actually been able to afford and accommodate it (Kirle 2005, 17).
Nevertheless, Marbury’s new program worked: the musicals produced at the
Princess connected with audiences, and the theater was soon out of financial
trouble.
The first small-scale musical staged at the Princess was a version of Paul
Ruben’s 1905 London hit, Mr. Popple of Ippleton, adapted for American tastes
and retitled Nobody Home (1915). Marbury hired Kern and playwright Guy
Bolton to write the score and refashion the book. Promotional material for
Nobody Home promised audiences something innovative and intimate: the
“[s]martest musical offering of the New York season,” featuring “a real plot,
which does not get lost during the course of the entertainment.” A wacky
comedy about complications that arise when “society dancer” Vernon Popple
and his girlfriend Violet seek permission to marry from Violet’s pretentious
aunt, Nobody Home was well-received by critics and ran for 135 performances,
so Marbury and Comstock eagerly pursued more projects with Bolton and
Kern (Bordman 2001, 351–2). The duo, sometimes joined by writer and

60
 The Early Twentieth Century

lyricist Philip Bartholomae and British humorist P.G. Wodehouse, developed

four more Princess musicals between 1915 and 1918: Very Good Eddie
(1915), Oh, Boy! (1917), Leave It to Jane (1917), and Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918).
Musical theater historians have long debated the groundbreaking nature
of the Princess musicals as they relate to the development of the so-called
“integrated musical,” in which all aspects of a production—dialogue, music,
lyrics, and choreography—contribute to a coherent whole. Some scholars
feel that the Princess musicals were nothing short of revolutionary, while
others argue that they were hardly as cohesive or fluid in their conception or
execution as they seem in retrospect. Despite Kern’s role as chief composer,
for example, many of the shows featured interpolated songs, and in many
productions, the dialogue seems stiff, forced or contrived—as if it had been
taken from elsewhere and inserted at various points into the script, instead
of written specifically to mesh with other aspects of the production (Kirle
2005, 17).
Regardless of just how innovative the Princess musicals were, they
certainly took giant steps in the direction of the integrated musical. As they
worked together, Kern and Bolton grew increasingly interested in creating
shows in which songs had at least something to do with the action at hand,
every line of dialogue furthered the plot, and the plots, however silly, were at
the very least credible (Jones 2003, 46).

The Actors’ Equity strike of 1919

As the First World War waged overseas, composers like Kern and Berlin
gained footholds in the entertainment business, and the Shuberts and
Syndicate battled over power, money, and control of the commercial theater,
stage actors grew frustrated over their lack of agency. Especially since the
creation of the Syndicate in 1896, many actors felt unappreciated and abused
by managers, directors, and especially producers. As the Shubert brothers
rose to power, some performers held out hope that they would be kinder and
more magnanimous than the Syndicate had been. But the Shuberts turned
out to be just as bad as the old guard in many cases, and in some respects
even worse.
Even as the theater industry grew more structured and financially
sound, its professional actors were granted a stunning lack of workplace
protection. Actors had no standard contracts and were thus at the mercy
of managers or producers when it came to jobs they took. Many were called

61
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

in for weeks of rehearsals, or for extra performances, without compensation.

Actors were frequently sent on tours for which no transportation or
accommodations were provided, were expected to supply their own
costumes, and could be fired or replaced without warning (Bernheim [1932]
1964, 132–3). In response to such mistreatment, a group of 112 actors
formed the Actors’ Equity Association in 1913.
Yet building membership, let alone becoming an official union, was no
small feat. Despite heaps of abuses, many stage performers were unconvinced
that such an organization was useful or necessary. Also, the American
Federation of Labor, with which Equity aspired to affiliate, would only grant
a single charter in each field, and the charter for performers was already held
by the vaudevillians’ union, the White Rats Actors International, which was
not terribly welcoming or encouraging of the new group.
Nonetheless, the association grew in numbers and strength. Within a
year, the Shuberts agreed to meet with Equity representatives to hammer out
a contract. This was subsequently ignored, not only by the Shuberts but, in
an ironic show of solidarity, by all the remaining Syndicate members. As
Equity grew, the producers dug in their heels: in April 1919, Lee Shubert
formed the Producing Managers’ Association, or PMA , to unite producers
and theater managers against the actors’ union (Hirsch 1998, 112).
Tables were turned three months later when the White Rats surrendered
their charter and the American Federation of Labor finally recognized
Actors’ Equity. The PMA promptly dug in its heels, resolving not only to
refuse to recognize Equity, but also to punish its leaders. On August 7, with
membership in Equity growing by the day, actors went on strike, refusing to
perform in any house represented by the PMA , and swiftly shutting down
twelve shows. As the strike continued, a number of established unions,
including the United Scenic Artists’ Local and the Theatrical Mechanics
Union, sided with Equity. When, a week later, Flo Ziegfeld acknowledged
that he had secretly become a member of the PMA , the Follies dancers, not
considered actors and thus not members of Actors’ Equity, hastily formed
the Chorus Equity Association with support from chorus-girl-turned-star
Lillian Russell, and walked off the job in solidarity.
Many of the Follies headliners, too, refused to go on, so the Follies
closed during the strike. So did productions at major venues in eight other
American cities, including Washington, DC , Boston, and Chicago. After
nearly five weeks, during which many more shows closed, several premieres
were canceled, millions of dollars were lost, and Equity’s roster ballooned
from barely 3,000 members to over 14,000, the producers acquiesced and

62
 The Early Twentieth Century

gave in to most of the union’s demands. Following the creation of a five-year

contract, the strike was settled on September 6, 1919.5
While the strike resulted in progress for Broadway performers, a few of
the players who opposed Equity subsequently suffered tarnished reputations.
George M. Cohan, in particular, felt that actors were artists, not laborers. His
disdain for the very idea of actors unionizing “blinded him to the very real
need for such an action.” Cohan remained resentful of Equity long after the
strike was settled, and his bitterness added to his posthumous reputation as
a rigid, difficult man (Kenrick 2008, 154–5).
Less obviously, the strike shed light on some ways the commercial theater
had yet to change for its players. Chorus members and dancers, for example,
were not invited to join Equity, which implied that work by performers in
smaller or more specialized roles was unimportant. The few black performers
working on Broadway, too, seem to have been summarily ignored both before
and during the strike. One of the more sobering stories centered on Follies
headliner Bert Williams who, never informed about his cast’s decision to
walk off the job, reported to work and got into his costume, only to find the
“auditorium empty and the strike on.” Years later, he recounts returning to his
dressing room feeling as if he were trapped in a bad dream. “I knew nothing
of it,” he remembered. “I had not been told. You see, I just didn’t belong”
(Forbes 2008, 297). For all the strides made in the theater industry in the
early twentieth century, some aspects remained stubbornly unchanged.

The Roaring Twenties

The 1920s are often referred to as “roaring” for very good reasons that
have nothing to do with lions. The country, enjoying a postwar boom
that helped establish it as a formidable western power, made large and
important strides on sociocultural, economic, technological, and artistic
fronts. At least until the stock market crash ended the decade with a
resolute thud, most Americans, excluding farmers and African Americans,
benefited tremendously from the nation’s economic upturn. The automobile
boom—which was stimulated by new technology and which, in turn,
fueled the steel, petroleum, and rubber industries—set off a second
industrial revolution. Skyscrapers, apartment buildings, homes, and movie
palaces rose across the nation. The sound of jazz, thrilling and new,
emanated from nightclubs, theaters, speakeasies, and concert halls. American
women, newly granted the right to vote, joined the workforce in record

63
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

numbers and, along with their male counterparts, often had more money to
spend on leisure activities (Jones 2003, 52–3).
The commercial theater industry, not yet as threatened by movies or as
financially strapped as it would become during the Great Depression, rose to
meet new demands. For the first time in the country’s history, more
Americans lived in cities than in rural areas. While the theater industry
experienced the slow death, beginning around the turn of the century, of
touring companies that departed from New York and made various stops
across the country, its growing cities saw the rebirth of stock or resident
theater companies, which only grew in importance in the postwar years.
These companies allowed urban centers nationwide to cultivate live
entertainment for local audiences (Bernheim [1932] 1964, 94).
By 1920, New York City’s population had grown to nearly eight million
and was experiencing truly astonishing economic growth. The city was
justified in calling itself a “factory of the new”: advertising, fashion,
publishing, and design had by this point risen so dramatically in international
importance that it was as if “the city were inventing the idea of urbanism,
and then retailing it to the rest of the country” (Traub 2005, 55).
Despite the endless in-fighting between some of its key financial players
and the decline of touring productions, the commercial theater industry
boomed along with its city. Through the 1920s, “Broadway” became
synonymous both with Times Square and the live entertainments on offer
therein. The illuminated billboards in Times Square were alluring enough to
draw some of the estimated 750,000 people who passed through the
neighborhood each night. Yet most visitors came to do more than gape at the
brightly-lit signs: they sought dinner, drinks, nightlife, sex, and entertainment,
all of which were on ample offer.
The wartime boom supported the construction of dozens of theaters,
which joined the many already lining the segment of Broadway snaking
through Times Square and radiating out among its side streets (Bianco 2004,
82). A dizzying diversity of genres filled the venues: new works by young
playwrights like Elmer Rice, George S. Kaufman, Maxwell Anderson, and
Eugene O’Neill were produced, as were revivals of older plays. Light comedies
(musical and otherwise), vaudeville, cabaret, night-club acts, Shakespeare
plays, domestic dramas, and a wide range of Follies-inspired revues—
sometimes four or five in a season—could be found, too. The number of
productions that ran on Broadway in any given season through the 1920s is
almost impossible to grasp by contemporary standards: in the 1920–21
season alone, Broadway opened over 150 productions, and it was not

64
 The Early Twentieth Century

uncommon for up to 200 shows to open in a season (Bernheim [1932] 1964,

208), with many musicals among them.
Then as now, theater production was a risky business. A vast majority of
shows that opened each season flopped or closed at a loss, and even with
the glut of shows on offer, only one or two musicals typically survived for
longer than a single season. This was less of a problem, though, since
production was not remotely as expensive as it has become. Through the
1920s, production costs remained low enough that shows only needed to
run a few months to turn a profit; ticket prices, too, were far lower than
they have become (Block 2008, 116). Ticket prices rose so slowly during
the 1920s that middle- and working-class audiences could see shows
comparatively frequently—if perhaps not in the orchestra on a Saturday
night (when tickets cost between $4 and $6), then certainly from the
mezzanine on a weeknight or during a matinee at a more affordable 50 cents
(Jones 2003, 60). The sheer number of shows, as well as their relative
affordability, meant that during the 1920s there was something on offer for
everyone.

Shuffle Along

Of course, the term “everyone” needs to be contextualized. From inception,

Broadway was primarily interested in appealing to—and thus depicting, or
at least reflecting the interests and concerns of—the country’s white,
mainstream middle class. Nevertheless, at various points in its growth and
development, the American musical has reflected more diversification in
content and appeal than it has at others. In the 1920s, for example, Broadway
showed such renewed interest in all-black musicals that the decade has been
referred to as a golden age for the subgenre (Woll 1989, 248).
Cynically speaking, producers would not have been so enthusiastic
about all-black productions had one not become a huge, runaway hit at
the start of the decade. Yet while the all-black productions staged on
Broadway during the 1920s hardly managed to shatter every stereotype or
bring true equality to audiences and performers, they helped change the
Broadway landscape in significant, lasting ways. Shuffle Along, the surprise
smash that inspired many all-black musicals to follow it, was a landmark
production that simultaneously served as yet another reminder of just how
hard it was for black artists to gain a toehold in predominantly white
entertainment realms.

65
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Shuffle Along was the result of a lengthy collaboration between four men:
the lead performers and book writers Flournoy Miller (1885–1971) and
Aubrey Lyles (1884–1932), and the composer-lyricist team James Hubert
“Eubie” Blake (1887–1983) and Noble Sissle (1889–1975). Tennessee natives
Miller and Lyles began performing together as students at Fisk University,
and between 1905 and 1909 were based in Chicago, where they performed at
the African American owned and operated Pekin Stock Company. While
there, they honed an act that employed rapid-fire malapropisms and intense
physical comedy, and that made fun of smalltown Southern life. While with
Pekin, they developed the characters Steven Jenkins (Miller) and Sam Peck
(Lyles), who eventually became two main characters in Shuffle Along.6
During his childhood in Indianapolis, Noble Sissle sang in church choirs
and his high school glee club. He attended college for a few years, but left to join
James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra in 1916. The year prior, he met Blake, a
Baltimore native who had been playing piano professionally since adolescence,
at a party. The two decided to write songs together.7 Their partnership was
almost immediately successful: their first song, “It’s All Your Fault,” was quickly
incorporated into Sophie Tucker’s vaudeville act. After the war, which Sissle
spent overseas touring with Europe’s orchestra, he and Blake developed their
own vaudeville act, whereupon they were approached by Miller and Lyles, who
asked them to collaborate on a musical comedy (Woll 1989, 61).
As Blake remembered it, at the time, “there was no money to be had for
the production of black shows” (King 1973, 151). Despite the success
Williams and Walker had had on Broadway at the turn of the century,
contemporary Broadway producers remained stubbornly and erroneously
convinced that white audiences would not support shows featuring all-black
casts. Nevertheless, Miller and Lyles’s agent eventually arranged a meeting
with the producer John Cort.
As luck would have it, Cort had recently seen the comedians perform as
Jenkins and Peck in Darkydom, a revue that had run in Harlem at the
Lafayette Theater in 1915. Despite his misgivings, Cort was, by the time he
met Miller and Lyles, enough of a fan that he agreed to back their new
production, Shuffle Along, once it returned to New York after a national tour.
Cort booked the show into the 63rd Street Theater, which he had recently
secured and had yet to fill (Sotiropoulos 2006, 233).
Shuffle Along’s tour probably did not make Cort feel any surer about his
investment. The musical’s company traveled through Washington, DC ,
Philadelphia, and New Jersey on a shoestring budget worn so thin that the
production quickly fell deep into debt (Bordman 2001, 407). Things did not

66
 The Early Twentieth Century

seem like they would improve much once the musical got back to New York
and the Shuffle Along company readied itself for its big opening on 63rd
Street. Cort was unwilling to invest much in the production, so scenery and
props were scant, and costumes were purchased on the cheap from a show
that had recently flopped. The venue itself, too, had serious shortcomings.
Designed for public lectures, it had a shallow stage that was poorly suited for
a big musical (Woll 1989, 62). While technically a Broadway house, it was
also so far north of Times Square that it did not benefit from the foot traffic
that served the other theaters. These are likely reasons Cort was willing to
consider booking an all-black show into the house in the first place.
Shuffle Along opened to an invite-only crowd on May 22, 1921, and to the
public on the following night. Some reviews of the musical were, if positive,
primarily reflective of the pervasive racism of the time. The critic for The
New York Times, for example, griped that Shuffle Along was disappointing
because it was not “conspicuously native” and because it was so “crude—in
writing, playing, and direction” as to make the production most comparable
to “a fair-to-middling amateur entertainment” (“Shuffle Along Premiere”
1921, 20). But other reviews were more effusive, and Shuffle Along benefited
as well from especially enthusiastic word of mouth.
The book of Shuffle Along was hardly a giant step in the direction toward
the integrated musical. Like most musical comedies of its time, it was more a
mélange that undermined “the already slim divide between musical comedy
and vaudeville” (Savran 2009, 73). A razor-thin plot followed two grocers,
Jenkins and Peck, who each run for mayor of their small, southern town,
Jimtown. They agree that whoever wins the election will appoint the loser his
Chief of Police. Jenkins wins dishonestly, but he and Peck disagree on trivial
matters that build into one of Miller and Lyles’s signature stage fights.
Meanwhile, an honest candidate, Harry Walton, steps in. Walton is eager
to put an end to the corrupt ways of Jenkins and Peck; also, his girl, Jessie, has
a wealthy father who will not allow the couple to marry unless Harry proves
himself worthy. As was typical of the time, the plot of Shuffle Along was
regularly interrupted so various players could perform pre-existing routines,
none of which had anything to do with the through-line. In the second act,
for example, the action stopped so Sissle and Blake could perform a short
concert derived from their vaudeville act (Woll 1989, 65–9). In both structure
and execution, then, Shuffle Along owed much to vaudeville and to the
pioneering productions of Williams and Walker.
The score, however, was a major departure from what had, to this point,
functioned as standard Broadway fare. Heralded as one of the most thrilling

67
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

and innovative scores of the 1920s, Shuffle Along was composed entirely by
Blake, with lyrics by Sissle. While they were the sole contributors, their
approach to building the score hearkened ironically back to the days when
songs were interpolated into pre-existing scripts. When they were approached
to score Shuffle Along, they went through old songs “that no one had wanted
to publish and that we had really originally written for vaudeville,” and
worked them, one by one, into the show (King 1973, 151–2).
The score might have been derived in a way that was rapidly becoming
old fashioned, but there was nothing outdated about the songs, which ran
the gamut stylistically from blues, ragtime, barbershop, and jazz to operetta-
style ballad. The freshness and variety of the score so impressed audiences
that Blake remembers overhearing spectators buzzing about it during the
first intermission. “The proudest day of my life was when Shuffle Along
opened,” he would say later. All “those white people kept saying: ‘I would like
to touch him, the man who wrote the music.’ Well, you got to feel that. It
made me feel like, well, at last I’m a human being” (Jones 2003, 69).
Shuffle Along became a monster hit that ran for 504 performances at the
63rd Street Theater, which Cort suddenly found the money to renovate in
order to better accommodate the large cast. The musical went on a second
national tour, raking in almost $8 million and spawning countless imitations
through the remainder of the decade. It made such an impact that it is often
mistakenly cited as the first all-black musical to run on Broadway. It
jumpstarted the careers of Sissle, Blake, Miller, and Lyles, as well as many
other members of its original and replacement casts, including such
luminaries as Lottie Gee, Gertrude Saunders, Ina Duncan, Florence Mills,
Paul Robeson, Adelaide Hall, and Josephine Baker (Woll 1989, 74). Shuffle
Along was the first Broadway musical to feature a love song, “Love Will Find
a Way,” that was performed genuinely and tenderly—not just for crude comic
effect—by two people of color. Yet perhaps one of the most profound, lasting
impacts Shuffle Along had on Broadway took place not on the narrow (if
eventually widened) stage, but in the house itself.
As it was all over Broadway, the audience for Shuffle Along was
overwhelmingly white; historians estimate that at most performances, the
racial mix was approximately 90 percent white and 10 percent black. This
might seem like an enormous discrepancy, but considering the fact that
nearly a century later, about 80 percent of all Broadway audiences are white,
the breakdown at Shuffle Along was more noteworthy than it might initially
seem.8 James Weldon Johnson noted in Black Manhattan that many black
spectators “flocked to the Sixty-third Street Theatre to hear the most joyous

68
 The Early Twentieth Century

singing and see the most exhilarating dancing to be found on any stage in
the city” (Johnson 1991, 186).
While the house at the 63rd Street Theater was far from equally mixed,
it was nevertheless the first Broadway venue to desegregate audiences.
When Shuffle Along opened, a few critics described something that clearly
struck them as noteworthy: black patrons sitting in orchestra seats “as
far front as the fifth row.” Of course, no one production can single-
handedly erase a generation of segregation: long after Shuffle Along, the
balconies of Broadway, known collectively and derisively as “nigger
heaven,” remained the go-to section for many black spectators, whether due
to habit or affordability (Woll 1989, 72). And through the run of Shuffle
Along, the seats at the 63rd Street Theater were never fully desegregated.
Rather, two-thirds of the orchestra seats were always reserved for white
patrons. Nevertheless, Shuffle Along seems to have been the first Broadway
production at which black patrons were seated on the same level and at
the same distance from the stage as their white counterparts (Sotiropolous
2006, 234).
The monumental commercial success of Shuffle Along resulted in a
decade-long surge of all-black musicals on Broadway. Yet while the success
of Shuffle Along led to a number of important improvements, it was also in
some respects seriously constraining. Through the 1920s, Shuffle Along
became a blueprint of sorts, from which no black production could easily
depart. If a show strayed too far from what Shuffle Along had inadvertently
cemented as a formula for black musicals, white critics would attack it for
trying too hard to “aspire” to white productions (Woll 1989, 78). And as all-
black shows were increasingly co-opted by white producers and creative
teams eager to capitalize on the trend, blacks were denied control of their
own images onstage. Producers of all-black shows—such as the vaudevillian-
turned impresario Lew Leslie, whose Blackbirds revues appeared regularly
on Broadway—denied performers their agency, and thus tamped the
possibility of a black theater truly by, about, and for black spectators.
As Cort did before Shuffle Along became a hit, white producers
frequently cried poverty when it came to budgeting black productions,
which continued to be booked into the worst theaters and granted
comparatively meager budgets and salaries. On some occasions, producers
or creative teams even stole promising material from black companies
for use in white shows. Producer George White, for example, claimed to
hate a new dance number Miller and Lyles featured in Runnin’ Wild
(1923), their follow-up to Shuffle Along. White complained vociferously

69
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

about the number and even brought friends to rehearsals to try to convince
the duo that they had to cut the dance from their revue. They refused, White
relented, and the number—the Charleston—moved beyond black circles to
become a defining dance of the roaring twenties once it hit Broadway. Only
much later did Miller and Lyles learn that White was trying to cut the
number so he could use it in Scandals, his whiter, more established Broadway
revue series (ibid., 89–90).
For the continued disparities, the increased popularity of black musicals
in the 1920s took Broadway a few steps away from its most overtly
racist practices. The all-black musical craze resulted in unprecedented
opportunities for black performers, contributed to the desegregation of
performing companies and audiences, and added to the diversity of the
developing musical genre. It shattered the assumption that white audiences
would not embrace black shows and contributed, at the very least, to a
gradual move away from some of the vilest of minstrel-derived stereotypes.

Show Boat

Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat was an enormously
influential production, the likes of which were unique to Broadway at the time
of its premiere on December 27, 1927. With Show Boat, Hammerstein and Kern
attempted to move the musical comedy beyond its contemporary boundaries
by infusing it with more realistic characters and social issues, and by marrying
its score and plot more closely to one another than previous musicals had.
While certainly deserving of its landmark status, Show Boat was also a product
of its time and place: it could not have materialized from nowhere, just as its
existence did not singlehandedly change the course of the American stage
musical.
Show Boat was influenced by many genres and productions, and by
cultural and industrial shifts that had taken place long before its run of 572
performances at the Ziegfeld Theater, the glorious new venue that the
impresario built with help from William Randolph Hearst on 64th Street at
Sixth Avenue. Absent blackface minstrelsy and vaudeville, the rise of ASCAP,
the current popularity of all-black musicals, and the philosophies that Kern
and Hammerstein brought to the table when they began their collaboration,
there would never have been a Show Boat.
Based on Edna Ferber’s sweeping 1926 novel about three generations
of performers traveling up and down the Mississippi river on a riverboat

70
 The Early Twentieth Century

named the Cotton Blossom, Show Boat is a musical about race relations in the
US and about “theater and performance itself ” (Hoffman 2014, 32). The plot
follows its characters from the 1880s through the 1920s. The owners of the
riverboat are Cap’n Andy Hawks and his wife, Parthy Ann; its performers
include Steve Baker and his wife, the sultry singer Julie LaVerne; the staff
includes Queenie the cook and her husband Joe, a dock worker.
The first act takes place while the Cotton Blossom is docked in Natchez,
Mississippi. The Hawks’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Magnolia, meets and
quickly falls in love with Gaylord Ravenal, a local gambler with a heart of
gold and an inability to quit his lowdown ways. Later in the act, the town
sheriff interrupts the riverboat troupe during rehearsal to inform them that
the show cannot go on because two of the company members are guilty of
miscegenation. When it is revealed that Julie is biracial and has been passing
for white, Steve cuts her finger, drinks her blood and proclaims himself
biracial, too. Yet the couple ultimately agree to leave the boat quietly. By the
end of the act, Magnolia and Gaylord marry.
The second act opens in 1893 in Chicago, in time for the World’s Fair.
Gaylord, Magnolia, and their daughter Kim have left the Cotton Blossom and
are living off Gaylord’s winnings. But when Gaylord falls into debt, he
abandons his family. Desperate to make ends meet after he leaves, Magnolia
auditions at the Trocadero, a music hall whose proprietor is looking to
replace his unreliable, alcoholic nightclub singer. This turns out to be Julie,
who overhears Magnolia’s audition and sneaks away, sacrificing herself to
help her old friend. Magnolia becomes a star, as does Kim. At the end of the
musical, Julie retires and returns with Kim to the Cotton Blossom, where they
reconcile with Gaylord. The reunited family joins the rest of the characters,
all older and presumably wiser, on the deck of the boat. Only Julie is missing
from the reunion.
The stage adaptation of Show Boat was somewhat more upbeat than the
book: Ferber killed off many of the characters that Hammerstein and Kern
kept alive for the finale, and Julie’s later life on the streets as a prostitute goes
unmentioned in their version. Nevertheless, with its themes of alcoholism,
gambling addiction, abandonment, and racism, Show Boat hardly fit its
original billing as “An All-American Musical Comedy” (Stempel 2010, 195). It
was more akin to a musical play: a piece with a relatively serious story about
people experiencing real problems, “set to music neither as clipped as typical
musical comedy writing nor as fully arioso as operetta” (Bordman 2001, 485).
Like Kern, Hammerstein was interested in developing a musical that
might “attain the heights of grand opera and still keep sufficiently human

71
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

to be entertaining” (quoted in Bordman 2001, 193). The grandson and

namesake of the pioneering theater impresario and erstwhile Syndicate
foe, Oscar Hammerstein II, was discouraged from pursuing a career in
theater by his family. Nevertheless, he dropped out of Columbia Law
School in 1917 to pursue work as a lyricist and book-writer. After
apprenticing with lyricist and librettist Otto Harbach, who felt strongly that
lyrics should relate to the show in question, Hammerstein began working
with established theater composers, including Kern, with whom he
collaborated on the successful Cinderella musical Sunny in 1925 (Stempel
2010, 193).9
Kern was reputed to be curmudgeonly and difficult to work with, but he
and Hammerstein got along well, perhaps because of their shared desire to
create musicals in which song and dialogue contributed seamlessly to plot and
character development. With Show Boat, the men worked to streamline and
simplify Ferber’s complex plot, and to infuse their adaptation with music
and lyrics that were appropriate for the characters and plot points. Because
of this, and to the fact that Show Boat spans some four decades, the score is
notably varied in its influences. Songs reference distinct periods, and borrow
from styles including operetta, spirituals, blues, coon songs, sentimental ballads,
parlor songs, and jazz (Savran 2009, 89–90).
The score featured a few interpolations, but these too were justified in
terms of plot and character. The song “Bill,” sung by Julie in the nightclub, had
been written by Kern and Wodehouse for the 1918 Princess musical Oh, Lady!
Lady!!, from which it was cut. In Act II , which takes place at the end of the
nineteenth century, Magnolia appears at the same nightclub and sings “After
the Ball,” the hit waltz by Charles K. Harris that was written and interpolated
into A Trip to Chinatown in 1891. Similarly, the performers on the boat each
had specialty acts featured at various points during the original production
(Kirle 2005, 37–8). This use of specialty acts referenced the waning days of
vaudeville, and would likely have appealed to Ziegfeld, the master of the revue
and Show Boat’s producer (Decker 2013, 49).
Many of Show Boat’s characters exhibit behaviors or experience situations
that are weightier than was typical of Broadway musicals at the time, but the
sociocultural issue the musical brings most consistently to the forefront is
contemporary race relations. Even the very name of the titular showboat
reflects the separate, unequal lives of American blacks and whites in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the American south.
For affluent whites who patronize it, the Cotton Blossom signifies leisure,
gentility, entertainment, and the natural beauty of the Southland. For the

72
 The Early Twentieth Century

blacks performing menial jobs on the boat, in the fields, and on docks along
the shores of the Mississippi, the boat’s name symbolizes a history of
enslavement, forced labor, and subjugation.
Musically, Kern’s score and Hammerstein’s lyrics attempt similarly layered
statements about the characters and their situations. The score seems to
imply, through its diversity and blending of styles, that racial equality is both
possible and positive. In many cases, the musical’s songs reveal information
about the characters singing them; at times they even anticipate character
traits or plot points disclosed later in the show.
A perfect example is “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” which blends Tin Pan
Alley and the blues, and is written in dialect, much like a coon song would
have been a generation prior (Knapp 2006, 192). Yet the number manages to
turn the very idea of the coon song on its head. Rather than a song written
and performed to demean blacks, “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” is sung in
Act I by Julie to Magnolia, after Magnolia confesses her blooming love for
Gaylord. Queenie, who overhears the number, immediately questions how
Julie—whose mixed-race background is at this point still a carefully guarded
secret—would have ever heard the song, which, she notes, is only known by
blacks. Audiences soon learn of Julie’s secret, but with this number, her
background is implied. Meanwhile, the song allows Julie, Queenie, and
Magnolia to sing happily together, bonding over the complicated love they
feel for their respective men.
“Ol’ Man River” functions similarly. On its surface a song with lyrics that
grossly exaggerate “black speech patterns to ridicule the mentality of the
‘coon’, ” Joe’s number instead launches almost immediately into lyrics
describing cruel indifference to the plight of African Americans in the early
twentieth century:

Dere’s an ol’ man called de Mississippi

Dat’s the ol’ man dat I’d like to be!
What does he care if de world’s got troubles?
What does he care if de land ain’t free?

He don’ plant taters

He don’ plant cotton
An’ dem dat plants ’em
Is soon forgotten
But ol’ man river
He jes keeps rollin’ along

73
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

In the culminating stanza, Joe’s lyrics move beyond the plight of American
blacks to neatly encompass the human condition in a few blunt lines:

I gets weary
And sick of tryin’
I’m tired of livin’
And scared of dyin’
But ol’ man river
He just keeps rollin’ along

Rather than mocking blacks, then, “Ol’ Man River” anchors Show Boat, and
is often hailed as one of the most powerful, effective numbers in the history
of the American stage musical. The song works musically and lyrically to
remind audiences of “the confinement of the character within his culture,”
and simultaneously his “almost infinite comprehension” of humanity and
the workings of the world (Mast 1987, 59–60).
While its creators’ aim was to elevate the musical form by giving its
characters new weight and dimension, Show Boat has nonetheless been
read as demeaning to its black characters. Unlike their white counterparts,
such criticism goes, the black characters—Queenie and Joe in particular—
“show no character development over the course of the three-hour musical,”
and serve primarily as “background servants who help the white characters
achieve all they can in the decades-spanning work.” Show Boat was, of
course, created by white men who, however well-meaning, nevertheless
reflected the sociocultural tenor of the 1920s. In this respect, Show Boat
remains very much a musical of its time, despite countless revisions and as
many revivals, not to mention concert and film versions. Its depictions and
unwieldiness in plot and presentation make revivals of the show problematic.
Nevertheless, for its time Show Boat “raised the bar for what the musical
could be and the stories it could tell” through both dialogue and song
(Hoffman 2014, 31–2).
Despite its success and impact, Show Boat remained something of an
anomaly after its run. The musical was revived on Broadway, staged in
London, and remade as a film long before it made any lasting impact on
the musical theater as a genre. Through the late 1920s, musicals continued
largely as they had been before Show Boat came along, and there were
few attempts to emulate the high-minded, integrated model so successfully
demonstrated by Kern and Hammerstein. This points in part to the fact
that with Show Boat, Kern and Hammerstein had devised a style of

74
 The Early Twentieth Century

entertainment—the integrated musical—that had yet to set any kind of

standard for others to emulate. Yet it also points to bigger, more sweeping
changes looming on the horizon. Just two years after Show Boat triumphed
on Broadway, the commercial theater industry and the country nurturing it
would be suddenly, unexpectedly transformed.

75
76
CHAPTER 4
THE GREAT DEPRESSION TO
THE SECOND WORLD WAR

As you probably know if you paid even the scantest attention in history class,
the roaring twenties ended just a tad more resolutely than most decades do.
In summer 1929, domestic spending in the US slowed, and with it the
production of goods. Despite the minor recession that resulted, stock prices
continued to rise precipitously . . . until the bubble burst. On October 26,
1929, subsequently known as Black Thursday, investors dumped nearly
thirteen million shares of stock that had begun plummeting in value,
effectively erasing $10 billion by mid-morning. The banks scrambled to
maintain calm, but on October 29—another Black day, this one a Tuesday—
an additional sixteen million shares of stock at some $14 billion were
dumped (Klein 1992, 575). The comfortable, freewheeling 1920s were very
suddenly a memory. The Great Depression had begun.
Despite President Herbert Hoover’s initial optimism, and upbeat forecasts
by specialists who insisted the country would recover quickly, the Great
Depression lasted over a decade. As the 1930s began, Americans remained
wary of the stock market and tightened their belts. Industry slowed
significantly and unemployment skyrocketed. By 1933, somewhere between
13 and 15 million Americans were out of work, and almost half the country’s
banks had failed.1 Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the presidency in
1933 and the New Deal, his series of government-supported domestic
projects and job-creating programs, helped stimulate the nation’s economy.
But the Depression colored the 1930s, lifting only once the United States
entered the Second World War in December 1941.
Popular imagination looks back on the Great Depression as an era during
which all Americans were abruptly plunged into a wretched, hardscrabble
subsistence economy: one long, gray breadline peopled by desperate, gray
citizens. The statistics were certainly dramatic, and millions suffered mightily
through the 1930s in search of food, steady work, and shelter. This was
especially the case for people who were already poor and disenfranchised, as
well as for Americans who were adversely affected by the Dust Bowl, which

77
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

hit the American prairie like some sort of cruel joke midway through the
decade.
There were, however, also millions of Americans who made it through
the era without an overabundance of hardship. Many citizens held onto
their jobs (if sometimes at reduced salaries), or benefited from the Works
Progress Administration and other New Deal agencies. Even in the worst of
times, many remained able to feed their families, meet rent or mortgage
payments, and even afford the occasional travel or leisure outing (Jones
2003, 80). After all, if consumer spending had ground to a halt in the US
during the Great Depression, mass entertainment would have died along
with it.
Instead, as often occurs in times of crisis, American popular entertainment
flourished through the darkest days of the Great Depression. Hollywood
grew stronger through the 1930s as Americans searched for affordable ways
to forget their troubles. And while it took an enormous financial hit from
which it had to struggle mightily to recover, the American commercial
theater survived, too, growing less financially and artistically frivolous in the
process. As its citizenry suffered through the era, America’s commercial
entertainments not only reflected the times but helped the country through
them.
The fact that the Broadway musical entered what is largely considered its
golden age in the 1930s is especially noteworthy under the circumstances:
the theater industry was forced to constrict significantly at the onset of the
Depression and was simultaneously thrown into new competition with a
younger, cheaper, more easily replicated entertainment form. After well over
a century of being the only option available, live entertainment was given a
run for its money, just at a time when money was scarce.
Moving pictures were hardly new in the 1930s. Photographers had been
experimenting with ways to capture motion and project images since at least
the late nineteenth century. Movie houses had begun to dot the landscape in
the early years of the twentieth century, and the first of several movie palaces
in Times Square were operational by 1910. By the teens, as the popularity of
touring theater companies dropped, many live venues across the country
became movie palaces. Long before the Depression, then, the film industry
had begun to lure away audiences from live events. In 1910, there were 1,549
venues for legitimate theater nationwide; by 1925, there were just 674 (Traub
2005, 84).
Yet while movies had become more sophisticated and popular through
the 1920s, live venues were better able to compete with movie houses before

78
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

1927, when the landmark film The Jazz Singer ushered in the age of the
“talkie.” During the vaudeville era, films were simply incorporated into the
daily bill. At many vaudeville houses, managers projected movie shorts at
various points over the course of each day. Doing so allowed live performers
to take breaks during their grueling performance schedules, and also allowed
customers to indulge in the new style of entertainment.
Yet once “talkies” were introduced, attendance at the movies nearly doubled,
from 60 million a week in 1927 to 110 million a week by 1929. After the stock
market crashed, the commercial theater became almost completely unable
to compete with the economics of film. Theater was, after all, collectively
handcrafted, live, and typically expensive to create and to patronize. By
comparison, “hundreds, even thousands, of copies of a movie could be made
at incremental cost,” which made films easily copied and distributed, and far
cheaper to attend (Bianco 2004, 89). Inexpensive, accessible, and easily mass
produced as they were, motion pictures quickly became the perfect go-to
entertainment during the 1930s.
For all intents and purposes, then, the stock market crash could easily
have been a nail in the coffin for commercial theater. Certainly, the
Depression forced the theater industry to constrict significantly following its
boom through the previous decade. But the newly level playing field—which
involved fewer venues, creative teams, performers, and projects—resulted in
productions that were often more carefully considered and developed than
many of the comparatively frivolous, hastily-drawn productions of the
1920s.

Business on Broadway in troubling times

The Great Depression did not affect the theater as immediately as it did
other industries, but in time it steamrolled many of Broadway’s most
powerful and influential players. Experienced impresarios and producers of
some of the most lavish revues and spectacles lost millions when the stock
market crashed. Some fell harder, faster, and more obviously than others:
Charles Dillingham, a seasoned producer of extravaganzas, melodramas,
musical comedies, and elaborate revues staged at the monstrous 5,300-seat
Hippodrome on Sixth Avenue between West 43rd and 44th streets was so
destitute by the time he died in 1934 that the Shuberts covered his funeral
expenses (Hirsch 1998, 163).2 Others were not totally ruined but still faced
significant losses. Lore has it that Flo Ziegfeld was in court fighting over a

79
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

marquee sign when the market crashed, depleting most of his fortune in
minutes. He continued to spend lavishly, nonetheless; after his death from
pleurisy in 1932, his second wife, Billie Burke, was left to settle his million-
dollar debt (Jones 2003, 82).
Perhaps no industry men put on a better show of moneyed resilience
than the Shuberts, who relied a bit too heavily on their sizable pre-
crash nest-egg in the earliest years of the Depression. Through 1931, they
continued to fill their many theaters with the same kinds of extravagant
productions they had offered through the 1920s, even as the rest of the
industry scaled back. The Shuberts made a point of bailing out (and in the
case of Dillingham, burying) their colleagues, frequently and showily
lending money they probably should have safeguarded to theater owners
like the Selwyn brothers and producers like the thirty-year veteran Albert H.
Woods.
Their grandstanding caught up with them when their company was
placed in receivership in 1931. Despite drastic cuts to their staff and attempts
to keep their business afloat with personal funds, a court-ordered liquidation
of their company was ordered in 1933. Lee Shubert showed up at the
bankruptcy sale and bought his own business, which he renamed the Select
Theaters Corporation, for $400,000. The bankruptcy diluted the stronghold
the Shuberts had wrested from the Syndicate, but it also allowed them to
save the family business and to remain in control of many of their theaters,
both in New York and across the country (Hirsch 1998, 163–7).
The theater industry’s money problems caused the number of shows
typically produced on Broadway to drop off considerably, and permanently.
As noted, it was not uncommon through the 1920s to see well over 100
shows open in a single season. The present standard is more to the tune of
around forty productions, with the number of musicals each season usually
somewhere in the high teens. This precipitous decline began during the
Great Depression.3
None of this happened overnight. The 1929–30 season was hardly abysmal.
More than 100 productions opened through the summer of 1930, and
the decline in musicals from the season prior—34, down from 42—was
hardly worth panicking over, especially considering the financial struggles
many other industries were experiencing at the time. At least in terms of
statistics, Broadway was still thriving when the Great Depression first took
hold.4
Yet soon, both the numbers and kinds of entertainments on offer in
Times Square began to reflect the times. Commercial productions remained

80
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

plentiful on Broadway through the decade, but as the Depression set in, they
shrank in budget and size. Musicals took an especially significant hit. Book
musicals dropped dramatically, hitting an all-time low of just thirteen by the
1933–34 season. Revivals, not included in this number, did not fare terribly
well either: there were only about a dozen in that season (Bordman 2001,
534). In general, the offerings on Broadway through the early 1930s tended
to be smaller, less extravagant, and weightier thematically, in keeping with
the tenor of the times.
Of course, producers were not offering smaller, darker shows to a
bruised populace by choice. Times Square has always relied on cash flow to
survive. As audiences declined, producers had to pull back accordingly, and
the theater industry was forced to downsize. In turn, many of the
neighborhood’s live entertainment venues—which no one could afford to
maintain, raze, or redevelop—were sold or leased to entrepreneurs eager to
capitalize on the economic downturn by providing cheaper forms of
entertainment.
The small, narrow theater venues lining 42nd Street were poorly suited as
movie houses, so many were converted into other kinds of cheap attractions:
dance halls, penny arcades, freak shows, flea circuses (Traub 2005, 86–7).
Vaudeville, already on the decline due to Ziegfeld, film, and radio, met
its end in the Depression. In 1930, Keith and Albee’s flagship vaudeville
house, the beloved Palace Theatre, was wired for sound and repurposed as a
movie house. The Palace joined a number of other large, new movie theaters
in Times Square—the Paramount, the Roxy, the Strand, and the Rivoli—
most of which incorporated the kinds of elaborate live shows before and
after movie screenings that the legitimate Broadway houses once had the
money and space to mount. Stars contracted by increasingly powerful
Hollywood studios played in these new movie palaces through the decade.
While their presence—along with chorus girls, dancers, comedians, and
orchestras—preserved the live component of Times Square, it did little
to benefit the remaining legitimate theaters, or the industry in general
(ibid., 104).
Like vaudeville, burlesque had been on the decline prior to the onset of
the Depression. Increasingly viewed by the middle classes as a crass, lowbrow
form of entertainment, burlesque had long been relegated to sleazier joints
well beyond the bright lights of Broadway. But the stock market crash
allowed the burlesque industry to take a last stab at middle-class respectability,
by securing spaces in Times Square that the legitimate theater had been
forced to abandon.

81
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

At this point, in an effort to stay viable amid an increasing number of

competing entertainment forms, burlesque had introduced the “hoochie-
coochie” dance, the runway, and the striptease. The Minsky brothers—Abe
(1880–1949), Billy (1887–1932), Herbert (1881–1959), and Morton (1902–
87)—who ran some of the best-known burlesque houses in the city (none of
which were renowned for their class or good taste), took control of Oscar
Hammerstein’s gorgeous old Republic Theater in 1931 once they learned
that its owner, Hammerstein’s son Arthur, was struggling financially. Other
burlesque outfits followed suit, quickly filling Times Square venues that
Broadway producers could no longer afford. The burlesque industry thus
enjoyed one last attempt at the mainstream—if not at mainstream
respectability—before social reformers, Times Square property owners,
and the city government drove it out of town in the early 1940s (Wollman
2013, 16).
In general, Times Square responded to the Great Depression by giving
more of the city’s people a wider variety of cheaper entertainments. This
kept the neighborhood alive and thriving through the Depression, but also
caused it to grow distanced from the middle- and upper-class audiences the
commercial theater industry had actively cultivated and catered to in the
first place. The legitimate theater, however diminished, survived the times.
Yet the neighborhood surrounding it continued to decline in mainstream
appeal and reputation through much of the rest of the twentieth century.

Broadway musicals: Boom and bust

Through the Depression years, the Broadway musical experienced what seems
at first glance to be a number of contradictions. First, while the theater industry
struggled to survive, the musical as a genre flourished. Second, while many of
the stage musical’s most talented and dedicated creators hightailed it to
Hollywood following the drop-off of regular work in New York, Broadway still
managed to offer some of the most meaningful, lasting musicals to date.
Additional contradictions seemed to affect the neighborhood that housed the
theater industry: Times Square began its decline at the same time that
Hollywood films began to represent it as a magnificent, magical place where
even the lowliest Broadway baby could rise to stardom with drive, talent, pep,
and gumption.
Yet the state of the Broadway musical through the 1930s was not as
paradoxical as it first seems. With limited finances and fewer projects to

82
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

back, producers were compelled to more carefully consider the shows they
did choose to nurture and mount. Rushing multiple frivolous productions to
the stage made good business sense when shows could run for only a few
months and still recoup, but those days were over.
Further, once many spectators began looking to films for entertainment
in the 1930s, Broadway was left largely to its own devices. This loss of status
as a “proving ground for national culture” resulted in smaller audiences, but
also ones who were dedicated and necessarily moneyed. In a class divide that
remains persistent to date, film became the country’s most accessible mass
entertainment form, while theater was, if newly financially hindered, also
newly free to look far and wide for engaging, penetrating, relevant subject
matter—at higher ticket prices (Traub 2005, 92).
It did not hurt the aesthetic growth of the musical that the early 1930s
saw a perceived strengthening of critical standards among theater journalists,
after which stage musicals “were suddenly deprived of the easygoing, favored
treatment they had so long received.” Whether the newly stringent criticism
was the result of journalists’ concerns about their readership’s tightened
entertainment budgets, or borne of a shared conviction that they had to be
more critical to keep their jobs, is anyone’s guess. But for whatever reason,
theater critics’ tolerance for light, mildly entertaining fluff seemed to vanish
along with a healthy, secure stock market (Bordman 2001, 511).
The theater critics, of course, were not alone. During the Great Depression,
the mood in the US darkened considerably. A looming sense of frugality and
collective struggle had a hand in influencing the kinds of shows produced
on Broadway. Gone were the casts of thousands, the sequined costumes,
elaborate scenery, and endless set changes. No one on Broadway had the
money anymore, and anyway, Hollywood was suddenly capable of creating
the kinds of enormous, elaborate spectacles—filmed at myriad angles and
enhanced with all sorts of camera tricks, no less—that Broadway had had on
offer through the 1920s. It is no accident, for example, that Busby Berkeley
(1895–1976), the film director and choreographer known for kaleidoscopic
dance extravaganzas with huge casts of dancing girls, left Broadway for
Hollywood in 1930. Once there, he directed and choreographed many film
musicals about the magic and appeal of Broadway, most of which featured
elaborate numbers performed by enormous casts that Broadway directors
could suddenly only dream about.
Berkeley was not alone in ceding to Hollywood’s charms. Many people in
show business went west out of necessity. By 1931, an estimated two-thirds
of Manhattan’s playhouses had ceased to function as theater venues. By 1932,

83
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

about 2,200 New York actors had registered with various Hollywood casting
agencies. Broadway composers and lyricists including Jerome Kern, Buddy
DeSylva, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, George and Ira Gershwin,
Irving Berlin, Vincent Youmans, and Cole Porter looked to Hollywood for
bigger audiences and better pay (Jones 2003, 83). But ultimately, very few
Broadway people permanently abandoned the stage for the screen. As they
had in the vaudeville days and still do at present, performers and behind-
the-scenes practitioners took whatever work they could find in whatever
medium came calling. While less powerful than it had been even in very
recent memory, Broadway lured its artists home when it could afford to. And
many of its artists came back, having never planned to stay away for too long
in the first place.

The show must go on: Depression-Era revues

The Depression precipitated the demise of a number of popular, serialized

revues, most of which were known for spectacle and glamour: Earl Carroll’s
Vanities, George White’s Scandals, and Ziegfeld’s Follies were, through
the early 1930s, scaled down, mounted less frequently, or discontinued.
Yet the revue format remained viable through the era. Revues have a
loose, endlessly variable structure: simply decide upon a connective theme
and fill the evening out with related songs, sketches, and dance numbers, any
of which can be reworked, replaced, recast, or reordered, even on short
notice. With a new eye toward moderation, 1930s producers found that
while the glitzy costumes, enormous casts, and elaborate sets had to go,
revues themselves could be produced on a shoestring and still appeal to
crowds.
Because they were received with enormous inconsistency by audiences
and theater critics through the 1920s, and because of persistent racism, all-
black Broadway revues had an unshakable reputation among producers for
being uncertain investments in economic boom times. Yet during the bust,
all-black musicals and revues surged: there were six in the 1930–31 season
and five in 1931–32. The number of all-black offerings had not been so high
on Broadway since the post-Shuffle Along craze in the early 1920s (Woll
1989, 135–6).
The resurgence of shows with all-black casts was due both to economic
reasoning and the social imbalance that had long existed on Broadway. With
the exception of the biggest and most established stars, most black artists

84
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

active in the 1930s received less pay than their white counterparts. Whether
cast with black or white performers, revues did not require as much rehearsal
as plotted shows. Instead, producers could open their scaled-down revues
quickly and, in some cases, even before they had been sufficiently rehearsed.
Or they could try them out in nearby lounges, nightclubs, or restaurants to
determine whether it was financially prudent to move them to Broadway.
Although short runs were less preferable than steady, long-term work for
performers, the preponderance of all-black productions did allow for black
talent to remain active on Broadway at a time when employement was
especially tenuous (Jones 2003, 84).
Notable for their quantity, the all-black offerings that cropped up on
Broadway in the 1930s have not been remembered for their quality. This is
not for lack of talent, which was newly emphasized in lieu of expensive
stagecraft and spectacular costumes. But revues such as Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds
of 1930, Rhapsody in Black (1931), Fast and Furious (1931), Blackberries of
1932, and Yeah Man (1932) remained most strongly influenced by Shuffle
Along, both in terms of subject matter and presentation. As such, they did not
offer audiences anything especially innovative. Easy and cheap to mount
though they were, most were not big commercial successes.5
Broadway saw its fair share of all-white and mixed-cast revues in the
early 1930s, as well. As with the all-black revues, these tended to be smaller
and more focused on talent than spectacle. The ones that resonated most
with audiences struck a careful balance between topicality and escapism.
Many spectators, it seemed, were newly turned off by the lavishness and
excess that had been the style during the 1920s. At the same time, however,
audiences still craved light diversions that did not constantly remind them
of the economy.
A noteworthy flop on this front was the 1932 revue Americana. Produced
by Lee Shubert and staged in the theater that still bears his name, Americana
featured music by composers including Jay Gorney (1894–1990), Harold
Arlen (1905–86), and Herman Hupfield (1894–1951), with lyrics by
E.Y. “Yip” Harburg (1896–1981), later the lyricist for the classic film
The Wizard of Oz. Among other topical issues, sketches in Americana
referenced breadlines, the Dust Bowl, and the corruption hearings of
former New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker. Noted by critics for its am-
bitious dance numbers, choreographed by modern dance denizens like
Doris Humphry (1895–1958) and Charles Weidman (1901–75), Americana
is perhaps most noteworthy for introducing Gorney and Harburg’s iconic
Depression-era song “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” This number

85
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

was originally performed with disarming seriousness by comedian Rex

Weber:

Once I built a railroad, I made it run

Made it race against time
Once I built a railroad, now it’s done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower up to the sun

Brick and rivet and lime
Once I built a tower, now it’s done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

While “Brother” quickly became an anthem for the era, Americana failed
to connect with audiences, due in large part to its pervasive solemnity. In his
review for The New York Times, critic Brooks Atkinson quipped, “ ‘Americana’
has kept its sense of humor under remarkable control.” Its sketches, he added,
made constant, heavy-handed reference to “a vast and dismal subject, merely
reminding us of the suffering we are powerless to relieve.” The result, at least
for him, was a “disgruntled mood” that settled in during the show and was
tough to shake after the curtain call (Atkinson 1932, 19).
A more successful topical revue was As Thousands Cheer (1933), a
collaboration between Irving Berlin, who wrote the score and lyrics, and
playwright Moss Hart (1904–61), who wrote the sketches. Warmly greeted
by critics and audiences, As Thousands Cheer starred Marilyn Miller, Helen
Broderick, Clifton Webb, and Ethel Waters. Waters (1896–1977), a black
vaudevillian who had appeared on Broadway in the 1930 edition of Lew
Leslie’s Blackbirds and in his Rhapsody in Black a year later, was recruited for
As Thousands Cheer by Berlin himself, once he saw her perform at the
Cotton Club (Woll 1989, 149).
Loosely connecting the songs and sketches of As Thousands Cheer was an
overarching “ripped from the headlines” structure. Each new song or scene
began with a news headline: “HEATWAVE HITS NEW YORK ; JOAN
CRAWFORD TO DIVORCE DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS , JR .; WORLD’S
WEALTHIEST MAN CELEBRATES 94TH BIRTHDAY ” (Stempel
2010, 220). Sketches depicted Herbert Hoover leaving the White House and
aiming a Bronx cheer at his former cabinet in the process, John D. Rockefeller
reacting with dismay when his children give him Rockefeller Center as a
birthday gift, and a radio broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera during

86
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

which commercials constantly interrupt the performance (Bordman 2001,

535). Songs from As Thousands Cheer that became hits include “Heat Wave”
and “Easter Parade.”
Berlin’s lyrics rarely reflected the social consciousness more typical of
lyricists like Yip Harburg or Oscar Hammerstein II, and yet As Thousands
Cheer did occasionally touch on issues that were a tad weightier than
Noël Coward’s trip abroad or the heatwave that had recently hit New York.
The revue steered clear of the Depression and kept a respectful distance
from FDR’s recently-implemented New Deal programs, but took a dark turn
early in Act II when, following the headline UNKNOWN NEGRO
LYNCHED BY FRENZIED MOB , Ethel Waters performed the number
“Supper Time.”
“Supper Time” depicts a wife struggling with how to tell her children that
their father “ain’t comin’ home no more.” So forcefully did Waters perform
“Supper Time” that Berlin and his co-producer, Sam Harris, were pressured
to cut it from the otherwise lighthearted revue for fear it would upset
audiences (Jones 2003, 100–1), but the men insisted it remain. Nightly,
Waters stunned audiences who, while not constantly reminded of every
sociopolitical ill plaguing the US in the 1930s, were confronted with one of
the bigger ones.

Book musicals gain weight

The book musical grew more artistically sophisticated in the 1930s, which
again relates to the economic landscape. Producers, newly concerned about
the bottom line and the number of productions they could afford to mount
in a season, grew more selective with the projects they agreed to back. With
fewer representative productions, artistic teams, too, were newly exacting
with the shows they devised. This was especially the case since a show with a
solid score, or even just a couple of catchy songs, could now reach wider
audiences. The radio, a comparatively new mass medium that had gained
traction in the 1920s, had become an important (and cheap) source for news,
information, and entertainment.
What with the Great Depression, subsequent labor unrest and union
growth, the Dust Bowl, the repeal of Prohibition, and Hitler’s slow rise to
power overseas, the 1930s was a period during which the book musical
grappled with new, creative ways to simultaneously entertain audiences and
reflect the contemporary world. As theater critic and Pulitzer Prize jurist

87
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

John Mason Brown wrote in 1938, “There are now a great many things to be
thought about in our musicals. They no longer permit us to be pleasantly
relaxed. They demand us to be jubilantly alert. Our laughter at them is the
surest proof that we are thinking” (quoted in Green 1971, 12). Plenty of
frivolous, escapist book musicals were mounted in the 1930s, but those
making the most lasting impact blended the escapist with the provocative.
Many such productions picked up where Show Boat left off, whether
aesthetically, structurally, or in an attempt at greater cultural commentary
than was typical of book musicals in the past.
It did not hurt that during the 1930s, a number of new developments
aided in the increased perception of the Broadway musical as a multifaceted
art form. Broadway’s stages benefited, for example, from a major technical
innovation: the mechanized revolving stage, which allowed for greater
fluidity of action during and between scenes. Also in the 1930s, classical
ballet and modern dance became more intrinsic to the stage musical, since
established choreographers including George Balanchine (1904–83), Agnes
de Mille (1905–93), José Limón (1908–72), and Helen Tamiris (1905–66)
began collaborating on Broadway (Leve 2016, 86).
Dance had long been an aspect of Broadway musicals, as its presence
in shows ranging from The Black Crook to Ziegfeld’s Follies implies. But
the use of classical and modern dance forms on Broadway in the 1930s
was newly reflective of influence from Hollywood musicals, a surge in
popularity of dance as an entertainment form, and an uptick in collab-
orations among artists working under the auspices of the New Deal.6 As the
book musical became more sophisticated in the 1930s, so too did its
choreography.

George and Ira Gershwin

The composer George Gershwin’s embrace of all music genres, from classical
to popular, resulted in a unique compositional style that was intelligent,
democratic, and accessible. Born in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrants,
George began studying classical piano as a child. He also immersed himself
in jazz and the popular songs emanating from Tin Pan Alley, all of which he
took just as seriously. Never much of a student, he dropped out of high
school in 1914 to become a Tin Pan Alley song-plugger; he soon became
known within the sheet music industry for his remarkable rhythmic and
melodic dexterity. His first song, “When You Want ’Em, You Can’t Get ’Em;

88
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

When You’ve Got ’Em, You Don’t Want ’Em,” was published in 1916, but his
first really big pop hit was “Swanee” (1919), which Al Jolson interpolated into
his long-running show Sinbad, and subsequently kept as a signature song
(Mast 1987, 67–8).
By the early 1920s, George began collaborating with his brother Ira, who
wrote lyrics. Their first Broadway hit, Lady, Be Good (1924), starred the real-
life siblings Fred (1899–1987) and Adele Astaire (1896–1981) as down-and-
out sibling vaudevillians who become entangled in (and eventually gain
entry into) high society. The highly polished, consistently uproarious musical
ran successfully on Broadway and in the West End, marking the start of a
close collaboration between the brothers that would last until George’s death
at thirty-eight from a brain tumor (Stempel 2010, 252–3).
Through the early 1930s, the Gershwins helped set a satirical tone on
Broadway with a trilogy of musicals lampooning contemporary American
politics, all of which were written in collaboration with George S. Kaufman.
The first of the three, Strike Up the Band, was written in 1927, but bombed
with Philadelphia audiences during the out-of-town tryout. Strike Up the
Band was revised and mounted on Broadway in 1930, by which point
audiences were arguably more willing to entertain a biting if ultimately
optimistic musical about American aggressiveness, big business, “self-
serving patriots,” “phony heroes,” and “bungling politicians” (Green 1971,
17–18).
The original version of Strike Up the Band featured a plot in which the US
declares war on Switzerland after that country complains about an American
tariff on cheese. The war is financed by, and thus named for, American cheese
manufacturer Horace J. Fletcher, whose patriotism is called into question
when he is spotted wearing a Swiss watch. The revised version, for which the
dramatist and then-Socialist activist Morrie Ryskind (1895–1985) was
enlisted for rewrites, changed cheese to chocolate, had the war turn out to be
a dream from which the hawkish Fletcher awakens a changed man, and
featured a score more influenced by jazz than the original Gilbert and
Sullivan-inspired one. Strike Up the Band’s “pertinence and impertinence”
and tongue-in-cheek political commentary inspired a slew of muckraking
musicals, which mixed shrewd social observations in with the song and
dance (Bordman 2001, 507–8).
Strike Up the Band ran for a perfectly respectable 191 performances, but
its successor struck gold. Of Thee I Sing (1931), again with a score by the
Gershwin brothers and a book by Kaufman and Ryskind, was by far the most
critically and commercially successful of the three satirical musicals the men

89
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

created together. It became the first Broadway musical to be published and

released for popular readership, and the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for
Drama (Jones 2003, 92). A spoof targeting the American electoral process,
Of Thee I Sing was optimistic, but also took plenty of digs at American
politics. The musical was unsparing when it came to politicians with money
and power, which went over well at a time when many Americans lacked
both.
Of Thee I Sing follows the candidacy of John P. Wintergreen, who
wants to be president of the US , and has come up with a catchy campaign
song:

Of thee I sing, baby

You have got that certain thing, baby
Shining star and inspiration
Worthy of a mighty nation

Stirring though the song may be, Wintergreen nevertheless lacks a platform
and a spouse, both of which are hindrances to a successful election. His
campaign managers meet in a hotel room where they ask a passing cham-
bermaid what she thinks is most important in life. When she responds that
money and love are more important than anything else, the managers decide
that Wintergreen’s platform will simply be “love.” When they subsequently
realize that such a platform makes no sense as long as Wintergreen is
single, a Miss White House pageant is hastily arranged. The winner will get
Wintergreen as a prize and, should he win the election, the role of First
Lady to boot. Meanwhile, the vice presidential candidate, Alexander
Throttlebottom, is a melancholy schlub whom no one can remember, and
who is embarrassed to tell anyone, even his mother, that he is the Vice
Presidential candidate.
Wintergreen wins the election, and one Diana Devereaux wins the
pageant. Yet by this point Wintergreen has fallen in love with his secretary,
Mary Turner. He marries her instead of Devereaux, who proves less than
understanding about the situation. When it is discovered that the jilted,
angry Devereaux is descended from Napoleon, France becomes infuriated
and national support for the president plummets. Yet Mary turns out to be
pregnant with twins, and due to Wintergreen’s resultant “delicate condition,”
Throttlebottom is constitutionally obliged to save Diana’s honor. He marries
her, she and France are appeased, Wintergreen is again embraced by the
populace, and everyone lives happily ever after (Stempel 2010, 255–7).

90
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

The plot of Of Thee I Sing was such a skillful mix of jollity and biting
satire that the advances the show made in terms of musical trajectory
are often overlooked. But the Gershwins’ score was almost constant
throughout the production, rather than built from a more typical sequence
of individual songs that stop during lengthy sections of dialogue. Throughout
Of Thee I Sing, songs regularly segued into lengths of underscoring and
vice-versa. Many of the musical numbers pushed the plot along, either
by describing characters’ motivations or their actions. Some scenes featured
such a sophisticated series of solos, choruses, and underscoring that
the music became just as important as the staging and dialogue (Green
1971, 59).
The final effort by the Gershwins, Kaufman, and Ryskind was not as
successful as Of Thee I Sing or even Strike Up the Band. Let ’Em Eat Cake
(1933), a sequel to Of Thee I Sing, featured many of the same characters but
this time placed them in situations that came off to critics and audiences as
too bitter for comfort. In Let ’Em Eat Cake, Wintergreen has failed in his bid
for re-election. Out of work and stuck with a surplus of blue shirts that his
wife Mary has gone into business to produce, Wintergreen decides to supply
the blue shirts to citizens and, with their support, overthrow the government
and resume power. His plan is thwarted and the electoral process survives,
but Let ’Em Eat Cake did not land well. It is possible that spectators, already
weighed down by the Depression and increasingly concerned by Adolf
Hitler’s appointment to Chancellor of Germany six months prior, were
repelled by a show about a blue-shirted populace overthrowing the
government (Kirle 2005, 90). Let ’Em Eat Cake lasted a mere eighty-nine
performances. Once it closed, its creative team parted ways.
George Gershwin’s presence on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley in the
1920s and 1930s did not preclude his work in other styles and venues. He
composed a number of works, including Rhapsody in Blue (1924), Concerto
in F (1925), Three Preludes (1926), and Cuban Overture (1932), which
became perennial favorites in classical music venues. Through his short
life, he also exhibited a continued fascination with jazz and other black
popular and folk music styles. Due to the ease with which he crossed
boundaries and blended seemingly disparate musical genres, it should come
as no surprise that Gershwin frequently voiced a desire to compose an
“American folk opera” steeped in both classical and American vernacular
styles.
One of his earliest attempts at such a piece, the 25-minute opera Blue
Monday, was written with the lyricist Buddy DeSylva for the second act of

91
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

George White’s Scandals of 1922. A variation on the Frankie and Johnny

legend set in a Harlem bar, Blue Monday was performed by whites
in blackface, and was so vehemently panned by critics who found it long
and boring that it was cut from the production after opening night.7 A
1925 remounting of the piece at Carnegie Hall was more respectfully
received, though it never caught on in classical circles, either (Woll 1989,
160–62).
In 1925, the writer DuBose Heyward, a white South Carolinian with an
interest in local black (Gullah) culture, published a novel titled Porgy. Set in
a fictional, poor, black enclave called Catfish Row, Porgy told of its title
character’s attempts to save a local woman, Bess, from her abusive lover,
Crown, and her cocaine dealer, Sportin’ Life. After Porgy was released,
Heyward and his wife Dorothy wrote a stage version produced in 1927 by
the Theatre Guild (Knapp 2006, 195). Performed at the playwrights’ insistence
by an all-black cast, Porgy was well-received by white critics, though black
critics were cooler about yet another white depiction of poor, superstitious,
drug-addled black characters. Porgy ran for a year at the Guild (now August
Wilson) Theater on Broadway.8
Shortly after Porgy was published, George Gershwin approached the
Heywards in hopes of adapting it as an opera, but the couple, busy with their
own adaptation process, declined. Gershwin contacted them again in 1932,
only to learn that Kern and Hammerstein had optioned the property as a
possible Al Jolson vehicle. In his response, Gershwin expressed surprise and
concern that the characters would be played by whites, and promised the
Heywards that he had “a much more serious thing” in mind (Woll 1989, 164).
When Kern and Hammerstein dropped their option shortly thereafter, the
Heywards and Gershwins began negotiations.
In the summer of 1934, George moved to Folly Island, a Sea Island off the
coast of Charleston, South Carolina, to immerse himself in Gullah language,
culture, and music. He spent nearly two years composing, orchestrating, and
writing vocal arrangements for the opera, which placed new emphasis on
Bess and was thus eventually titled Porgy and Bess. The Gershwins considered
the Metropolitan Opera as a potential producer, but chose to work instead
with the Theatre Guild, the same organization that had produced the original
production of Porgy. Tickets, the Gershwins reasoned, would be more
affordable on Broadway than at the Met; also, the Met claimed that it could
not promise a full cast of black opera singers, and the Guild voiced no such
limitations. Once the venue had been determined, the creative team retained
the original Porgy director, Rouben Mamoulian, to direct the opera as well.

92
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

The Russian-Armenian director, who had made his name in Hollywood as a

director of film musicals, had proven particularly democratic when working
with black actors (ibid., 164–5).
Boasting a typically sophisticated blend of American folk and blues
idioms, jazz, Broadway show-stoppers, and operatic arias, Porgy and Bess
opened on October 10, 1935 at the Alvin (now Neil Simon) Theatre. Because
it was so atypical for Broadway, most newspapers sent both their drama and
music critics to review the show. This ended up harming the show’s reception,
since at the time, many “drama critics, who normally covered musicals,
tended to view opera as a debased form of drama’” while “music critics, who
normally covered operas, tended to view musicals as a debased form of
opera” (Stempel 2010, 387–8). Thus criticized for being on the one hand too
lightweight to be a “real” opera and on the other too heavy to be an effective
musical, Porgy and Bess confounded spectators as it had critics. Further, its
unsparing depictions of desperately poor, disenfranchised southern blacks
were hard on Depression-era audiences. Whether Porgy and Bess was more
an opera or a musical became the least of its problems. The show ran for 124
performances, and though the Guild sponsored a tour after it closed, Porgy
and Bess did not earn back its $50,000 investment (Bordman 2001, 546–7).
Disappointed, George Gershwin quit Broadway for Hollywood, where he
remained until his death two years later.
Appreciation for the artistry of Porgy and Bess has grown significantly
since its premiere, and the piece is frequently revived both in opera halls
and theater venues. But Porgy and Bess has never been free of controversy.
While the Heywards and Gershwins “made a conscientious effort to
depict Negro life as realistically as possible,” the opera, like the novel on
which it was based, was filled with black characters who were drawn by
whites, with the intention of reaching predominantly white audiences
(Green 1971, 116).
The premiere of Porgy and Bess in 1935 inadvertently reflected “the white
usurpation of what had initially been a black cultural form.” By this point, a
“black musical” referred more to the color of its cast and less to its almost
always all-white creative teams (Woll 1989, 154). While the cherished score
of Porgy and Bess is filled with songs that have become American standards—
including “Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’ ”
and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now”—the piece has been accused both of
cultural appropriation and of perpetuating stereotypical depictions of black
American life. When the piece is revised or reimagined for contemporary
audiences, as it was for the 2012 Broadway revival, the hackles of purists who

93
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

believe musicals should remain as their creators left them are inevitably
raised.9 Porgy and Bess has arguably appreciated somewhat less comfortably
on social grounds than it has on artistic ones.

The Cradle Will Rock

During the Great Depression, the Theatre Guild, producer of both Porgy and
Porgy and Bess, was not unique in supporting theatrical productions deemed
artistically worthwhile if not necessarily commercially viable. The 1930s was
a significant period for political—and often politically radical—theater, due
to the development of several left-leaning actors’ collectives and the rise,
especially after 1935, of public funding for the arts under the auspices of the
Works Progress Administration. One of the more noteworthy performers’
collectives, the Group Theatre, was founded by Theatre Guild members
Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg.
The Group Theatre promoted a disciplined, collective approach to
forceful, naturalistic theater that de-emphasized individual stars. It produced
plays by Americans such as Irwin Shaw and Clifford Odets, and supported
the careers of, among others, the actor Harry Morgan, writer and director
Elia Kazan, acting teachers Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, and composer
Marc Blitzstein (1905–64). Blitzstein would become a key figure in the
WPA’s Federal Theatre Project, or FTP (Klein 2001, 595).
Run by producer and playwright Hallie Flanagan (1890–1969), the FTP
was founded in 1935 to employ some of the nearly 30,000 people with
careers in the theater who lost their jobs when the Depression struck. In its
four years of existence, the FTP hired over 12,000 people at around $24
weekly and staged a number of diverse projects: avant-garde and children’s
theater, Shakespeare plays and other classics, theatrical documentaries, and
musicals. Frequently attacked by various congressional committees as
financially wasteful and a hotbed for Communist influence, the FTP was a
locus for controversy practically from inception (Green 1971, 144). Not all
shows affiliated with the FTP were especially left-leaning, or even politically
minded. But Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock (1937) added fuel to
many an anti-FTP fire.
Blitzstein was born in Philadelphia to affluent parents, and educated in
music composition, first at the Curtis Institute and then in Europe with
Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger. Convinced of the arts’ potential to
unite the masses, he took the advice of his idol, Bertolt Brecht, and wrote the

94
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

book, words, and music of a jazz-infused “proletarian opera” that he titled

The Cradle Will Rock (Jones 2003, 104).
The Cradle Will Rock is a morality musical that expounds upon the
importance of labor unions. Without unions, the musical argues, people
would fall prey to autocrats and be “forced into a kind of prostitution, forced
to do whatever they do—teach, preach, edit newspapers, paint, make music,
practice medicine, work in factories, etc.—not out of love but according to
the dictates of whoever is paying” (Knapp 2006, 112). The musical’s
symbolically-named characters live in Steeltown, USA, which is controlled
by the Mister family: the wealthy and powerful Mister Mister, his greedy and
vacuous wife, Mrs. Mister, and his selfish, spoiled children, Junior and Sister
Mister.
At the start of the musical, the prostitute Moll is arrested for solicitation.
In jail, Moll meets several members of the anti-union Liberty Committee,
whom Mister Mister’s police force have mistaken for union organizers and
arrested. Moll also meets Harry Druggist, who has lost his business to Mister
Mister and been arrested for vagrancy. Through a series of flashbacks, Harry
fills Moll in on Mister Mister’s rise to power and crusade against union
organizer Larry Foreman. When Foreman is beaten and arrested, he tells
Moll about the importance of unions and promises that they will grow in
power, thereby rocking the capitalist cradle and creating positive change. At
the end of the musical, Mister Mister arrives to bail out the Liberty
Committee, and tries to bribe Foreman to stop organizing. Foreman refuses,
vowing instead to overthrow the wealthy and powerful, thereby restoring
equality for all.10
Written in a straightforward, stirring style that borrowed liberally from
folk and mass song, standard Broadway fare, and musical modernism, The
Cradle Will Rock proved unappealing to Broadway producers, who felt its
plot was too heavy-handed, its characters too one-dimensional, and its score
too eclectic for Broadway audiences. Of course, the stringent anti-capitalism
of Cradle did not exactly help warm Broadway’s money-men to the project,
either (Green 1971, 144).
Broadway was no stranger to political theater, but the ardently pro-union
Cradle might have raised the hackles of many a bottom-line-minded
producer, especially at the time in question. The mid-1930s saw a major
uptick in the presence and power of unions. President Roosevelt took a
notably pro-union stance, and Congress had recently passed legislation
permitting collective bargaining and granting new protections for both
employers and their employees.11 But with the new power of unions

95
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

came considerable growing pains: work stoppages, strikes, dissent from both
the sympathetic left and the anti-union right, and plenty of clashing
ideologies within the ranks of unionizers and union members themselves
(Klein 2001, 586).
An important industrial center, New York City was a hotbed for union
activity in the 1930s. “[B]readlines and eviction protests spurred class
consciousness” in the city, and work provided by the Temporary Emergency
Relief Administration and the Works Progress Administration “shrank
the potential number of strikebreakers among the vast numbers of un-
employed” (Klein 2001, 586). Whether due to concern about the rise of
unions or just a sense that The Cradle Will Rock would not work commercially,
Broadway producers all passed on the musical when Blitzstein first shopped
it around.
The musical did, however, win the admiration of director Orson Welles
(1915–85) and producer John Houseman (1902–88), who had worked
together on the FTP Negro Theater Unit’s acclaimed Macbeth, commonly
nicknamed the “Voodoo Macbeth,” in 1936. With Flanagan’s approval,
Houseman and Welles agreed to stage Cradle. Welles conceived the musical
as a morality play, and commenced rehearsals nine weeks prior to the
planned opening in June 1937 (Vacha 1981, 136).
Anxiety over the production grew in Washington, DC, during the
rehearsal period, especially following the deadly Memorial Day Massacre
that occurred during the Little Steel Strike in Chicago.12 That incident,
combined with growing dissent among anti-New Dealers in Congress, led to
rumors about massive FTP cutbacks once the act that had led to the creation
of arts relief projects expired in June (ibid., 138). The timing, it was believed,
was no accident: many people involved with the FTP and the production of
Cradle felt the musical “was the specific target of these cuts” (Knapp 2006,
113).
On June 10, a week before The Cradle Will Rock was scheduled to enter its
preview period, the WPA cut the New York branch of the FTP by 30 percent,
resulting in the immediate dismissal of some 1,700 workers. Pleading
assurances by Flanagan, who had gone so far as to bring assistant director
Lawrence Morris from the WPA’s Washington office to New York to watch a
rehearsal of Cradle, made no difference. Nor did Morris’s report that what he
saw was “magnificent.” On June 12, the FTP directors were told to prohibit
the opening of any new play, performance, or gallery exhibit before July 1
because of impending cuts and plans for reorganization. The fact that several
less politically-minded, federally-funded shows opened undisturbed in New

96
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

York and New Jersey during the period in question fueled further suspicion
that the June 12 memo was specifically aimed at The Cradle Will Rock (Jones
2003, 105–6).
Welles and Houseman refused to comply with the order. They invited
guests to a dress rehearsal at the Maxine Elliot Theater on the evening
of June 14. This would turn out to be the only performance of Cradle
before audiences in the Elliot. The next morning, company members arrived
to find the theater padlocked and surrounded by uniformed WPA guards
(ibid.). Furious, and determined to find a new place to stage the production
on short notice, Welles and Houseman rushed to their office and shut
themselves in, fearful that if they left it, they would be unable to access it
again.
During the mad scramble to secure a new theater for the fervently pro-
union musical, an ironic conflict arose in the form of clashes with Actors’
Equity and the musicians’ union. The president of Equity would not approve
“the appearance by the cast on any stage not under WPA auspices,” while the
musicians’ union announced that any appearances by musicians in non-
WPA theaters “would require full Broadway salaries and an augmented
orchestra.” As crowds gathered in front of the padlocked theater on the night
of June 15, Houseman frantically sent a production assistant to rent a piano,
which Blitzstein himself agreed to play. When spectators grew impatient,
actors mingled with them, frequently breaking into bits from the show or
singing rousing ballads to deter them from leaving. By around 8:15 p.m., as
word spread that the Venice Theater on 59th Street had been secured for the
performance, the company and many spectators began the walk uptown
(Vacha 1981, 141–4).
The actors were prohibited by Equity from performing on the stage of the
Venice, so they delivered their lines and songs from the orchestra seats.
Blitzstein played the score at center stage while Welles, sitting a few feet away,
narrated some of the action. The left-leaning crowd’s enthusiasm built, and
by the end of the evening, which was close to midnight, the company
reprised several songs so the audience could sing along.
The extraordinary circumstances surrounding the performance of The
Cradle Will Rock resulted in enough press attention for Houseman to secure
private backers, who kept this necessarily minimalist—or, as it became
known, “oratorio style”—version of Cradle running at the Venice for two
weeks, with actors now seated on chairs on the stage and Equity bond posted.
Shortly thereafter, Houseman and Welles resigned from the FTP to form the
Mercury Theater, where they remounted The Cradle Will Rock on Sunday

97
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

evenings through 1937 (Jones 2003, 110–11). In January 1938, Cradle, still in
oratorio style, ran on Broadway at the Windsor Theater for 108 performances.
When it closed, the revue Pins and Needles moved there from the aptly titled
Labor Theater—formerly the Princess, where Jerome Kern had once honed
his intimate musicals.
Another ardently pro-labor show, Pins and Needles had music and lyrics
by the young, leftist composer Harold Rome (1908–93), sponsorship by the
International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU ), a revolving cast
drawn from that union’s locals, and sketches contributed by none other than
Marc Blitzstein. Yet Pins and Needles was not nearly as polemic as Cradle
was. It was heavy on humor, light in tone, and as quick to poke fun of unions
as capitalists. Regularly updated and recast with willing ILGWU members,
Pins and Needles remained fresh for over a thousand performances. By the
time it closed, the Great Depression had lifted, Welles and Houseman had
moved to Hollywood, the FTP had been terminated, and The Cradle Will
Rock had become the stuff of Broadway legend.

Cole Porter and Anything Goes

Not all 1930s musicals made a point of commenting directly on social,

political, or cultural issues of the time. Just as Depression-era Hollywood
churned out plenty of musicals that peddled in escapism—think of Fred
Astaire and Ginger Rogers, expensively dressed and gliding through any
number of well-appointed settings—so too did Depression-era Broadway.
One of the most quintessential of well-made if breezily diverting 1930s
productions is Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, which premiered on November
21, 1934, at the Alvin (now Neil Simon) Theater. The musical ran for 420
performances, became the fourth-longest-running musical of the decade and
remains a frequently-revived favorite.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, the Broadway composer and lyricist
Cole Porter (1892–1964) was born gentile, midwestern, and ridiculously
wealthy. Raised in Peru, Indiana, Porter went to Yale and then Harvard,
where his domineering grandfather expected him to earn a law degree.
Porter quickly realized that he would rather make music than take the bar,
so in his second year, he dropped out of Harvard Law and enrolled in
the music school. Eventually, he quit Cambridge entirely and moved to New
York, where his first Broadway musical, See America First, opened in March
1916, only to close after 15 performances.13

98
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

Stung by the disappointment, Porter left New York for Paris and then
Venice, where he hobnobbed, galavanted, and enjoyed a well-connected
social life. Though gay, he entered into a marriage of convenience with a
close friend, the divorced socialite Linda Lee Thomas, which lasted until her
death in 1954. Before returning to New York in 1928 with his first hit musical,
Paris, Porter kept his distance from Broadway, contributing only a handful
of songs for interpolation into a few productions.
Paris, which introduced the number “Let’s Do It” and was made into a
movie a year after debuting on Broadway, helped establish Porter as a
household name in theater and film circles. He became only more well-
known through the Depression years, with a string of successful productions
including Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), The New Yorkers (1930), and Fred
Astaire’s last stage show, Gay Divorce (1932).
As both composer and lyricist, Porter specialized in songs evocative
of the cheerful, extravagant 1920s at a time when most American popular
entertainment was busily distancing itself from excess. Porter made
no attempt in his songs to hide his affluence, downplay his erudition, or
deny his cultivation. Yet he managed to strike a careful balance with
his audiences, to whom he never seemed to condescend. Rather than
expecting them to marvel at his wealth and style, Porter seemed eager
to invite them to laugh along with him over how drolly absurd the world
could be.
Porter’s extensive travels exposed him to all kinds of music, elements of
which he frequently incorporated into his own songs. In this respect, he was
vaguely similar to Gershwin in his eclectic compositional style. Lyrically,
Porter had a gift for wordplay and double entendre. He often made long lists
from his lyrics, into which he inserted sly social commentary or a dizzying
blend of high- and lowbrow cultural references (Greher, 159–60). Every
person who heard Porter’s songs might not catch every turn of phrase,
French expression, or reference to high culture, but broader jokes, double
meanings, and puns—which were often about sex and just as often
hilarious—would inevitably follow the denser references. Everyone likes to
be in on a joke, and Porter reflected no qualms about that certainty in his
lyrics.
The gleefully silly Anything Goes was rooted aesthetically to the “snappy
and joyous” Princess Theater musicals of the 1910s. It was “light, fast, flip, hip,
with good jokes, comic specialty acts, shrewd cultural observations, and
terrific songs,” not all of which necessarily hang together. For its throwback
elements, however, Anything Goes reflected a change of the guard and an era

99
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

during which musical and lyric sophistication were increasingly valued on

Broadway (Mast 1987, 195).
Anything Goes was the brainchild of producer Vinton Freedley (1891–
1969), longtime champion of the Gershwins, whose January 1933 musical
Pardon My English went so over budget and flopped so quickly that Freedley
fled the country to escape his creditors. He spent most of 1933 and 1934
fishing, surely morosely, from his yacht off the Pearl Islands, paying off his
debts and planning a comeback. His stars, he decided, would include the
comedy team of William Gaxton and Victor Moore, as well as Ethel Merman
(1908–84). Merman, the Queens-born former stenographer with a voice like
a bulldozer, had made her Broadway debut in the Freedley-produced 1930
Gershwin hit Girl Crazy.
At first, Freedley wanted Jerome Kern to score his comeback show,
Anything Goes. Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse were enlisted to write the
book and lyrics. When Kern’s involvement fell through, Freedley tapped the
Gershwin brothers, but they were too busy with Porgy and Bess to consider
the offer. The score of Anything Goes finally went to Porter, whose star by this
point was still very much on the rise (Knapp 2006, 88).
Newly debt-free, Freedley sailed to France to confer with Wodehouse,
who had moved there, and Bolton, who traveled from London to meet them.
Relieved of the lyrics, which Porter himself would provide, Wodehouse and
Bolton sent Freedley the draft script, in August 1934, about an eccentric
crowd of characters who get shipwrecked while on a pleasure cruise (Green
1971, 105). Although not especially impressed with the script, Freedley
began rehearsals by the end of that month.
Mere weeks later, the SS Morro Castle, an ocean liner headed from Havana
to New York, spent a final and very possibly cursed journey being pummeled
by a nor’easter, losing its captain to an apparent heart attack, and finally
bursting into flames off the coast of Asbury Park, New Jersey. Of the 549
people aboard, 137 died in the fire or the scramble to escape it, and the
company of Anything Goes realized that a wacky musical about a shipwreck
was suddenly an absolutely terrible idea. The book was thus hastily revised
by director Howard Lindsay, whom Freedley paired with press agent Russel
Crouse. This marked the beginning of what would become a long and
fruitful partnership, but Lindsay and Crouse were for the moment both
green and terrified enough to come up only with the famously haphazard
semblance of a plot that made it to the stage when Anything Goes opened in
November (Block 2009, 43). In their hasty rewrite, a loopy assortment of
characters—all of whom are either in love with one another, running from

100
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

the law, preaching the gospel or some combination thereof—embark on a

cruise. This time, the ship never crashes, but chaos and wackiness nevertheless
ensue.
Despite its last-minute overhaul and flimsy plot, Anything Goes was
warmly received by critics, who took its loose book in stride and focused
instead on its instantly memorable songs, among them “You’re the Top,” “It’s
Delovely,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and the title number. Anything Goes was
the big hit of the 1934–35 season, made a Broadway legend of Ethel Merman,
and cemented Cole Porter’s legacy.

Rodgers and Hart and Pal Joey

Cole Porter was not alone in taking up the reins from Kern and the Gershwins
as the 1930s progressed. Irving Berlin remained very much on the scene, as
he would for decades to come. Oscar Hammerstein II’s career had slowed
since the success of Show Boat, but he would soon dominate the Second
World War era in a new partnership with the composer Richard Rodgers
(1902–79). Rodgers himself was very active during the 1920s and 1930s, in
collaboration with the brilliant if tortured lyricist Lorenz Hart (1895–1943).
Rodgers’ partnership with Hammerstein was so extraordinarily successful
and influential that his partnership with Hart, long and fruitful though it
was, is often given comparatively short shrift.
Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers met as students at Columbia University
in 1919, and worked together until Hart’s death of exposure-borne
pneumonia in 1943 (Kirle 2005, 19). For their close partnership, they were
remarkably different men: Rodgers was polished and professional, if by most
accounts also cold, impenetrable, and distant. Hart, a depressive alcoholic
and closeted homosexual, was widely considered the more personable,
emotionally transparent, and endearing of the two.
Both men were, however, strongly influenced by the many kinds of music
and theater that had surrounded them through their upbringings in
culturally rich New York City. In his childhood, Hart regularly saw Yiddish-
and German-language productions, vaudeville shows, and early Broadway
confections. From an early age, he found himself striving to emulate the
many different kinds of lyrics he heard. Rodgers, on the other hand,
gravitated more to concert music. His extended family frequently gathered
around a piano or attended concerts of classical music, as well as operas,
operettas, and shows on Broadway. Both Hart and Rodgers were particularly

101
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

passionate about the small, cohesive Princess musicals by Kern, Wodehouse,

and Bolton (Symonds 2015, 8–10). And both men were convinced that
musicals could achieve “a far greater degree of artistic merit in every area
than was apparent at the time” (quoted in Stempel 2010, 275–6).
One of their earliest songs, “Any Old Place with You,” was interpolated
into the musical A Lonely Romeo (1919). The following year, seven of their
songs were interpolated into Sigmund Romberg’s Poor Little Ritz Girl. But
while many benefits, gala events, and amateur productions followed, it was
not until 1925, when they scored the revue The Garrick Gaieties and the
Revolutionary-era musical Dearest Enemy, that the duo found lasting success
on Broadway (Block 2009, 83).
Rodgers and Hart had an established rhythm to their collaboration:
Rodgers composed music for a number, after which Hart would pen “nimble”
and “penetrating” lyrics, many of which demonstrated his knack for
“polysyllabic and internal rhymes” (Hischak 2008, 327–8). It has been noted
that one of the pleasures of listening to a Rodgers and Hart song is the
frequent juxtaposition between Rodgers’ sweet, lyrical, memorable tunes
and Hart’s “biting, cynical, brutal, and intellectual lyrics” (Mast 1987, 169).
Before heading to Hollywood in the the earliest, leanest years of the
Depression, they collaborated on twelve musicals, three of which—The
Girl Friend (1926), Peggy-Ann (1926), and A Connecticut Yankee (1927)—
were especially successful. In Hollywood, Rodgers and Hart scored several
feature films including the Al Jolson vehicle Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! (1933).
But the duo quickly tired of Hollywood’s approach, in which composers and
lyricists were paid well but granted no creative control during the filming
and editing of a movie (Stempel 2010, 279). Once the initial shock of the
Depression wore off, Rodgers and Hart were only too happy to return to
Broadway, and the collaborative process to which they were accustomed.
In keeping with the aesthetics of the period, Rodgers and Hart’s 1920s
musicals tended toward the broad, madcap, and carefree. Yet even during
this period, the men regularly grappled with “different elements of
performance like design, atmosphere, lighting, and especially dance” in a
quest to aid “the dynamics of performance” overall (Symonds 2015, 264).
After their return from Hollywood in 1935, Rodgers and Hart put out a
string of successful Broadway musicals that remain more squarely in
collective memory than most of their 1920s productions: On Your Toes
(1936), Babes in Arms (1937), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), and Pal Joey
(1940). These shows reflect significant strides toward the integrated musicals
Rodgers and Hammerstein would soon be lauded for.

102
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

On Your Toes is considered a landmark musical because dance—long a

Broadway staple, if one that typically stopped rather than advanced
a musical’s plot—was so integral to its storyline. Initially devised in
Hollywood, On Your Toes was to star Fred Astaire as a vaudeville dancer
who gets involved with a Russian ballet troupe. But Astaire, busily dancing
up a storm with Ginger Rogers, passed on the project. Rodgers and Hart
decided instead to develop On Your Toes for Broadway, and commenced
collaborations with the producer, director, and playwright George Abbott
(1887–1995). Ray Bolger (1904–87), later the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz
and an already seasoned vaudevillian, was cast in the lead role (Block 2003,
85–6).
A noteworthy member of the creative team was the Russian ballet dancer
and choreographer George Balanchine (1904–83). Balanchine’s interest in
commercial stage musicals stemmed both from a desire to build American
audiences for dance and to keep his own dancers steadily employed. A
relative newcomer to Broadway (and to the US , where he emigrated in
1933), Balanchine had a history of reaching beyond classical dance venues.
In both London and Paris, he had choreographed dances for use in revues,
operettas, and variety shows. In New York, his agent, who also represented
Lorenz Hart, recommended him for his first Broadway show, the 1936
edition of Ziegfeld’s Follies. Hart, in turn, introduced him to Rodgers and
Abbott (Hardy 2006, 16).
The plot of On Your Toes centers on Phil “Junior” Dolan, a vaudeville
hoofer teaching at a WPA-sponsored college extension program. One of his
students, Frankie Frayne, has eyes for him and a talent for composing pop
tunes. Another, Sydney Cohn, composes the jazz ballet “Slaughter on Tenth
Avenue,” which Junior brings to the attention of Sergei Alexandrovitch’s
flagging Russian ballet company. The ballet company agrees to perform the
work. Alexandrovitch’s prima ballerina, Vera Barnova, develops an aggressive
crush on Junior, much to the dismay of both Frankie and Vera’s lover,
the dancer Konstantine Morrosine. When a pre-show scuffle between
Alexandrovitch and Morrosine leaves Morrosine unconscious, Junior steps
in to dance opposite Vera. Once revived, the jealous Morrosine sets some
gangsters on Junior who, thanks to a tipoff by Frankie, is spared the fate
implied in the ballet’s title by dancing until the police can arrive to make
arrests. Afterward, an exhausted Junior embraces Frankie and the musical,
like the ballet within it, ends (Hischak 2008, 551).
On Your Toes has not aged well. Its first Broadway revival, eighteen years
after the original production, was poorly received because the book was

103
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

newly deemed “labored, mechanical, and verbose” by what were at that point
contemporary standards (Block 2009, 87). Yet the strides On Your Toes took
in uniting various dance styles and presenting them as part of a broader but
increasingly accessible art form were unparalleled at the time.
Dance infused the entire musical, but three numbers in particular are
representative of Balanchine’s approach to popularizing dance, and to
breaking down class assumptions and stylistic boundaries. The “Princess
Zenobia” ballet closing Act I parodied Michel Fokine’s 1910 choreography
for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and featured a hilariously rubber-
legged and confused Bolger in the lead. The title number, in Act II , featured
tap and ballet dancers performing together using choreography that
“presented the two styles as a single American art form,” rather than two
competing ones. And the lengthy finale, “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,”
blended classical ballet, modern and jazz dance, and was so integral to
On Your Toes that the musical can only end once the dance within it has.
Dance was so intrinsic to On Your Toes, which opened to accolades at
the Imperial and ran for 315 performances, that Balanchine became the first
person to be listed in a program as the choreographer for a Broadway
musical (Hardy 2006, 17). Ballanchine continued to work on Broadway,
collaborating with Rodgers and Hart on Babes in Arms, I Married
an Angel, and The Boys from Syracuse before heading to Hollywood in
1938.
One of Rodgers and Hart’s last musicals, Pal Joey, was also their favorite
and most celebrated (Block 2009, 101). Pal Joey’s book was cohesive enough
that it can be successfully revived for contemporary audiences without
requiring extensive modifications. One of their most truly integrated shows,
Pal Joey was also their darkest and most controversial. Its characters were
morally questionable at best and often downright unlikable, its settings and
situations were seamy, its sexual themes blunt and base. Yet its grit was also
its strength: its characters were fleshed-out enough, its plot coherent and
believable enough, and its songs and dances integrated enough that many
critics quickly recognized it as a landmark that advanced the Broadway
musical genre. By the time Pal Joey was first revived on Broadway in 1952,
most critics and historians considered it the most important musical of
Rodgers and Hart’s output (Sears 2008, 147).
Pal Joey was based on a series of thirteen epistolary stories by John
O’Hara that were published serially in The New Yorker through 1939. Always
signed “Your Pal Joey,” the letters were written by the character Joey Evans to
his “Pal Ted” in New York. Joey, an amoral, uneducated, street-smart

104
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

nightclub singer who drifts from Ohio to Chicago, is not a particularly mean
or vengeful person, but he is also not especially self-aware, generous, or
capable of personal growth. Joey blames the world for denying him the
success he feels entitled to, and views other people as a means (or barrier) to
his sexual or material ends. O’Hara’s stories, like the musical based on them,
end more or less the way they begin: Joey parts ways with people he seemed
close to, and begins his search anew for someone on whom to harness his
dreams of success and fame (Mast 1987, 174–5).
O’Hara approached Rodgers and Hart about adapting the stories, and
subsequently wrote the script, which was revised by Rodgers, Hart, and
George Abbott. The stage version of Joey, often considered musical theater’s
first anti-hero, is a “self-serving, two-timing little twerp” working at a sleazy
nightclub on the South Side of Chicago and dreaming of owning a classier
joint. Early in Act I, he woos the sweet, comparatively naïve Linda English
with the now-standard song “I Could Write a Book.” After Joey and Linda
begin dating, Joey also starts seeing the slumming socialite Vera Simpson,
who is older, harsher, and more self-serving than Linda.
In exchange for sexual favors, Vera buys Joey expensive clothing, rents
him a fancy apartment, and bankrolls his dream nightclub, Chez Joey. She
also expresses, with a frankness remarkable for the late 1930s, the pleasure
she derives from sex with him in the song “Bewitched, Bothered, and
Bewildered”:

When he talks he is seeking

Words to get off his chest
Horizontally speaking
He’s at his very best

Vera adds later that while she is “vexed again” and “perplexed again” as she
enters into the affair, she is nevertheless grateful to be “over-sexed again.”
Vera may not have fit comfortably into the contemporary conception of a
“proper” American woman, but she, like the rest of Pal Joey, was bluntly,
refreshingly honest.
Eventually, both women dump Joey: Linda loses interest in him and
Vera, fearing that her husband will find out about him, abruptly removes
him from her life. Newly broke and single, Joey is unfazed: clearly, this sort
of thing has happened to him before and will probably happen again. Pal
Joey thus ends as it begins—with Joey blithely picking up a new woman by
singing a reprise of “I Could Write a Book” (Bordman 2001, 576).

105
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

The book and lyrics to Pal Joey were filled with double entendre and
suggestive language, spouted by characters who were notably tough to cozy
up to. Many of the show’s musical numbers emanated naturally from either
the sleazy nightclub Joey and Vera first meet in, or in Chez Joey. These
aspects of the show only added to its gritty, natural feel. In a stroke of genius,
the creative team countered the transgressive production with conservative
casting: the “charming” soprano Vivienne Segal played Vera against type,
infusing the hardened, self-absorbed character with more grace and charm
than she might otherwise have had. And the young Gene Kelly, in the
title role, apparently “achieved the impossible by making Joey not only
sexually attractive but also irresistibly lovable” despite his many flaws (Kirle
2005, 100).
Pal Joey connected with audiences, who seemed generally unperturbed
by Brooks Atkinson’s famously barbed review of the musical in The New
York Times. Quick to acknowledge that Pal Joey was expertly written, staged,
and performed, Atkinson still called the story “joyless” and “odious,” its
characters not worth the audience’s time or attention, and the sexually
loaded lyrics to “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” “scabrous.” He
concluded his review by questioning whether one could “draw sweet water
from a foul well” (Stempel 2010, 286).
Yet other critics lauded Pal Joey for refusing to sugarcoat its themes or
characters. Especially with Kelly in the lead, audiences found Pal Joey
appealing enough to support for 374 performances. Atkinson revisited the
musical when it was revived in 1952 and admitted finding it newly palatable,
especially given the “changed moral climate and more relaxed theatre
standards” (Bordman 2001, 577).
By the early 1940s, Rodgers and Hart’s relationship was strained. In 1941,
Rodgers was approached by the Theatre Guild about musicalizing the 1930
Lynn Riggs play Green Grow the Lilacs, a Broadway flop that had developed
new life in the regional theater. Hart, whose chronic alcoholism had begun
to affect his ability to stick to deadlines or show up for meetings or rehearsals,
did not like the idea. He refused to work with Rodgers on it, even after
Rodgers threatened to accept the project and find another lyricist (Sears
2008, 148). Hart held firm; his last work with Rodgers was on a November
1943 revival of their 1927 hit A Connecticut Yankee. After being ejected from
a performance of that production for drunken disorderliness at Rodgers’
request, Hart disappeared. He was found five days later in a Times Square
gutter with a raging case of pneumonia, to which he succumbed on
November 22, at the age of 48.14

106
 The Great Depression to the Second World War

About eight months prior, Rodgers’ adaptation of Green Grow the Lilacs,
with lyrics by his new partner Oscar Hammerstein II, opened at the
St. James Theater to the kinds of ecstatic accolades Rodgers and Hart
had never seen. Virtually every critic raved about the production, which ran
for an unprecedented 2,212 performances over the course of five years. Hart
was in the audience on opening night, dutifully applauding, laughing, and
hooting approval from his orchestra seat. But his decades-long partnership
with Rodgers was truly over (Stempel 2010, 287). As the Depression gave
way to the Second World War, Broadway’s players, output, and cultural
resonance would shift again to meet the needs of a changing nation.

107
108
CHAPTER 5
THE SECOND WORLD WAR TO 1960

Oklahoma! has long been regarded as so monumentally important to the

history of the American stage musical that in some surveys it is treated as
the very linchpin of the genre: both the culmination of everything that
came before it and an indelible influence on everything that followed. The
partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II enjoys similar
treatment. No history of the Broadway musical would be complete without
discussion of their many contributions to the genre.
Without question, Oklahoma! was a watershed musical created by and
marking the debut of an extraordinarily important partnership. Both
Oklahoma! and the seemingly charmed partnership that created it emerged
at a time when the commercial theater industry had not only solidified
but weathered seemingly impossible challenges, and the country was uniting
under the kind of intense patriotism that only external conflict can engender.
Oklahoma! was a musical that was important not only for its stylistic
contributions, but also because it was so well-shaped by and so sharply
reflective of its era. Something similar can be said about Rodgers and
Hammerstein themselves.

The Second World War and popular culture

Wars are sometimes given weirdly positive nicknames. The First World War
was known as the “Great War,” for example, and the Second World War
the “Good” one; current global conflicts have been officially, collectively
labeled “Operation Enduring Freedom” by the US government. While such
monikers reinforce the historical importance of a given war or international
dispute, they also gloss over the messiness, contradictions, violence, and
heartache such events cause, emphasizing instead their positive impact on
the nation. There was, after all, nothing “good” about the Second World War
for those whose homes or cities were destroyed, those who were grievously
injured or killed in battle, or those who lost their brothers, fathers, or sons.
Yet the Second World War has earned a hallowed place in American history
in part because it seemed to pit a clear good against a clear evil, as well as

109
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

because it was fought at a distance that put the US at a safe advantage over
the swaths of Europe and Asia that were decimated in combat. It was also
“good” because it unified the populace and rebooted the economy more
quickly and successfully than any number of WPA projects could possibly
have managed.
Due to the lingering impact of the Depression, nearly eight million
Americans remained unemployed in the early 1940s prior to the country’s
entry into the war. Wartime demand, however, saw the rapid creation of tens
of millions of jobs. By 1944, unemployment had plummeted to a low of
around 800,000. Many of the new jobs were filled by women, who went to
work in unprecedented numbers in the absence of men sent to fight overseas.
Despite continued inequality, millions of African Americans, too, enlisted in
the war effort; those who remained at home had increased access to jobs in
manufacturing, as skilled craftsmen, and with unions. Due to the Great
Migration, which continued through the 1940s, the growing concentration
of blacks in northern urban centers allowed as well for easier participation
in civil rights activities, greater access to cultural and political organizations,
and less difficulty registering to vote (Brinkley 2007, 19).
The American media fostered both enthusiasm and unity among
American citizens well before the US entered the war. Prior to the attack on
Pearl Harbor, newspapers, magazines, and radio programs regularly covered
news from Europe and Asia. Once the US responded to the Pearl Harbor
attacks, its new Office of War Information generated its own propaganda in
the form of newsreels, radio broadcasts, pamphlets, and advertisements.
These encouraged American citizens to unify in support of the country’s war
effort by buying bonds, donating goods, and participating in food or supply
drives. The result was a remarkably strong, sustained sense of national unity,
borne primarily of wartime but also of the newly robust economy (Jones
2003, 123–4).
Such economic abundance, especially after over a decade of restraint,
stimulated “a striking buoyancy in American life in the early 1940s that the
war itself only partially counterbalanced. Suddenly, people had money to
spend again and—despite the many shortages of consumer goods—at least
some things to spend it on.” As often happens during dark times, the film,
music, and theater industries did record business in the war years. Hotels,
resorts, sporting events, and casinos, too, prospered anew as Americans
sought to forget their concerns (Brinkley 2007, 17–18).
Most mass entertainment forms incorporated wartime themes of
democracy, unity, patriotism, and support. During the war years, the

110
 The Second World War to 1960

government depended to some degree on the self-regulation of various

entertainment markets to, for example, record patriotic music or depict
upbeat, positive scenes of men serving the country. But government
committees, too, were formed to encourage “nearly every segment of the
American public to unite in the wartime effort, including agencies whose
specific charge was to make sure Hollywood, radio broadcasters, and the
sound-recording industry kept the war before the public,” albeit never in
graphic or upsetting ways.1
An exception was Broadway, which was deemed too small to function
effectively in the spread of wartime propaganda and was thus largely left to
its own devices (Jones 2003, 129). This does not mean that the commercial
theater industry ignored the war. Swept up in patriotic sentiment with much
of the rest of the country, many Times Square venues began performances
with the national anthem, and Broadway proudly sponsored wartime
fundraisers and bond drives. And, of course, many stage musicals to open at
the time reflected aspects of the country and its people at war.

The war and Broadway

In the Second World War era, Broadway embraced many of the same
contradictions inherent in American culture at large. As the Broadway
musical reached maturity and entered what many historians consider a
golden age, it reflected both “delight in the apparently limitless opportunities
America afforded for self-invention” and, simultaneously, the country’s
international status, power, prestige, diversity, national culture, and wartime
anxieties (Most 2004, 1–2). By the early 1940s, the commercial theater
industry was far smaller than it had been before the Depression. The
Broadway musical nevertheless reached important heights in its artistic
output, critical and commercial reception, and influence on later productions.
The prosperity of the Second World War-era New York—a state that
surpassed all others in war production and thus anchored the country’s
“arsenal of democracy”—resonated in the theater industry. Broadway
responded with productions that were, on the whole, weighty, sentimental,
innovative, and preoccupied with what America represented culturally
(Klein 2001, 600–1). The Second World War-era Broadway is often lauded
for its cultivation of the integrated musical—a goal that by this point had
been sought for decades and that was seen to have been realized by the
partnership of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Yet beyond this oft-celebrated

111
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

accomplishment, it is perhaps the “escapist turnback to real or exaggerated

joys of a bygone Americana” that became wartime Broadway’s most
“impressive and lasting contribution to the lyric stage” (Bordman 2001, 583).
Between the 1940s and early 1960s, the Broadway musical was dominated
by a small, concentrated number of enormously talented artists whose
output benefited from time and place, the cohesiveness of its industry, the
consolidation of its audiences and critical corps, and a growing reliance on
formulas that simultaneously embraced old European and contemporary
American artistic ideals. While the output on Broadway remained typically
heterogeneous—not all productions were, after all, integrated works by
Rodgers and Hammerstein—the war- and postwar years set the stage for
contemporary Broadway, and exerted numerous influences that continue to
resonate.

Rodgers and Hammerstein and the “birth” of the

integrated musical

As noted through these pages, creators of the American stage musical have
long aspired to an integrated art form in which plot, character, song, dance,
and setting would serve a unified whole, perceived as artistically superior for
its cohesion. Stylistic integration became even more desirous through the
1930s once realism in the movies became more popular and theater artists
scrambled to “re-position self-conscious theatricality in the cultural
marketplace” (Most 2004, 30). In striving to create commercial productions
blending dance, music, and theater into a populist whole, musical theater
creators sought a distinctive, American take on the Wagenerian concept of
Gesamtkunswerk (“total art work”). This, it was reasoned, would allow the
Broadway musical to incorporate weightier subject matter and more
“classical aesthetic principals” while exposing audiences to a wider variety of
performing arts, all of which would benefit commercially and artistically in
the process (Kirle 2005, 21–2). The idealization of arts integration is thus in
part culturally derived: integrated musicals were seen as “elevated” in
importance due to film and critical trends, and the increased involvement
on Broadway of artists from the dance and classical music worlds.
Both the timing and reception of Oklahoma!, which opened at the St.
James Theater on March 31, 1943, were of great importance in setting
commercial and critical standards on Broadway. No entertainment industry
is wise to ignore a big hit, after all, and Oklahoma! was no mere success—it

112
 The Second World War to 1960

was “an indisputable blockbuster of remarkable coherence,” a blindingly

white-hot ticket that was almost immediately emulated (Riis and Sears
2008, 164).
It takes several ingredients to create a blockbuster, among them good
timing, skill, innovation, and keen business sense. With regards to the last, it
is worth noting that Rodgers and Hammerstein, talented as they were with
crafting musicals, also had plenty of business experience between them.
Their partnership might have been brand new, but well before it began, each
man had built a solid reputation for being as hard-driving on the business
end as he was brilliantly creative on the artistic front (Hirsch 1998, 224).
Together, they were fiercely protective when producing their own shows,
and soon proved similarly formidable when it came to producing others’
works. They produced the 1946 hit Annie Get Your Gun, for example, and
helped shape it by bringing Irving Berlin out of semi-retirement to write it
when its first composer, Hammerstein’s former partner Jerome Kern, died
unexpectedly in 1945 (Knapp 2006, 209).
When it came to Oklahoma!, timing and theme could not have been
better. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s premiere musical, which opened just
over a year after the US entered the Second World War, was steeped in
Americana. Many of its innovations were couched in nationalistic sentiment
and themes of strength in unity. Set in Oklahoma territory in the early
twentieth century, Oklahoma! never directly references the Second World
War, but its unwavering love of country comes through with crystal clarity.
As the oft-referenced lyric from the titular song goes, “we know we belong to
the land / and the land we belong to is grand.”
Oklahoma! balances its innovations with tradition. Like many subsequent
musicals, it features a dual plot structure that Hammerstein borrowed from
classic operetta. Dual plot structures tend to balance a serious or even
tragic romance with one that is comparatively light or comedic (Mast 1987,
208–9). Oklahoma! also has a classic boy meets, loses, and wins girl back
trajectory. Yet while modeled on structures typical of older entertainment
forms, Oklahoma! departs from tradition in important ways, eschewing
ingredients long assumed critical for the commercial success of a stage
musical.
For example, Oklahoma! bluntly dispenses with the notion that a large
group of leggy chorines had to be present, smiling, and kicking up a
sequined storm at the opening curtain. Instead, following the overture,
Oklahoma! emulates the opening of the Riggs play on which it is based
by featuring Aunt Eller alone on stage churning butter, and Curly wandering

113
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

in while singing the opening strains of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

Further, Oklahoma! demonstrated that mixed choruses—“usually reserved
for shows with serious operatic pretensions”—could be employed to dance
and sing in any number of scenes (Riis and Sears 2008, 165). In general,
Oklahoma! proved that a logical, well-executed plot, carefully threaded
with well-crafted, memorable songs, could justify any innovation. More
“flexibility in the creation of scenarios and even occasional violence
resulting in an on-stage killing could be included,” especially if some of the
characters were exonerated or saved in the end. Dance, too, could further
the plot or add dimension to the motivations or emotional states of
characters; choreographer Agnes de Mille was lauded for staging Oklahoma’s
dream ballet, which wordlessly depicted Laurie’s courtship-related, and thus
romantic and sexual, anxieties (ibid.).
Hammerstein’s lyrics, too, were carefully crafted to mirror the way
characters talk and behave through the use of dialect, accent, and “verbal
imagery” (Mast 1987, 217). All of these allowed characters’ actions and
motivations to be plumbed to new depths. Rodgers and Hammerstein were
adept at using songs to tip off audiences about the subconscious desires of
characters, hence the frequent use in their musicals of what are often called
conditional or hypothetical love songs, performed in early scenes. These
songs—like Oklahoma’s “People Will Say We’re in Love” and, later, Carousel’s
“If I Loved You”—helped transmit to spectators two characters’ romantic
interest in one another, long before the characters themselves realize or act
on their feelings.
The plot of Oklahoma! traces two love triangles that are resolved before a
backdrop drenched in patriotic sentimentality. The primary love triangle
involves Aunt Eller’s niece Laurie, the amiable cowboy Curly, and the gruff,
vaguely threatening farmhand Jud Fry. Laurie is drawn to Curly and fears
Jud, who lives on Aunt Eller’s farm in a smokehouse that he has covered with
pictures of naked women. When Jud invites Laurie to a boxed lunch social,
she accepts his invitation to spite Curly. The prospect of going with Jud
causes Laurie great anxiety, and puts the tension borne of love triangles into
action, fueling the plot.
The second, more comic love triangle involves cowboy Will Parker, farm
girl Annie (nicknamed “Ado Annie” because of her healthy interest in men),
and the Persian peddler Ali Hakim, with whom Annie flirts while Will is
away. As these love stories play out, progress in Oklahoma territory is
disrupted by tensions between the cowboys and farmhands, which is
outlined in the number “The Farmer and the Cowman.”

114
 The Second World War to 1960

All conflicts are neatly resolved by the end of the musical. The farmers
and cowmen eventually, if grudgingly, accept one another. Ali leaves the
territory, and Annie and Will marry. Tensions simmer between Curly, Jud,
and Laurie until a drunken Jud picks a fight with Curly, during which he
accidentally falls on his knife and dies. Curly and Laurie marry, Oklahoma
becomes a state, and the people in it collectively rejoice. Without mentioning
the contemporary US once, Oklahoma! frequently marvels over Americans’
innovations, industriousness, ability to tackle and resolve conflicts through
hard work, morality, and belief in the common good.
A darker, moodier musical than Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
highly-anticipated follow-up, Carousel (1945), nevertheless similarly
impresses the importance of community support, hard work, and a collective
desire for “a future where no one walks alone” (Mast 1987, 210). For its
differences and bleaker tone, Carousel again featured a blend of innovation
and tradition that was by this point rapidly becoming a Rodgers and
Hammerstein trademark.
Like Oklahoma!, Carousel was adapted from a literary work. It featured
long musical scenes with frequent reprises and extended ballet sequences,
again choreographed by Agnes de Mille, which provided deeper insight into
the lives of its characters. Its plot, like Oklahoma’s, featured two sets of lovers,
one less fraught than the other. And while set in America’s past, Carousel
allowed audiences to reflect on the American present.
Adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom, Carousel relocates the
action from late-nineteenth-century Hungary to late-nineteenth-century
Maine, and renames the original title character Billy Bigelow. Bigelow is a
smart if gruff and frustrated man with a quick temper and a widely swaying
moral compass. He works as a carousel barker at a local parade grounds,
where he meets Julie Jordan, a millworker whose naïveté and quiet, dreamy
personality belies her iron-clad strength and survivor instinct. In the
secondary, lighter plotline, Julie’s friend and fellow millworker Carrie
Pipperidge is courted by and eventually marries a local fisherman named
Enoch Snow.
Julie and Billy establish an interest in one another early in Act I with the
conditional love song “If I Loved You”; their growing affection for one
another costs them both their jobs. They marry after a brief courtship, but
their life together proves difficult. Both are preoccupied with money and
finding work, and they struggle to communicate their love for and devotion
to one another. Julie soon admits to Carrie that Billy hits her; Carrie, in turn,
tells Julie that she and Enoch have become engaged to be married.

115
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Late in Act I, Julie tells Billy that she’s pregnant. “Soliloquy,” the number
Billy sings in response to the news, tracks his mixed feelings about impending
fatherhood: anxiety, elation, doubt, and finally stolid determination to
support his child. Yet Billy’s inability to make wise choices proves his
undoing. Desperate for money, he agrees to help his morally bankrupt friend
Jigger Craigin rob Julie’s former boss, the mill owner. The robbery goes
wrong when the intended victim pulls a gun on Billy and Jigger. Jigger runs
away, but when Billy realizes that he will be shot if he tries, he instead falls on
his own knife. As he dies, Julie arrives to finally profess her love for him; in a
show of community support, Julie’s cousin Nettie sings the ballad “You’ll
Never Walk Alone.”
Billy goes to purgatory, where time passes more slowly than on Earth. He
sees his daughter, Louise, now fifteen years old; a lengthy dance sequence,
“Billy Makes a Journey,” depicts her as a sad, lonely teen who feels shunned
by her community because of her dead father’s bad reputation. Hoping to
redeem himself and gain entry into heaven, Billy returns to visit Louise and
tell her not to isolate herself. He also finally tells Julie, who cannot see him
but detects his presence, that he truly loved her. Carousel ends with a reprise
of the number “You’ll Never Walk Alone”; it is suggested that Billy has been
redeemed, and that Julie and Louise will find strength in their community.
Like Oklahoma!, Carousel reinforces the power of American solidarity in
times of hardship.
Many musical theater scholars, including Raymond Knapp, Bruce Kirle,
Andrea Most, and Warren Hoffman note that for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
frequent emphasis on inclusiveness and community, their musicals
nevertheless focus overwhelmingly on white, middle-class values and
concerns, while eliding deeper, more realistic conversations about race,
ethnicity, and difference. In many respects, this is a reflection of the time and
culture in which Rodgers and Hammerstein worked, and of Broadway’s
typically white, middle- to upper-class audience base. Recent revivals of
their musicals have incorporated color-blind casting and subtle directorial
and dramaturgical adjustments “in an effort to make them relevant to a
different cultural moment” (Kirle 2005, 39). A much-loved 1994 Broadway
revival, for example, featured the white actor Eddie Korbich as Enoch,
introduced the African American Broadway superstar Audra McDonald to
audiences as Carrie, and joked about its own casting choices by featuring
eight children of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds as their offspring.
Such contemporary casting choices would, of course, not have translated
well to Broadway audiences in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s time. Yet while

116
 The Second World War to 1960

musicals during the Second World War era primarily emphasized white
middle and upper classes, the 1940s was nevertheless a period during which
new steps toward racial integration, both on and off the stage, were slowly
taking place.

Social integration through the war years

During the Harlem Renaissance, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote of the need for an
African American theater movement that would create productions about,
by, for, and near black audiences. His call to action “fit within the larger push
toward self-expression and self-determination that burgeoned within
African American communities of the 1920s,” and which resulted in the
establishment such black theater companies across the country. In New
York, several such companies operated out of the basement of the Harlem
Library, which first became a performance space when Du Bois himself
founded the Krigwa Players in 1926. Following the demise of that company
in 1929, other like-minded groups used the same space: the Harlem
Experimental Theater (1929–33), the Harlem Players (1931), and the
American Negro Theater (1940–9). This last company was co-founded by
Frederick O’Neal (1905–92), who would in 1964 become the first African
American president of Actors’ Equity (Shandell 2013, 108–9). The growth of
the so-called Negro Little Theatre Movement through the mid-twentieth
century created new opportunities for black artists, and options for spectators
who “sought meaningful alternatives to the racist tendencies of American
culture” (ibid., 104).
The Negro Little Theatre Movement was deemed necessary in large part
because mainstream commercial theater continued to provide little for black
entertainers and audiences. On Broadway in the 1940s, there remained the
occasional musical with an all-black cast, but these were increasingly rare.
The Vernon Duke and John Latouche musical Cabin in the Sky was a hit in
1940, and later “a beneficiary of the wartime emphasis on racial harmony in
motion pictures” when it became the first musical with an all-black cast to
become a Hollywood film (Woll 1989, 195). In 1946, St. Louis Woman,
featuring Pearl Bailey in her Broadway debut, ran at the Beck for 113
performances. This was the rare musical to feature a mixed-race creative
team: its book, based on the 1931 novel God Sends Sunday by Arna Bontemps,
was adapted by Bontemps with the poet Countee Cullen; its score was by
Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer.

117
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

But in general, “black musicals” on Broadway rarely reflected the “by,

about, for and near” tenet outlined by Du Bois. Rather, as vehicles for white
composers, lyricists, and book writers to explore black American culture for
overwhelmingly white audiences, most followed the Porgy and Bess model:
black casts performed work by white creative teams that was backed by
white producers. Through the mid-twentieth century, black book writers,
composers, choreographers, and lyricists—not to mention directors and
producers—were rare, if not nonexistent on Broadway, though the poet
Langston Hughes collaborated with composer Kurt Weill on Street Scene
(1947), and Katherine Dunham was a regular presence as both performer
and choreographer through the 1940s. In terms of power and economics,
race relations on Broadway “remained deeply unequal, with whites largely
controlling the narrative of the shows, as well as their production and
business practices” (Oja 2014, 155).
Nevertheless in subtle, gradual ways, the cultural shifts taking place in the
US during the mid-twentieth century were reflected on Broadway. On its
stages, in its orchestra pits, and in its long-desegregated seating areas, white
and black people mingled. And while racism was still rife, glimmers of
increased understanding occurred. Stories of grossly imbalanced business
practices and unequal pay-scales faded, and anecdotal evidence emerged
that implied more empowerment among artists of color who appeared on
Broadway’s stages. On several occasions during rehearsals for St. Louis
Woman, for example, cast members openly questioned or challenged the
white director Rouben Mamoulian about what they perceived as offensive
representations of black characters in the production (Woll 1989, 200). A
number of musicals, too, showed glimmers of what would become the
American Civil Rights Movement.
During and just after the Second World War, a number of American
institutions took sure steps toward desegregation. In 1941, FDR issued
Executive Order 8802 prohibiting discrimination in American defense
industries, and establishing the Fair Employment Practices Commission. In
1946, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in interstate travel was
unconstitutional. In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke major league baseball’s
color line when he was signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers. And in 1948,
President Truman signed an executive order desegregating the armed
forces.2
On Broadway, integrated casts became more typical, as did shows
promoting social progress and racial equality. Harold Arlen and Yip
Harburg’s 1944 production Bloomer Girl, for example, was marketed as

118
 The Second World War to 1960

another Oklahoma! due to its integrated structure, de Mille choreography,

historic American setting, and involvement of Oklahoma! original cast
members Celeste Holm and Joan McCracken. Bloomer Girl was not as
artistically resonant or serious as Oklahoma!, but its cast featured black
performers, and the musical used its historic setting to comment on
contemporary concerns, including women’s rights and racial equality. The
Civil War ballet de Mille choreographed for Bloomer Girl was perhaps less
relevant to the musical than it was to wartime audiences: the dance
“poignantly depicted the grief of wives and mothers whose loved ones will
never return,” and thus “had a certain thinly disguised timeliness.” Bloomer
Girl was not the enormous hit Oklahoma! was, but it resonated with
audiences nonetheless. It ran for 657 performances before closing in 1946
(Bordman 2001, 597).
Of course, on Broadway as elsewhere, there remained stubborn structural
and representational throwbacks. While one of the more important wartime
productions, Irving Berlin’s now oft-forgotten 1942 revue This Is the Army,
featured a mixed-race cast,3 Berlin initially conceived of an opening number
featuring the entire cast in full military uniform . . . and blackface. Already
fifty-three when the US entered the Second World War, Berlin had been
active on Broadway for over thirty years, and was drawing on forms, however
offensive, with which he was familiar and comfortable.
This Is the Army was Berlin’s second wartime revue. He wrote his first, Yip
Yip Yaphank (1918), while he was stationed at Camp Upton, Long Island,
and initially intended This Is the Army as a revival of Yaphank. Yaphank had
run on Broadway in August and September of 1918, grossing over $50,000
and closing only because the members of its military cast were “required to
become soldiers again.” Yaphank—for which Berlin composed “God Bless
America,” though the song was cut from the show—had a big opening
sequence modeled after the first act of a traditional minstrel show: the huge,
all-male cast stood on risers with a sergeant serving as the interlocutor. The
sequence featured sentimental ballads and coon songs, and cast members
frequently donned drag, blackface, or both for the comic bits (Magee 2012,
69–72).
When the US entered the Second World War, Berlin jumped at the chance
to help with morale by updating Yip Yip Yaphank. After receiving permission
from General George Marshall to embark on the project, proceedings from
which would be donated to Army Emergency Relief, Berlin hired Ezra Stone,
an actor, producer, and director serving with the Army’s Special Services, to
direct (Grimes 1994, 12). Younger than Berlin by nearly three decades, Stone

119
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

convinced Berlin not to use blackface in This Is the Army. Arguments about
the practice being outdated and offensive fell on deaf ears, so Stone instead
noted that there would be no time to get the cast out of blackface once the
opening number ended. Berlin conceded, and when This Is the Army opened
at the Broadway Theater on Independence Day 1942, it featured a mixed-
race cast that was, at the time, “the only integrated company in uniform.” Its
huge opening number remained rooted in minstrelsy, but no one wore
blackface.4 This Is the Army ran for 113 performances and then, with regular
changes to the cast and material, went on a tour that lasted as long as the war
did. The revue was made into a movie in 1943; coupled with the sale of the
film rights, the show earned $10 million for the Army (Jones 2003, 135).
The 1944 dance musical On the Town shared This Is the Army’s light
touch, mixed-race cast, embrace of American idealism, and rooting in
the traditional musical revue, but was more innovative for its time. Its
ambitious choreographer, Jerome Robbins (1918–98), like Rodgers and
Hammerstein, ascribed to the idea of “totally integrated,” accessible stage
entertainments that blended ballet, social dance, and contemporary music
(Kirle 2005, 21–2).
On the Town was inspired by and based on Fancy Free, a short ballet
Robbins choreographed to a score by Leonard Bernstein (1918–90), which
premiered in April 1944 at the old Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway
between West 39th and 40th streets. On the Town opened on Broadway a
mere eight months later, in December of the same year. Like Fancy Free, On
the Town depicted three Navy men sightseeing and looking for women
during a 24-hour shore leave in New York City. The musical’s book and lyrics
were contributed by the comedy duo Betty Comden (1917–2006) and
Adolph Green (1914–2002), who drew material from their nightclub act.
The resultant musical was as dense a mix of high-, middle-, and lowbrow
elements as its disparate influences imply. In some numbers, moody, classical
dance sequences were accompanied by Bernstein’s symphonic scoring; in
others, hips rotated suggestively to jazz or blues accompaniment. The plot
featured erudite and elitist characters mixing with crass ones, ridiculous
situations and deeply moving ones. Plenty of jokes, whether subtle, corny,
recurring, cheap, or dirty, kept the energy high.
When they were developing On the Town, the left-leaning, politically
active creative team responded to an effort by various civil rights
organizations to encourage mixed-race casting and “nonstereotypical racial
representation.” The original Broadway cast featured four black dance chorus
members and two black singers. One of its female leads, Miss Ivy Smith, was

120
 The Second World War to 1960

originated by Sono Osato, a dancer of Japanese and European heritage

whose father was interned during the war as a result of the Japanese
American Internment Policy. White performers outnumbered those of color,
but On the Town’s racially mixed casting was quietly remarkable for its time.
Cast members acted and danced together instead of in segregated groups,
and all the characters were considered part of a typical urban landscape.
Black and white men appeared together as sailors, dockworkers and citizens,
and one black chorus member played the recurring role of a police officer.
These choices were daring enough that Robbins recalled having trouble in
some of the cities the touring production visited (Oja 2014, 154–5).
While more subtle than overt, and certainly not without plenty of
contradictions, wartime musicals reflected a new interest in artistic
integration and, more cautiously, in racial integration. Both types of
integration would be reflected through the postwar era on Broadway, which
continued to promote, if not always successfully, unity, harmony, and
goodwill for all citizens of a country that was on its way to becoming a global
superpower.

The postwar era

Just after 7 p.m. on August 14, 1945, the Times Tower’s street-level news
ticker announced the official surrender of the Japanese to the Allied forces.
As news spread through the neighborhood, there erupted a thunderous roar
of exultation that some news sources reported lasted almost twenty minutes.
People in office buildings showered the growing throngs below with paper
and confetti, and by 10 p.m., two million people had amassed between 40th
and 52nd streets from Sixth to Eighth avenues, where they became “one solid
mass of joyful humanity, kissing, hugging, sobbing, or simply gazing in
wordless relief and delight” (Traub 2005, 100). The war was over and the US
was victorious.
There was certainly good reason to dance in the streets. While countries
in Europe and Asia needed to heal, restructure, and rebuild, the US emerged
comparatively unscathed, economically strong, and newly powerful. Yet
as the country eased into the postwar era, its fabric nevertheless remained
pocked with cultural anxieties and contradictions.
Politically, the US moved slowly to the right while socially, it edged to the
left. Many Americans, newly aware that it was impossible to “reconcile a
commitment to freedom and democracy with the effort to deny one group

121
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

of citizens a set of basic rights guaranteed to everyone else,” grew newly

willing to confront the country’s race problem. Yet still others “considered
the war not a challenge to but a confirmation of their commitment to
preserving the old racial order” (Brinkley 2007, 21).
The American workforce’s wartime reliance on women had brought new
opportunities and freedoms that were not easy to rescind. Many women
returned to the domestic front once they lost the jobs they had taken in the
absence of American men, but a significant number simply sought new
employment. The number of women in the workforce never receded to pre-
war numbers, and continued to climb in the postwar era.
At the same time, the new freedoms enjoyed by many American women
proved threatening enough that obstacles to equality not only persisted but
grew. The postwar years saw significant growth in the influence of images
and nationalized sentiments idealizing “traditional” American women and
their roles as dutiful, passive wives, homemakers and mothers (ibid., 22–4).
Mixed messages abounded: women were free to work, but why would they
want to if they could marry a man and have children? Especially among the
white middle classes, postwar American women were expected to desire a
quiet life on the domestic front, while men were expected to venture into the
public sphere to earn the household salary (Wolf 2011, 27).
Mixed messages extended well beyond gender roles. After decades of
uncertainty, the country’s economic prosperity and increased international
power were thrilling, but also cause for anxieties about new issues and
conflicts, including the Korean War, the Cold War, the rise of McCarthyism,
nuclear power, and “the growing bureaucratization and impersonality of
mass society.” Concern increased as well over the possibility that the
country’s triumph in the Second World War could somehow soften the
nation, that war-torn or broken families were contributing to a perceived
spike in juvenile delinquency, and that as the US rose in global status, there
would be that much further to fall. And, of course, for all the new prosperity,
many Americans—among them women, people of color, gay men and
lesbians, and the poor—continued to live in ways that did not reflect the
country’s strength, wealth, solidarity, freedoms, and power (Griffith and
Baker 2007, 81).
This swirl of concerns and cultural contradictions was endlessly reflected
in postwar popular culture. This grew more sophisticated and influential
through the 1950s, especially with the exponential growth in American
ownership of television sets, and the recognition among various
entertainment industries of a burgeoning, economically viable youth culture.

122
 The Second World War to 1960

In a holdover from the war years, American popular culture continued to

promote themes of democracy, unity, and patriotism—as well as traditional
gender roles and the assumed universality of the white middle class.
As the Cold War reinforced the idea of consolidation against a lurking
enemy, mass entertainment, especially in its cultural themes and messages,
became “more homogenous than Americans had previously known.”
Homogeneity was compounded by the newly centralized and effective
dissemination of popular entertainment, as well as by a decline in immigration,
resulting in the drop-off of ethnic or foreign-language periodicals, theater
companies, social groups, and music organizations (Marchand 2007, 98).

Postwar Times Square

The advent of new mass media, coupled with the postwar suburbanization
boom, slowed business in Times Square, which once again adjusted its
offerings for maximum profit. The neighborhood’s dime museums, arcades
and 24-hour second- and third-run movie houses—known as “grinders”—
grew shabbier. Once the Port Authority bus terminal opened in the far
southwest corner of the neighborhood in 1950, such establishments were
joined by “rip-off retailers” peddling “overstock, seconds, and other dubious
merchandise.” Many of these places paid noisy hawkers to stand on the street
and attempt to lure pedestrians (Bianco 2004, 126–7).
Times Square’s bizarre blend of high- and lowbrow offerings was
alternately celebrated and decried by the businesspeople, theatergoers, film-
buffs, artists, poets, transients, junkies, winos, and runaways who spent their
time there. When he was elected in 1954, Mayor Robert Wagner attempted
to rid the neighborhood of its seedier establishments by making drastic
changes to local zoning codes. This helped close plenty of arcades, dime
museums and cheap restaurants, but inadvertently paved the way for a slew
of adult bookstores and peepshows.
The city’s middle and upper classes began to associate the “clamor and
vulgarity of 42nd Street” with the “rising rates of assault, rape, and murder in
the city” through the era. Yet at the same time, the neighborhood remained a
mecca for creative outsiders. It birthed the Beat movement; its remaining
dime museums were favorites of the photographer Diane Arbus and the
comedian Lenny Bruce; it functioned as a thriving gay enclave; its grinders
were frequented by future filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese,
and Woody Allen (ibid., 130–3).

123
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Times Square would become even seedier and more alienating to the
city’s middle classes, visitors, and political leaders through the 1960s and
1970s. But just after the war, it struck a delicate enough balance between
classy and squalid, welcoming and sinister, that the Beat writer Jack Kerouac
described it in his 1950 novel The Town and the City as welcoming to all: the
“Broadway weisenheimer-gambler . . . The mellow gentleman in the De
Pinna suit headed for the Ritz bar, and the mellow gentleman staggering by
and sitting down in the gutter, to spit and groan and be hauled off by cops
. . . The robust young rosy-cheeked priest from Fordham with some of his
jayvee basketballers on a ‘night of good clean fun,’ and the cadaverous
morphine-addict stumbling full of shuddering misery in search of a fix”
(quoted in Traub 2005, 102).
Meanwhile, the theater industry faced concerns that were not far removed
from those of the surrounding neighborhood. Through the 1950s, the
number of venues, and of live entertainments to put in them, contracted as
audiences moved to the suburbs, went to the movies, turned on radios or
record players, or switched on new television sets.
Unable to compete with the growing and vastly more powerful mass
media, the commercial theater instead experimented with new ways to
harness itself to it. Broadway personnel continued moonlighting in
Hollywood. And as television took off, the theater industry began working
with studios interested in broadcasting musicals or featuring Broadway stars
on television shows.
Even as its musicals trailed behind more easily mediated entertainments
in terms of power, reach, and influence, Broadway continued to serve as
the country’s live entertainment mecca, and thus to retain some of its
prestige. Recording artists, movie stars, and television personalities still
chose to assert their connections with fans by appearing in Broadway shows;
cast recordings, too, could now be played on turntables, broadcast across
the country on the radio, or performed on televised variety shows (Traub
2005, 103).
As the theater industry adapted for the postwar era, the Shubert empire,
still the most powerful in the business, saw new troubles. In 1950, the US
Attorney General hit the organization with an anti-trust suit, accusing it of
monopolizing the industry and “stifling fair trade by controlling ‘practically
all of the theatrical booking in the United States” ’—in short, of behaving
exactly like the monopoly the Shubert brothers toppled during their initial
climb to power (Hirsch 1998, 213–15). Members of the theater industry
sided with or against the Shuberts, who mourned Lee’s death in 1953 and

124
 The Second World War to 1960

restructured their business several times in his absence while the lawsuit
dragged on. In 1956, the Shuberts surrendered twelve of their theaters in six
different cities, including four in New York. They closed their more suspect
booking agencies and severed ties with “any ticket agency in any city with a
Shubert house.” The concessions hardly destroyed them; in fact, the forced
downsizing ended up stimulating profits. But the Shuberts bore the
embarrassment of becoming “the first theatre entrepreneurs ever to be
challenged and rebuked by federal authorities” (ibid., 229).
As if suburban flight, new developments in mass media, and increased
scrutiny by the government were not stressors enough, the theater industry
was also forced to compensate for inflation and the nation’s rising cost of
living. During the first fifteen years of the postwar era, the cost of production
on Broadway increased sharply, especially for musicals, which often demand
more than straight plays in terms of casting, costuming, scenery, technology,
orchestral accompaniment, and crew. The number of original musicals to
open on Broadway through the 1950s dwindled more than at any point since
the Depression, and the pressure to keep musicals running for longer
stretches to recoup intensified. Between 1944 and 1960, ticket prices on
Broadway doubled. Costs were not yet steep enough to make Broadway
prohibitively expensive, but they marked the beginning of a climb that
escalated through the end of the century (Jones 2003, 162–3).
And yet the show not only went on, but was celebrated for its increased
sophistication, sociocultural relevance, and artistic depth. In fact, during
the postwar era, the American musical “witnessed a sustained seriousness
of approach unknown before on the lyric stage.” This was even more
impressive considering “the remarkably small number of inspired creators”
contributing scores, scripts, and lyrics (Bordman 2001, 583). While theater
industry economics were in constant flux, the Broadway musical itself was
being celebrated like never before for its innovations and artistry (Mast
1987, 291).

Rodgers and Hammerstein after the war

Rodgers and Hammerstein continued to exert influence on Broadway in the

postwar era, though a notable interruption in their string of hits was Allegro
(1947). Allegro was something of a departure for Hammerstein, who
conceived of and wrote the book and lyrics to the musical himself, instead of
adapting previous source material. Allegro was not an outright flop: it ran for

125
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

a respectable 315 performances and, due to a huge advance in ticket sales,

even made a small profit. But it was not remotely as glowingly received by
critics or audiences as Oklahoma! or Carousel were.
The plot of Allegro traces the life of Joseph Taylor, Jr., a small-town doctor
who leaves home to become a prominent if unsatisfied physician in Chicago.
Choreographed and directed by Agnes de Mille, Allegro pushed ahead—for
some, a bit too far—with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s innovations. Its
enormous cast featured over forty principal actors and nearly 100 chorus
members, some of whom served as a Greek chorus. The complicated set made
use of two tiers, state-of-the-art lighting, and many projections, and the score
was so closely knitted to the plot that songs often extended through entire
scenes, making them and the show itself hard to grasp for many spectators.
Critics were mixed about Allegro. Some heralded it as brilliant and ahead
of its time, while others called it a confusing, pretentious bore. Stung by the
failure, Hammerstein tinkered with Allegro long after it closed. He was
apparently rewriting it for television at the time of his death (Sears 2008,
156–7).
Yet he was hardly so devastated that he could not focus on new projects.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s next two musicals, South Pacific (1949) and The
King and I (1951), were both more typical of their creative process. The
former was adapted from James Michener’s 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning
book Tales of the South Pacific, the latter from Margaret Landon’s Anna and
the King of Siam (1944). Both musicals were more accessible than Allegro
and more directly linked to American postwar culture and politics. South
Pacific, which opened just four years after the war ended, played
simultaneously on American’s collective healing from and nostalgia for the
Good War. It also touched on a number of contemporary issues and concerns,
including shifting gender roles and the country’s new status as a global
power. Finally, it reflected Hammerstein’s interest in social justice and civil
rights causes.
Plotwise, South Pacific mirrors the structure of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
first two musicals in its use of parallel romantic couples. Early in South
Pacific, Ensign Nellie Forbush, a self-described optimistic hick from Kansas,
meets and falls for the French plantation owner and widower Emile de
Becque. Meanwhile, American Lieutenant Joseph Cable meets and falls for
Liat, daughter of the Tonkinese merchant Bloody Mary. What links these
love affairs, beyond setting and situation, are Nellie and Cable’s reactions to
cultural or racial difference. Midway through the musical, Nellie learns with
horror that de Becque’s first wife was Polynesian, and abruptly ends the

126
 The Second World War to 1960

relationship. Similarly, Cable realizes with great shame that despite his love
for Liat, he lacks the courage it would take to bring her home to his white,
affluent, prejudiced American family.
South Pacific features a veritable jukebox of songs that have become
American standards: “Bali Ha’i,” “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My
Hair,” “Younger Than Springtime,” and “Some Enchanted Evening.” Yet it is
Cable’s scorching “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” that drives home
Hammerstein’s philosophy about prejudice as learned and cultivated, if also
potentially overcome:

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff ’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

After finishing this number, Cable vows that if he survives the war, he will
remain with Liat no matter what. But he never has the chance: he is killed in
a spy mission. De Becque, who is on the same mission, survives, and Nellie,
“the embodiment of American youth, optimism, energy, and power,” realizes
that love can overpower prejudice (Most 2004, 165). When de Becque returns
from the mission, Nellie and his children are waiting for him at his plantation,
and the four sing lovingly together as the musical ends.
Like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s previous musicals, The King and I
features plenty of headstrong, well-developed characters, humor, and dance.
It also emphasizes Hammerstein’s passion for universal understanding and
acceptance. The plot of The King and I centers almost entirely on people
from different places and with different worldviews who work to overcome
culture clashes. At the same time, however, it reflects both the sociopolitical
influence and political dominance of the western world.
Set in the 1860s, The King and I traces the experiences of the widowed
schoolteacher Anna Leonowens, who travels to Siam (now Thailand) to
tutor the king’s children. Once there, Anna, who is British but often read as
symbolically American, and the king “butt heads on every conceivable
subject, from whether the children should be taught Western rather than

127
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Siamese geography to proper modes of etiquette and paying respect to

royalty” (Jones 2003, 153–4). While not overt in the script, a romantic interest
between these two strong, stubborn characters is implied. More explicit is
the emphasis on changing gender roles: throughout the musical, “both East
and West profess consternation at the place of women within the other’s
culture” (Knapp 2005, 263).
While Rodgers and Hammerstein regularly attempted to educate
audiences about racial, ethnic, and cultural acceptance, they have since been
criticized for only going so far in promoting social harmony. It has been
noted, for example, that for South Pacific’s stance against prejudice, the
Asian characters, and especially Bloody Mary, are drawn broadly and
stereotypically, and that Cable’s death allows the musical to conveniently
skirt any real possibility of interracial marriage. Similarly, The King and I has
been criticized for Eurocentrism and “treating as childlike a culture and
people eminently worthy of respect in adult terms,” even as it unironically
purports “to teach us the importance of respecting cross-cultural difference”
(ibid., 264–5).
Of course, Rodgers and Hammerstein had to temper their social
commentary lest they alienate theatergoers. During the out-of-town tryout
of South Pacific, several advisers to the creative team advocated cutting
“You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” because even this fairly straightforward
declaration was widely considered too risky for Broadway. A permanent
union between Liat and Cable, or an overt romance between Anna and the
King, would certainly have alienated or offended many spectators at the
time of the musicals’ premieres (Lovensheimer 2010, 85–6). Rodgers and
Hammerstein may have been well-intentioned, but were ultimately creatures
of their time and place.
After The King and I came a string of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals
that are less well-known, either because they were not as commercially and
critically successful or because they are less frequently revived, or both.
These include Me and Juliet (1953), Pipe Dream (1955), and Flower Drum
Song (1958). The team’s final big hit was also their swan song. The Sound
of Music (1959) lives on in the collective consciousness as a beloved film
classic and oft-revived stage musical. A year after it premiered on Broadway,
Hammerstein died of stomach cancer. His death ended one of the most
powerful and influential collaborations in the history of the American
musical.

128
 The Second World War to 1960

Postwar musicals not by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Musical theater audiences had, by the early 1950s, grown attuned to “exactly
what a book musical was supposed to be: a romantic drama of conflicting
characters, alternately comic and dramatic, based on a literary source,
ancient or modern, with at least eighteen musical slots, some sung, some
danced” (Mast 1987, 290). Most audiences by this point knew, as well, to
expect a medley of songs played by the pit orchestra as an overture; early
scenes that would introduce characters, plot, and setting; and a blend of songs
performed as solos, duets, small ensemble numbers, and a few featuring the
entire cast. The most sophisticated of audience members might even have
recognized recurring musical or thematic devices: the intersection of main
and secondary plots; the use of the conditional or hypothetical love song; and
perhaps an “I Want” song or two. These last are usually featured very early in
the first act to establish the desires of specific characters and to set the plot in
action (Wolf 2011, 25).
Through the 1950s, a curious pattern emerged in which strong seasons
for Broadway musicals were followed by notably lousy ones (Bordman 2001,
637), but in general, the decade was strong for the genre. In keeping with the
steady decline in demand for stage musicals as the twentieth century elapsed,
fewer musicals were produced in the 1950s than in decades prior. But a large
number of the shows to premiere during the decade made particularly huge
profits, and many continue to be regularly revived, and performed in schools,
regional, and community theaters (Wolf 2011, 30).
While most new forms of mass media worked more to hinder than help
the commercial stage musical, one innovation actively helped the genre,
especially through the 1950s and early 1960s. Broadway benefited
enormously from the advent of the LP, or long-playing record, which
was introduced in the US in 1948. After an incomplete original cast
recording of Oklahoma! (released by Decca on several 78s in 1943) sold a
million copies, record companies grew eager to release original Broadway
cast recordings (OBCR s), which were typically made available on LP. By
the 1950s, OBCR s were no longer an exception but the rule. OBCR s
allowed Americans to bring a slice of Broadway into their homes. In this
way, the advent of new entertainment technology allowed the Broadway
musical to cultivate new devotees—even among people who, unable or
unwilling to see shows on Broadway, were nonetheless interested in
American cultural products that were both “entertaining and meaningful”
(Leve 2016, 133–5).

129
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

One of the most successful musicals of the 1950s was also one of the
decade’s first. Guys and Dolls, a “sassy, irreverent love poem of lowlife in New
York,” featured a book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows that drew from
journalist Damon Runyon’s short stories about prohibition-era gangsters,
hustlers, and gamblers. Its score was by Frank Loesser (1910–69), a Tin
Pan Alley composer whose number “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” had won the
1949 Academy Award for Best Original Song. Guys and Dolls opened on
Broadway at the 46th Street Theatre on November 24, 1950, where it
remained for over three years; it has been revived on Broadway five times
since then (Bordman 2001, 629).
Neither of the two love stories in Guys and Dolls is tragic, or even very
serious, but one is more broadly comic than the other. The two romantic
leads are the gambling-, drinking- and fun-averse Salvation Army Sergeant
Sarah Brown and the gambler Sky Masterson (who is also perfectly
comfortable with fun and booze). The second couple consists of the
marriage-averse gambler Nathan Detroit and the long-suffering nightclub
performer Miss Adelaide, to whom he has been engaged for fourteen years.
Guys and Dolls’ action begins when the perpetually broke Nathan learns
that following a police crackdown, the only place he can host his “permanent
floating crap game” is in a garage whose owner wants a $1,000 retainer.
Nathan bets Sky that amount that Sky cannot convince Sarah to fly to
Havana with him for dinner. Sky promises Sarah “one-dozen genuine
sinners” in exchange for the date. She initially rebuffs him, but changes her
mind when she learns that her mission may close for lack of souls to save.
While she is gone, Nathan moves his crap game into her mission.
Meanwhile, Adelaide and Nathan squabble over their long engagement
and Nathan’s refusal to stop gambling. Adelaide learns that her chronic cold
is a psychosomatic condition caused by frustration with her fiance. The song
she sings about this realization, “Adelaide’s Lament,” is one of the highpoints
of the musical and has become a classic of the genre.
Sarah falls in love with Sky in Havana, but when she discovers the crap
game Nathan is hosting in her mission she blames Sky and ends their
relationship. Nathan again moves the game, this time to a sewer below Times
Square. Genuinely in love with Sarah, Sky bets the crap players a thousand
dollars each against their souls. If he loses, he will pay them all; if he wins,
they all have to attend a meeting at Sarah’s mission. Sky wins, thereby
not only saving the mission but proving his love to Sarah. In the end, both
guys give up gambling for their dolls, and presumably live happily ever
after—though Nathan begins to sneeze on the way to the altar.

130
 The Second World War to 1960

Without trying too hard or digging too deeply, Guys and Dolls captures a
number of contradictions inherent in 1950s American culture. It drives home
the notion of Times Square as simultaneously grungy and gorgeous, sleazy
and romantic. It touches on the postwar myth of America as a melting pot—“a
society that tolerated ethnic and cultural differences and that had learned to
recognize the similarities that existed beneath strongly differentiated exteriors.”
In its portrait of big-hearted gamblers with strict honor codes, religious folk
who always find the goodness in sinners, and couples who resolve even the
most contentious of fourteen-year engagements, Guys and Dolls is ultimately
an American fairytale that depicts New York as a place “where opposites of
whatever kind rub against each other freely, creating inevitable frictions but
leaving no real trace on the capacity of each differentiated group to muddle
through without undue interference from the other” (Knapp 2005, 138–9).
Guys and Dolls also demonstrates a contradiction typical of many stage
musicals of the time in its depiction of characters, especially female ones,
who simultaneously adhere to traditional gender roles and move beyond
them. Both Adelaide and Sarah desperately crave lives of traditional
domesticity; this desire allows them to bond despite their obvious differences
in class, education, personality, and vocal style (Adelaide is an alto, Sarah a
soprano). It also justifies the last number of the musical, “Marry the Man
Today,” in which the two women scheme to coerce their men into marriage
and “train them subsequently.” At the same time, they are both independent
working women with strong opinions and firm beliefs. They both exhibit
clear intelligence—and in Adelaide’s case, some of the funniest, most
memorable numbers in the musical (Wolf 2011, 39–40).
When it comes to shifting gender roles, perhaps no 1950s musical is as
telling or as enormously popular for its time as My Fair Lady, a smash
hit based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion, with a new book
and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner (1918–86) and a score by Frederick Loewe
(1901–88). My Fair Lady premiered at the Hellinger Theater in March 1956
and ran for 2,717 performances over six years, toppling Oklahoma! as the
longest-running musical in Broadway history in the process.
Like Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady seems rooted in traditional gender
tropes that assume men are smarter and more powerful than women. But
again, the characters and plot ultimately imply otherwise: just as Nathan and
Sky prove no match for the women who love them, My Fair Lady’s Eliza
Doolittle is hardly the sort of passive, agreeable little twit of a woman that
was so often idealized in the 1950s. Instead, she is headstrong, driven, and
intelligent, and her accomplishments are ultimately her own.

131
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Set in London in the early twentieth century, My Fair Lady is a Cinderella

story about the transformation of a cockney flower saleswoman who
becomes the subject of a bet between the snobbish, misogynist phonetics
professor Henry Higgins and the linguist Colonel Pickering. Upon first
encountering Eliza in a London square, Higgins bets Pickering that in six
months he can transform her into an upper-class lady by teaching her to
speak accordingly. Eliza, whose early “I Want” song “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?”
makes clear the fact that she dreams of more comfort and leisure than her lot
in life allows, takes Higgins up on his offer of elocution assistance.
Pickering and Higgins commence lessons with the aim of presenting her
at a fancy society ball. After much work and great frustration, Eliza has a
breakthrough with the celebratory number “The Rain in Spain,” after which
she can speak with grace and erudition. More lessons help her behave like a
member of the upper class. Higgins brings her to social gatherings, where
she wins the affection of the aristocrat Freddy Eynsford-Hill; while neither
Eliza nor Henry will admit it, Freddy is an irritant to them both because he
disrupts their growing affection for one another.
Eliza is a success at the Embassy Ball, where even the most highborn
members of European society believe her to be of royal blood. But when
Higgins claims all the credit for her transformation, she explodes in fury and
leaves him. After realizing that she cannot go back to her old life, she
contemplates marrying Freddy, though she does not love him.
While ambiguous for a Broadway musical of its time, the ending of My
Fair Lady is nevertheless more positive and hopeful than that of Pygmalion,
which implies that Higgins and Doolittle are ultimately incompatible as
lovers. In My Fair Lady, Higgins realizes that Eliza has vastly improved his
life and admits to himself that he has come to rely on her as much as she
has on him. He is listening to old recordings of their lessons when she
walks back in; the curtain falls on a scene that is, while still uncertain,
open to the possibility that this odd couple will live happily ever after. In
softening the ending, Lerner and Loewe not only “reverse the musical roles
of their protagonists,” but also challenge traditional 1950s gender roles
(Block 2009, 270).
As products of their culture, musicals frequently invite gendered
interpretations. As with film and television shows, a vast majority are, after
all, built on the assumption that a happy ending requires love to bloom
between two heterosexual characters. Yet this is hardly the only way to “read”
a musical: the genre can also be interpreted as commentary on broader
collective hopes, desires, or concerns. For example, The Music Man and West

132
 The Second World War to 1960

Side Story—two very different musicals that premiered on Broadway in

1957—are primarily love stories about seemingly mismatched individuals
who nevertheless fall in love. But as Carol Oja points out, they also touch on
concerns typical of the middle class in 1950s America.
West Side Story was developed by a team of highly accomplished Broadway
players. Conceived, directed, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins with a
score by Leonard Bernstein and a book by screenwriter and playwright Arthur
Laurents (1917–2011), West Side Story was highly innovative and dedicated to
the philosophy of arts integration. The musical’s “tense, vibrant” dances and
score blended classical and popular music elements, both of which were
carefully integrated into the plot to help set the scene and illuminate the
musical’s young, intense characters (Bordman 2001, 661). The one newcomer
on West Side Story’s creative team was its lyricist, Stephen Sondheim (1930–),
who had been mentored through childhood by Oscar Hammerstein II, and
who would soon become a highly accomplished Broadway composer in his
own right.
In its earliest drafts, which Robbins, Bernstein, and Laurents sketched in
the late 1940s, West Side Story’s working title was East Side Story. The team
intended to develop a version of Romeo and Juliet set among Jews and
Catholics on the Lower East Side during the Easter and Passover holidays.
But the project was shelved after the team decided that the oft-revived and
cinematized 1922 comedy Abie’s Irish Rose would keep audiences from
taking any love story about a Jew and a Catholic seriously.
In 1954, Bernstein and Laurents, chatting poolside at the Beverly Hills
Hotel, noticed a headline on a nearby copy of the Los Angeles Times about
gang warfare between white and Mexican youths. The headline inspired a
new direction for the musical, which the creative team relocated from the
lower East Side to the upper West. Instead of Jews and Catholics, the
characters became recent Puerto Rican immigrants and more settled, if still
poor and disenfranchised, white kids of Polish and Irish descent, all of
whom were vying for turf in the same densely populated urban ghetto. West
Side Story thus instantly became more topical than it would have been had it
remained set among more established if similarly adversarial religious
populations.
One way postwar anxiety was reflected in America was through middle-
class concern about the rise of “juvenile delinquents,” especially among black
and working-class populations. This anxiety persisted throughout the 1950s,
even in areas where youth-related violence and crime had been steadily
decreasing since the war years (Graebner 1986, 81). There are many

133
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

explanations for this preoccupation, among them generalized fear about

uncontrollable elements capable of contaminating or infecting American
culture, whether from abroad or within. The cultural obsession with juvenile
delinquency, after all, occurred in the mid-1950s, concurrent with feverish
concerns about communism that stimulated the McCarthy hearings. Fear
about violent young ruffians was likely due as well to the newly “socializing
force of the mass media”—especially comic books, movies and, increasingly,
rock ‘n’ roll—which resulted in the media’s growing reputation among
distrusting adults as a frightening outside influence capable of corrupting
young people (Fass 1987, 153). The introduction of new media frequently
causes such concern—think, for example, about similar fears associated with
video games, hip-hop, and the Internet. In the 1950s as now, there was an
awful lot of new media to contend with . . . and thus to worry about.
West Side Story might have touched on topical concerns, but its creative
team was careful not to play into the fears of potential spectators. The
musical was sympathetic to its characters, who were portrayed as complex,
tragic victims of time and circumstance. The youths depicted tended not
to be vilified; the only truly unlikable characters in West Side Story are its
few adult authority figures: the pathetically inept social director, Mr. Glad
Hand; the bigoted, threatening policemen, Lt. Schrank and Officer Krupke.
Only Doc, owner of the drug store where the Jets hang out, approximates a
positive role model, though he too is incapable of soothing gang-related
tensions.
Like the Shakespeare play on which it is based, and like many musicals to
open before it, West Side Story follows two pairs of lovers. Tony, a reformed
Jet now working for Doc, falls in love with Maria, a Puerto Rican girl
promised to Chino, a member of the rival gang, the Sharks. Maria’s brother,
Bernardo, is leader of the Sharks; he and his girl, Anita, form the second
couple. Yet West Side Story is atypical in that neither couple gets to live
happily ever after. With the exception of the Act I number “America”—in
which the Shark girls debate whether life is better in Manhattan or Puerto
Rico—and the Act II number “Gee, Officer Krupke!”—in which the Jets
lament the ineptitude of adults who are supposed to help them—there is
little in the way of comic relief in West Side Story. The musical’s weight is one
of its chief innovations.
After falling in love at first sight at a dance in the school gym, Tony and
Maria dream of running away together to a place where they will be
understood and accepted. Before they can, Maria begs Tony to stop a rumble
planned by the warring gangs. Tony goes, but when Bernardo stabs and kills

134
 The Second World War to 1960

Tony’s best friend, Riff, during the scuffle, Tony stabs and kills Bernardo in a
fit of rage.
When she learns of Bernardo’s fate, Maria is furious but realizes that her
love for Tony is unshaken. They plan to rendezvous and run away together;
“Somewhere,” an extended dance sequence depicting the violence around
them and their escape to the countryside, is performed as they dream together
of their future. Anita initially berates Maria for forgiving Tony, but eventually
accepts their love as true and strong. She agrees to warn the Jets that Chino is
armed and looking to exact revenge on Tony. Yet when she appears at Doc’s
with the message, the Jets attack her verbally and physically before Doc stops
them. Blinded by anger, Anita tells the Jets that Chino has killed Maria.
When Doc tells Tony of Maria’s death, Tony comes out of hiding to search
for Chino, whom he hopes will kill him too. He is momentarily calmed
when Maria steps from the shadows, but as they run to one another, Chino
appears and shoots Tony. He dies in her arms as she sings a reprise of
“Somewhere,” and the Jets and Sharks gather around. West Side Story diverges
from Romeo and Juliet in its final moments. Whereas both Romeo and Juliet
die, Maria not only lives, but blames both gangs for contributing to the
deaths of Riff, Bernardo, and Tony. The musical ends with a shred of hope as
the Jets and Sharks come together to carry Tony’s body offstage.
West Side Story ran for 732 performances and made an impact on
Broadway due to its cohesiveness, intensity, eclectic score, and atypically
downbeat conclusion. But its success at the time of its premiere paled in
comparison with that of The Music Man, which opened in December of the
same season, ran for for 1,375 performances, and took most of that year’s
biggest Tony Awards. With a book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson
(1902–84), The Music Man was more upbeat and less obviously socially
relevant than West Side Story, if nevertheless innovative and culturally
reflective in its own right.
Set in Iowa in 1912, The Music Man’s score is evocative of early-twentieth-
century America. The opening patter song, “Rock Island,” emulates both the
rhythm of train travel and the excited banter of the traveling salesmen on
board; “Ya Got Trouble” is a musicalized sales pitch by the central character,
the conman Harold Hill. Other numbers, like “Iowa Stubborn” and the
concurrent “Pickalittle” and “Good Night Ladies” reflect aspects of small-
town life. Still others, like “Sincere” and “Lida Rose” are performed by a
barbershop quartet, while “Seventy-Six Trombones,” perhaps the show’s
most famous number, is reminiscent of Sousa marches and thus exudes
American patriotism.

135
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

The quirky characters in The Music Man almost all find redemption in
music. Some also find love in the process, not to mention satisfaction with
the innocence and simplicity of small-town American life (Knapp 2005,
144–7). “Professor” Harold Hill, a phony traveling salesman, regularly cons
townspeople into purchasing instruments and uniforms for a boys’ band
that he promises to establish, only to sneak off with the money before any
materials arrive. But when he gets to River City, Iowa, he meets his match in
Marian Paroo, the town’s prim, self-protective librarian and piano teacher.
Like the female characters in Guys and Dolls and My Fair Lady, Marian is
in many respects shrewder than her shrewd leading man, so she quickly
realizes that Hill is a fraud. But she keeps the information to herself when
she notices that her much younger brother, Winthrop, who is painfully self-
conscious about his lisp, has overcome his shyness at the prospect of learning
an instrument and joining a band. Over time, Marian and Winthrop’s
growing love for Harold is returned, and the bond transforms all three
characters. Just as Marian and Winthrop protect Harold from being exposed,
he chooses to remain with them, return their love, and refrain from taking
advantage of their fellow townspeople. None of the boys can play their
instruments at the end of The Music Man, but the townspeople are so
overcome with pride upon hearing the horrible sounds their children make
that they overlook Hill’s failure to teach them to play, and everyone
presumably lives happily ever after (Bordman 2001, 662).
A musical set in small-town Iowa in the early twentieth century might
not seem to have much to do with postwar America, but The Music Man’s
emphasis on a patriotic, overwhelmingly white town in the heartland—one
that embodies “an artificial and imaginary homogenous America”—evokes a
specific sort of escapism that was reflected in concurrent television shows
like Father Knows Best (1954) and Leave It to Beaver (Hoffman 2014, 93). For
their seemingly vast differences, West Side Story and The Music Man can be
seen as two sides of the same coin. West Side Story “dealt with a troubled time
by placing a near-agitprop focus on race and immigration, teen violence, and
urban decay” while The Music Man “sought to calm jitters through rhapsodic
constructions of a simpler America” (Oja 2009, 17). Both musicals ran
together on Broadway for a while, perhaps inadvertently reassuring some of
Broadway’s overwhelmingly white, middle-class audiences that their recent
move from city to suburb was a wise decision indeed.
As the so-called Golden Age of the American musical came to fruition,
Broadway became “a simultaneous site of fertility and contraction, artistic
health and commercial decay, creative confidence and progressive cultural

136
 The Second World War to 1960

withdrawal” (Mast 1987, 293). While this tangle of artistic growth and
industry constriction inevitably served the development of the American
stage musical well through the onset of the postwar era, the 1960s was a
different story. This is the case not only in terms of Broadway’s output, but
also in terms of new challenges and even greater changes to American
culture and society, popular entertainment, and the mass media. In the early
1960s, as Tin Pan Alley began to wheeze its last dying breaths, Broadway
again found itself at a precipice.

137
138
CHAPTER 6
WE’VE SURELY GOT TROUBLE:
THE 1960s AND 1970s

Few decades in America’s history are as emotionally wrought or as

nostalgically recalled as the 1960s. The decade was so fraught that “The
Sixties” often refers not merely to the years 1960 to 1969, but to a more
general, less decade-bound period in American history marked by civil
unrest and seismic social, political, and cultural change (Jones 2003, 235). As
the decade itself began, the US continued to wrestle with its postwar status
and robust economic health; its growing tensions with other newly powerful
nations; its new technologies, entertainment forms, and media outlets; and
the shifting needs and demands of its changing, growing population. As if
these issues were not enough for a single decade, the US also saw the
intensification of the Civil Rights Movement; escalated involvement in and
growing opposition to the Vietnam War; widening class, generation, and
gender gaps; and the unprecedented development of a youth culture and
accompanying youth market, all of which worked to cause disturbances in
the country’s cultural, social, and political order.
While national in scope, the “troubles” of the 1960s affected various
groups and communities in dramatically different ways. Some Americans
greeted the country’s cultural shifts, political conflicts, and societal growing
pains by organizing to hasten reform and encourage permanent change.
Others resisted in fear, anger, and frustration (Farber 1994, 1). The period
was marked by conflict, anxiety, and euphoria, strides toward peace and
justice, and setbacks filled with violence and disappointment. Beloved
leaders were gunned down, men flew to the moon, and millions marched for
civil rights at home and to end an unpopular war abroad. Drug culture and
the sexual revolution blossomed. Rock ‘n’ roll, the dancy teen music faddish
in the 1950s, took hold, morphing as it did into a more musically varied and
sociopolitically aware genre known simply as “rock.”
By the early 1960s, Broadway had long been competing with film, radio, and
television, contending with shrinking audiences, and compensating for rising
ticket and production costs. But the new decade brought with it a mess of
interrelated technological and sociocultural hurdles to negotiate. The Broadway

139
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

musical, once at the center of American commercial entertainment culture

and through the 1950s still lauded as an important American art form, again
grew anemic as new entertainment forms gained speed, Tin Pan Alley died
away, and the rising youth culture began to dismiss the Broadway musical as a
corny, old-fashioned, and out of touch. At a time when one popular slogan was
“Don’t trust anyone over thirty,” Broadway was dismissed as positively ancient
in the eyes of a newly powerful and influential swatch of the population.

The rise of youth culture and the decline of Tin Pan Alley

Before the postwar era, the word “teenager” was exceedingly rare. The Oxford
English Dictionary suggests that the variation “teen-ager” was first used in
the early 1940s, appeared more frequently through the 1950s, and lost its
hyphen by the early 1960s.1 There is good reason that the word became more
familiar as the postwar era elapsed: before then, “teenagers,” at least as we
understand the term today, did not exist.
Of course, long before the term “teenager” entered common parlance,
millions of people between the ages of thirteen and nineteen roamed the
Earth at any given time. Quite a lot of them even lived in the US . But
the very concept of the modern-day teenager—a person whose age and
socioeconomic status make them part of a group that is differentiated from
children on the one hand and adults on the other—is comparatively new. In
a culture where people were, for generations, either “children” (culturally
viewed as wholly dependent) or “adults” (culturally expected to be wholly
responsible), “teenagers” surfaced in the mid-twentieth century as “the
products of an emerging advanced industrial society for which a long period
of formal education became a necessity.” The postwar booms, both economic
and baby, led to the development of a group now viewed as a unique segment
of the population. This group is differentiated primarily by age, but also by
taste and social behavior. While not yet fully independent, teenagers are,
as anyone who has ever met or been one knows, fully capable of forming
opinions, voicing preferences, and seeking out social and entertainment
outlets.
The affluence of the 1950s allowed a growing number of adolescents to
remain in school for longer periods of time, instead of having to leave after
(or in some cases well before) high school to help support their families.
Increased affluence also allowed adolescents to have more in the way of
discretionary income, which they earned through part-time jobs or

140
 The 1960s and 1970s

allowance, and which they could spend on things they desired, rather than
on things they or their family needed (Weinstein 2015, 37–8).
In growing numbers, then, adolescent Americans began making enough
money and enjoying enough leisure time to influence the country’s economy
in the 1950s and 1960s. The burgeoning youth culture exerted pressure on
all aspects of the commercial market, which duly responded with movies,
television shows, clothing, print matter, and personal items that were
developed for and marketed to teens. One of the most influential ways this
emerging group swayed the market was through their tastes in, and the
manner by which they consumed, popular music.
Since the nineteenth century, Tin Pan Alley was the chief purveyor of
popular music sold to middle- and upper-class urban, literate, white
Americans. The industry had long been less interested in or adept at serving
the tastes of lower classes, people of color, and populations in comparatively
rural areas. These very significant populations had cultivated their own
preferred music styles—blues, country music, and other folk-derived
forms—which were largely perpetuated via the oral tradition. Beginning in
the 1920s and 1930s, these styles benefited enormously from new
technologies, including the commercial radio and the phonograph record
(Hamm 1979, 379).
Through the first half of the twentieth century, Tin Pan Alley composers
profited from inclusion in ASCAP, which boasted a selective, urban,
overwhelmingly white, musically literate membership. Rural country and
blues composers, who often played and wrote from memory, were typically
not welcome to join (Covach and Flory 2015, 106). When the contract
between ASCAP and the largest radio networks expired in 1940, ASCAP
asked the networks to double their $4.5 million-a-year fees. The networks
refused, ASCAP went on strike, and the radio stations, unable to play music
by ASCAP composers, began playing a lot of recorded music by pre-ASCAP
composers such as Stephen Foster. That got boring fast, so many stations
turned to music by contemporary, non-ASCAP musicians, who were
hurriedly invited to join Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI ), a new
organization formed to represent them. ASCAP settled with the networks
in 1941, but the organization had done itself great damage: during their
holdout, radio stations had introduced national audiences to rural genres
like country and blues—the foundations of rock ‘n’ roll (Hamm 1979, 389).
The radio strike contributed to the decline of the sheet-music industry
that was only exacerbated by technological advances and the developing
generation gap. In the early 1950s, marketing polls revealed little in the way

141
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

of varied tastes among age groups. Parents and children tended to listen to
the same music, which was typically chosen by the heads of any given
household. Until the later 1950s, producers did not consider age as a factor
when they promoted music. Yet as the decade elapsed, the average age of
Americans who purchased music fell steadily. This was especially the case
after the introduction of the transistor radio and 45 rpm record, both of
which were inexpensive, durable, and easy to transport (Marchand 2007,
106). A number of factors, then—from technological advances to radio’s
newly beneficial relationship with music that came from beyond the confines
of the Manhattan-based music industry—resulted in the demise of Tin Pan
Alley in the middle of the twentieth century.

Broadway courts the new youth culture

Because Broadway and Tin Pan Alley had enjoyed a long, lucrative, mutually
beneficial relationship, the decline of the latter was initially met with stunned
denial by the former. Convinced that rock ‘n’ roll was a silly, noisy fad that
would fade once teenagers grew up and embraced “real” music, the theater
industry preoccupied itself through much of the 1960s with other concerns.
There were, as usual, plenty. Times Square was growing into an ever-lurid
breeding ground for petty crime, prostitution, and pornography. Inflation,
fueled by the war in Vietnam, caused hikes to the cost of production and the
price of tickets. Many producers attempted to compensate by cutting back
on cast size and scenery budgets, thereby attempting to offer audiences less
for more. Broadway’s audiences continued to shrink (Bordman 2001, 699).
And as young people’s tastes diverged from those of their parents, Broadway’s
audiences were aging precipitously, to boot.
At least initially, the interest in adapting rock music for use on Broadway
was thus borne of necessity. Yet the composers attempting to emulate rock
music’s sounds and structures clearly did not much like or understand what
they were hearing. Some of the earliest examples of rock ‘n’ roll on the
Broadway stage, in short-lived revues like the fiftieth-anniversary edition of
Ziegfeld’s Follies (1957) and the Bert Lahr-Nancy Walker vehicle The Girls
Against the Boys (1959), only served to further alienate young people. These
shows’ respective “rock ‘n’ roll” numbers, “I Don’t Wanna Rock” and “Too
Young to Live,” were performed by much older actors: Lahr, in his sixties in
1957, failed to appeal to teenagers by donning a leather jacket and a youthful
sneer. Both of these shows, and others that featured songs influenced by

142
 The 1960s and 1970s

contemporary popular music, ended up merely mocking the new youth

culture with songs that were repetitive, loud, and condescending.
One musical, however, managed to depict the generation gap with
affectionate humor, and to offer songs approximating rock ‘n’ roll without
seeming nasty. Bye Bye Birdie premiered in spring 1960, with a book by
Michael Stewart (1924–87), and music and lyrics by Charles Strouse (1928–)
and Lee Adams (1924–). Inspired by Elvis Presley’s induction into the
Army in 1958, the plot of Bye Bye Birdie is set in motion when rock ‘n’ roll
heartthrob Conrad Birdie is drafted. This causes his agent and songwriter
Albert Peterson great distress, but Albert’s secretary and girlfriend Rosie
Alvarez devises a brilliant publicity stunt that promises to result in a healthy
stream of royalties while Conrad serves: Conrad will sing a new song, “One
Last Kiss,” to a member of his fan club live on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Meanwhile, Rosie hopes that once Conrad enlists, Albert will quit the music
business, marry her, and become an English teacher.
When young Kim McAfee is selected as the fan club winner, Albert, Rosie,
and Conrad travel to her town, Sweet Apple, Ohio, to prepare for the big
show. Conrad is greeted ecstatically by Sweet Apple’s teenagers, with the
exception of Kim’s jealous boyfriend, Hugo Peabody. Kim’s Ed Sullivan-
worshiping father, Harry, also dislikes Conrad, who strikes him as rude,
entitled, and dumb. Albert’s racist, overbearing mother Mae also shows up,
with the aim of sabotaging her son’s relationship with Rosie.
All hell breaks loose during The Ed Sullivan Show: the starstruck Harry
gets in the way of the cameras, and Hugo rushes the stage to punch Conrad.
Rosie, convinced that Albert will never stand up to his mother, breaks up
with him, and Kim with Hugo. Yet after an evening of wild revelry (“wild”
being a relative term; this is, after all, a 1960 Broadway musical depicting a
tiny Midwestern town), everyone reconciles: Kim and Hugo make up,
Conrad reports for duty, and Albert stands up to his mother, proposes to
Rose, and informs her of a Midwestern town in need of an English teacher—
preferably, in keeping with the weird, constrictive tenor of the times, a
married one.
A structural throwback featuring parallel romances and good-natured
humor, Birdie made fun of contemporary teenagers and their new culture,
but it also gently mocked their parents’ generation for being so resistant to
change. The approach worked: Bye Bye Birdie ran for over 600 performances,
appealing to both adults and younger spectators with a blend of age-
appropriate numbers. The songs performed by the teens and Conrad are all
influenced by rock ‘n’ roll, while the adults’ numbers are standard Broadway

143
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

fare. Little in the musical functioned as “real” rock ‘n’ roll, but Birdie was
as close as Broadway came to emulating the new style for most of the rest of
the decade.

New competition from beyond Broadway

While Broadway has long served as the country’s commercial theater center,
New York City has also served as home to many smaller, independent
theaters that did not follow the commercial industry in its slow move uptown
from the Bowery to Times Square.2 In 1909, the playwright Percy McKaye
wrote of a theater movement that was “wholly divorced from commercialism,”
and came up with the term “civic theatre” to collectivize the many small,
diverse theaters and troupes scattered across the city. The term never
stuck; within a few years, small theaters and troupes unaffiliated with
Broadway had become more typically known as “Little Theatres.” The
expression “Off Broadway,” sometimes used to describe the many Little
Theatres in Manhattan, has been in use since at least the mid-1930s, but it
did not become the predominant phrase until the early 1950s (Hischak
2011, 1–2).
Through the 1950s, the Off Broadway movement grew increasingly
popular with audiences, critics, and benefactors, and became more moneyed.
By the early 1960s, a looser, less organized collective of theaters and troupes
arose in response to what was perceived as Off Broadway’s increased
commercialism. The resultant Off Off Broadway movement, concentrated in
the East Village and Greenwich Village neighborhoods in lower Manhattan,
explored ways theater might stimulate sociocultural or political change in a
tumultuous era. To varying degrees, troupes and theaters like the Caffe Cino,
Judson Poets’ Theater, Play-House of the Ridiculous, Theatre Genesis, La
MaMa, Bread and Puppet Theater, and Open Theater blended political and
aesthetic radicalism, pushed the boundaries of what was considered
theatrically appropriate, and encouraged audiences to engage directly with
and thus become part of performances.
Because many of these theaters and collectives drew from the philosophies
of the broader youth culture—whether the politically engaged New Left, the
socially engaged counterculture, or some combination of both—and because
they relied on people willing to work hard for little or no money, Off
Off Broadway appealed to younger, less established artists and drew
audiences that tended to be more adventurous than Broadway’s was.

144
 The 1960s and 1970s

Adding to Broadway’s troubles during the 1960s, then, was a freewheeling

collective of ragtag theater groups who were suddenly winning the respect
of young, engaged theatergoers and the city’s more open-minded theater
critics.

The concept musical

The 1960s was hardly the easiest era in Broadway’s history, but it was not
all gloom, doom, and despair. Stark claims by historians of Broadway’s
precipitous decline into bland, forced frivolity are overstated. Yes, Broadway
musicals had even more to contend with in the 1960s than in previous
decades. Then again, at this point, Broadway’s industry members and creative
personnel were hardly unaware of what they were up against in advocating
for a genre that could not be mass mediated and that was aging precipitously.
While there were plenty of forgettable musicals that came and went on
Broadway’s stages in the 1960s, there were also important innovations that
took place there during this most tumultuous of decades. Several 1960s
musicals—among them Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, and Hair—rank among
the most beloved, inventive, and commercially successful productions in
Broadway’s history.
The 1960s was the era of what is often referred to as the “concept musical,”
in which all elements, both “thematic and presentational, are integrated to
suggest a central theatrical image or idea” (Block 2009, 346). The term
“concept musical” has been criticized alternately as too vague to be of much
use, or as descriptive of shows that are ultimately not terribly different from
either the integrated musicals that inspired them or the megamusicals that
followed them.
Adding to the problems people have with the term is that it is often used in
blanket descriptions of musicals helmed by powerful stage directors, many
of whom cut their teeth as performers, choreographers, stage managers, or
producers. While some of these men, for example Jerome Robbins, were
established on Broadway well before the 1960s, others rose to prominence
during that decade, becoming increasingly sought-after through the 1970s
and 1980s. Among them are Michael Bennett (1943–87), Bob Fosse (1927–87),
Gower Champion (1919–80) and Harold “Hal” Prince (1928–). These directors
became central to the notion of the concept musical, since it was
the director’s overarching concept that was honed, developed, and nurtured
to fruition.

145
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

“If musical comedy was typified by the star as cocreator and if the
integrated musical, throughout the 1950s, increasingly repositioned the
author as seemingly autonomous,” Bruce Kirle wrote, “the concept musical
turned the integrated musical into a vehicle for the auteur-director,” a figure
who became so powerful that his name—and it was always a he—was “often
as bankable as their over-the-title performers.” The creative vision of the
director was at least as important in a concept musical as its book, stars,
dance numbers, or score (Kirle 2005, 109).
Whether due to the tenor of the times, the continued influence of
integrated musicals, newer influences from the innovative Off Off Broadway
movement or all of the above, concept musicals pushed at the stage musical’s
stylistic boundaries with themes that were often sober and complex. While
scholars continue to ponder the meaning and applicability of the term, Kirle
might have put it best when he suggested that in the end, a concept musical
is simply one “that confronts the audience with ideas it usually goes to
musicals to escape” (ibid., 111).
One of the biggest hits of the 1960s, Fiddler on the Roof, is often described
as a pioneering concept musical. The production, directed and choreographed
by Jerome Robbins, featured music by Jerry Bock (1928–2010), lyrics by
Sheldon Harnick (1924–) and a book by Joseph Stein (1912–2010). Stein
based his script on the Yiddish writer and playwright Sholem Aleichem’s
stories about Tevye, a dairyman in the fictional Jewish village of Anatevka,
in turn-of-the-century Russia. Now a classic, Fiddler was structurally
unconventional for its time, in that it was less a tightly cohesive narrative
than a series of loosely developed subplots that all related to the musical’s
unifying themes.
The three subplots in Fiddler focused on the three oldest of Tevye’s five
daughters. Each focused on the challenges Tevye’s daughters “poses to her
father’s authority and to her community’s customs and beliefs by how she
marries.” Tevye’s oldest, Tzeitel, chooses her own mate instead of acquiescing
to the desires of the village matchmaker and her parents. The second oldest,
Hodel, seeks her family’s blessing but not their permission to marry a man
she falls in love with and gets engaged to on her own. The third oldest, Chava,
falls in love with a gentile from a nearby village and eventually elopes with
him (Stempel 2010, 260).
While clinging to his beliefs and customs, Tevye simultaneously
realizes that if he does not bend some rules and adjust to the changing
times, he will alienate his children. With the exception of Chava, whose
intermarriage he only eventually, grudgingly acknowledges, Tevye comes

146
 The 1960s and 1970s

to accept and even to respect his daughters’ choices. The constant seesawing
between tradition and innovation throughout Fiddler culminates in the
biggest change of all: the village of Anatevka is liquidated by the
Russians, and its inhabitants must leave in search of new homes and
communities.
Fiddler’s opening number, “Tradition,” sets the scene and introduces the
characters. It also establishes the musical’s unifying thread by introducing
the titular character. If absent tradition, Tevye explains, “life is as fragile as a
fiddler on the roof.” As Tevye reconciles his beliefs with the changing times
and demands of his children, he interacts with the fiddler, who appears
through the production as a silent and yet vitally important character.
As Anatevka empties at Fiddler’s end, Tevye beckons to the fiddler, who
jumps down from his perch to follow Tevye and his family to America (Kirle
2005, 110).
Fiddler opened on September 22, 1964, and became a huge hit, running
3,242 performances over eight years and assuming the title of longest-
running Broadway musical. Initial concerns that it would not appeal to non-
Jews proved unwarranted. Fiddler, after all, opened at a time when older
generations were being challenged by an outspoken youth culture, social
mores were shifting, and the links between tradition and change seemed
stretched to the limit. On the surface, Fiddler might have been about early-
twentieth-century Russian Jews, but its themes resonated with broader
audiences.
Two years after Fiddler opened, the producer Hal Prince, who had backed
musicals including The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), West
Side Story, and Fiddler, chose as a directorial project a musical version of
John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera, itself an adaptation of Christopher
Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories. Cabaret established Prince as an innovative
director of dark, challenging material. Cabaret’s score was written by two
relative newcomers to Broadway: John Kander (1927–) wrote the music and
Fred Ebb (1928–2004) the lyrics. Also considered a concept musical, Cabaret
had a fragmented plot about several interconnected characters in Berlin in
the 1930s, just prior to the rise of the Third Reich.
The plot structure of Cabaret, which follows two couples, hearkens back
to the Rodgers and Hammerstein model. The primary coupling consists of
Clifford Bradshaw, an American writer who has come to Berlin to write a
novel, and Sally Bowles, a British nightclub singer who works at the Kit Kat
Klub, a gritty cabaret. An amoral party girl, Sally initially resists Cliff ’s
advances, only to appear on his doorstep in hopes that he will let her share

147
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

the boarding-house room he rents from Fraulein Schneider. Meanwhile, the

widowed Schneider is courted by Herr Schultz, a Jewish grocer who also
rents one of her rooms. As the couples fall in love, Berlin’s political climate
grows darker.
Cabaret departs from tradition by alternating scenes about the two
couples with non-narrative ones set in the dim, seedy Kit Kat Klub. Overseen
by a spectral, androgynous character known only as the Emcee, the scenes in
the Klub provide musical commentary about the action taking place beyond
its strange interior. Both the Klub and its Emcee symbolize Berlin’s gradual
descent into Nazism.
To say that Cabaret does not end well is like saying that the Titanic’s
maiden voyage was a little rocky. Cabaret is one of the darkest, most
unsettling musicals in the canon and no one gets out of it happily. Cliff
realizes the gravity of the situation and begs Sally, now pregnant, to return to
America with him, but she refuses. More committed to herself and her own
good time than she is concerned about politics, she sells her coat to afford
an abortion and insists on remaining willfully ignorant in Berlin. Herr
Schultz is blasé about the rise of anti-Semitism, arguing that he is, after all,
a German and a Jew, but Fraulein Schneider, under pressure from friends
and acquaintances, breaks off her engagement to him in a fit of fear and
cowardice.
Both couplings, then, are doomed. Driving this home is the final sequence,
in which the Emcee bids the newly Nazi-dominated audience of the Kit Kat
Klub a detached, robotic “auf wiedersehen/A bientot/Good night.” This last
scene has been staged in myriad ways, but the message is always the same: even
within the once-bohemian confines of the Kit Kat Klub, the Nazis have won.
Cabaret was not meant to be uplifting; its pervasive, creeping darkness
was part of Prince’s overall concept. Rattled by the often violent resistance to
the Civil Rights Movement in the American south as he planned the
production, Prince intended the not-so-distant past explored in Cabaret to
serve as a cautionary tale for contemporary Americans. The comparisons
were ultimately subtle: his initial plan to end the show with footage depicting
the Selma march and riots in Little Rock, Arkansas, were scrapped in favor
of a huge, tilted mirror that hung over the stage. Before and after the
performance and during intermission, spectators faced an exaggerated, fun-
house version of themselves that reflected back at them from the stage.
While not as obvious as clips of protests and riots, the mirror implied that,
“as Cliff says in the show, ‘if you’re not against all this, you’re for it—or you
might as well be”’ (Jones 2003, 241–2).

148
 The 1960s and 1970s

Hair : Enter the rock musical

Many scholars have described Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical
as another concept musical, but its real claims to fame were its Off Off
Broadway pedigree, innovative staging, much-talked-about (if brief and
very dimly lit) nudity, and especially its amplified rock score.3 It is this last
feature that caused Hair, which opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theater
in April 1968, to be hailed by some critics as a revolutionary production that
would transform Broadway’s sound, relevance, and audience.
Of course, still other critics dismissed Hair as a loud, confusing show about
stoned, shaggy, unwashed hippies. But its supporters praised the musical’s
ability to harness the theatrical mainstream to the energy and experimentalism
taking place Off Off Broadway, as well as its affectionate depictions of
contemporary young people. Clive Barnes, drama critic for The New York
Times, lauded Hair for doing what had long been thought impossible: it
blended rock music with traditional Broadway fare in a way that did not
condescend to young audiences or alienate older ones (Barnes 1968).
Hair’s book was by Gerome Ragni (1935–91) and James Rado (1932–),
two actors active in the Off Off Broadway movement. In 1966, they worked
together on Viet Rock, a collaborative anti-war piece staged at the Open
Theater. Between rehearsals, Ragni and Rado hung around the West Village
with a group of hippies who inspired them to develop a musical about the
counterculture. They based the two central characters on themselves: Claude,
a quiet dreamer from Flushing, Queens, was inspired and originated by
Rado; Berger, a charismatic high-school dropout and leader of the tribe of
hippies with whom Claude socializes, was inspired and originated by Ragni.
Presented as a series of loosely interconnected vignettes, Hair follows Claude
as he debates whether he should go to Vietnam to please his parents, or burn
his draft card and stay with his hippie friends. He ultimately chooses to go to
Vietnam, where he is killed; Hair ends as the hippies mourn his death and
celebrate his life.
Ragni and Rado developed Hair for Broadway, but after endless rejections,
they approached Joseph Papp (1921–91), producer and founder of the Public
Theater. Papp chose Hair as the inaugural production of the Public’s then-
new space on Lafayette Street in the East Village, with two conditions: Ragni
and Rado had to cut their long, rambling script, and find someone to
compose an acceptable score. A mutual friend introduced them to composer
Galt MacDermot, who had recently arrived in New York from Montreal, and
plans for a limited run at the Public in October 1967 commenced.

149
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

At the Public, Hair caught the attention of Michael Butler, a Chicago

businessman who secured the rights to the musical after Papp—who, at
the time, took a staunch anti-Broadway stance—let them expire. The
experimental director Tom O’Horgan was brought in for the transition.
Under O’Horgan, Hair retained a distinct Off Off Broadway sensibility.
O’Horgan employed non-traditional casting, bringing in both seasoned
experimental actors and talented amateurs. The cast and creative team
worked collectively to build trust, rework the script, and stage the musical
numbers. Among the show’s many innovations, aside from the live rock
band on the stage in lieu of a traditional orchestra in the pit, were its disjunct
structure, frequent disregard of the imaginary fourth wall that traditionally
divides spectators from performers, and its use of stage nudity during the
recreation of a human be-in at the Act I finale.
Hair was additionally noteworthy for its liberal approach to contemporary
social and political issues. While ultimately as traditional in its treatment of
women as the counterculture and New Left could be, Hair tackled race, class,
colonialism, the environment, the generation gap, Vietnam, and the sexual
revolution. Its contemporary themes and setting, and its catchy, bouncy,
innovative score appealed to many traditional Broadway spectators, as well
as to more young people and people of color than was typical of Broadway
at the time (Horn 1991, 133–4).
Hair’s success resulted in the kind of pop-culture success Broadway had
not seen in a very long time. Seven months after it premiered on Broadway,
the original cast recording hit number one on the Billboard album chart.
Through the turn of the decade, radio stations across the country blared
covers of songs from the show, including The 5th Dimension’s medley of
“Aquarius” and “Let the Sun Shine In” (The Flesh Failures), Three Dog Night’s
version of “Easy to Be Hard,” the Cowsills’s “Hair” and Oliver’s rendition of
“Good Morning Starshine,” the last of which also showed up on the children’s
television show “Sesame Street” (Wollman 2006, 53).
Of course, the critics who thought Hair would somehow revolutionize
the American musical were wrong. The many rock musicals that were rushed
to Broadway in the years immediately following Hair worked instead to
convince producers that the successful rock musical was less a paradigm
shift than a lucky fluke. Jesus Christ Superstar, the 1970 platinum-selling
double album by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948–) and lyricist Tim
Rice (1944–), did well enough on Broadway when it was adapted for the
stage by Hair director Tom O’Horgan in 1971, but the production was not
nearly as commercially successful as the album that had inspired it. Fates

150
 The 1960s and 1970s

were even less kind to several other rock musicals to open (and close) on
Broadway at the turn of the decade: Soon (1971), Dude (1972), and Via
Galactica (1972), all of which suffered savage reviews and lasted a mere
handful of performances. Hair would eventually prove influential for late-
twentieth-century musicals like Rent, but for the time being, the term “rock
musical” was soon verboten on Broadway.

The 1970s

Rarely revered as a glorious or even especially memorable era in

contemporary American history, the 1970s are often dismissed as a protest-
weary, economically strapped, drug-addled, self-centered stepchild to the
revolutionary decade that came before it.4 Even as it progressed, the decade
was painted as one of failure, disappointment, and national exhaustion.
Perhaps this is no wonder: during the 1970s, the US saw defeat in Vietnam,
watched the first president in its history resign in scandal, and experienced
staggering economic problems, disenchantment, and disenfranchisement.
It did not help the decade’s street cred that it was host to so many
ridiculous fads, like the pet rock, mood rings, high-heeled sneakers, and
streaking.
Yet to dismiss the 1970s as a deflated, burned-out waste of a decade is to
ignore the immense strides Americans made toward racial, sexual, and
gender equality during the decade. Through the 1970s, the Civil Rights
Movement continued to resonate, while gay men and lesbians began in
growing numbers to step from the closet and demand equal rights. American
women, too, began in growing numbers to demand equal treatment in the
home and the workplace. Subsequent generations frequently assume that
these social movements arose in the 1960s, but they belong solidly in the
1970s.
There are several reasons for this confusion. First, mass movements were
so important to the 1960s that subsequent ones are often automatically
associated with that era. Second, many of the people involved in the women’s
and gay liberation movements cut their teeth as Civil Rights and anti-
Vietnam War activists in the 1960s. Finally, while the women’s and gay
liberation movements gained most momentum through the 1970s, they
both had origins in earlier decades.
The women’s movement is often referred to as the “second wave” in a nod
to the first, which took place during the nineteenth and early twentieth

151
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

centuries and focused primarily on suffrage. The second wave took root in
the US between the early 1950s and late 1960s; the publication in English
of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1953) and Betty Friedan’s The
Feminine Mystique (1963), are often cited as milestones in the burgeoning
movement. Similarly, the gay liberation movement, sparked by riots at the
Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in late June 1969, was the more vocal
offshoot of a quieter, less nationally organized movement that had taken
root in earlier decades. The pioneering gay rights organizations the
Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis were both founded in the 1950s;
through the 1960s, gay and lesbian activists shifted away from prioritizing
personal identity and toward a more politically organized struggle against
institutional and cultural discrimination.
The 1970s was thus a decade during which different approaches to
equality and acceptance “filtered into broader consciousness.” Increased
awareness of gender and race issues trickled into all forms of American mass
entertainment: groundbreaking television shows like “All in the Family,”
“Good Times,” and “One Day at a Time”; popular songs like Helen Reddy’s “I
Am Woman,” and the Village People’s “YMCA” and “Macho Man”; movies
like Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, and
An Unmarried Woman. They could also be detected in countless Broadway
musicals. The 1970s was not the cheeriest decade, but to dismiss it is to
ignore the identity politics and breadth of related artistic expression that
infused it (Wolf 2011, 92–4).

The Broadway musical in the “Me” Decade

In a decade remembered for the cultivation of personal identity, it is perhaps

fitting that several powerful individuals would helm the development of
Broadway’s most innovative concept musicals. Hal Prince remained an
influential director and producer; his power on Broadway was matched by a
handful of other director/choreographers such as Bob Fosse and Michael
Bennett. Through the 1970s, Prince mounted a string of Stephen Sondheim
musicals, among them Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music
(1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Sweeney Todd (1979).
While most did well enough at the box office, many of the Prince–
Sondheim collaborations were more critically acclaimed than commercially
successful. They were repeatedly lauded for their innovations, layered
artistry, and depth. Sondheim’s material, like Prince’s approach, often proved

152
 The 1960s and 1970s

ideal for an era bound up in personal cultivation and identity politics. After
all, many Sondheim works, whether written during the 1970s or not, are
about outsiders: complex, alienated, neurotic loners in search of direction
and meaning in a difficult world (Lundskaer-Nielsen 2014, 97).
Take for example Company, with music and lyrics by Sondheim, book by
George Furth, musical staging by choreographer Michael Bennett, and
direction by Prince.5 Company opened at the Alvin Theater on April 26,
1970. Its disjunct narrative, disorienting approach to time, and emotionally
frozen, sexually ambiguous central character touched a nerve with audiences
and critics, many of whom acknowledged that Company was both deeply
unsettling and an artistic triumph.
Company focuses on Robert, an upper-middle-class, 35-year-old
Manhattan bachelor. In scene after scene, which might or might not be
happening chronologically if at all, Bobby visits his many friends, all of whom
are married and unhappy. When not with friends, he dates three different
women, none of whom he can commit to. While it is never clear whether
Bobby’s friends know one another, they all exhibit an almost desperate urge to
see him find a mate, despite or perhaps because of their own marital woes. At
the end of the musical, Bobby is still unsure if he wants commitment, but
decides—maybe—that marriage might be better than being alone. The
disjointedness of Company’s plot and neuroses of its characters relate to the
pessimism and uncertainty of the era during which it premiered. The musical
manifested “the bitterness, rejection, and uncertainty displayed in affluent,
educated, upper-middle-class New York society” in its questioning of
traditional values like marriage, and the legitimacy of American social mores
(Bristow and Butler 1987, 253).
Yet while Company caused discomfort for some spectators, it was
empowering for others. Many gay men interpreted the musical as a coming-
out parable and read Robert as a coded gay or bisexual character. There are
a few reasons for this interpretation, even though Robert’s sexual ambiguity
was referenced just once, disparagingly, in the original production: during
the number “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” Robert’s girlfriends, Kathy,
April, and Marta vent their frustrations over his commitment issues, at one
point questioning his sexual preferences:

I could understand a person

If it’s not a person’s bag
I could understand a person
If a person was a fag.6

153
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Yet the interpretation of Robert as a queer character does not rest solely
on this snippet of song. Some of it relates to Sondheim’s tendency to gravitate
toward disenfranchised characters, as well as to his own oft-discussed
outsider status as a gay, Jewish man. One does not have to make much of a
leap, after all, to envision Sondheim himself in Bobby’s shoes: a New York
bachelor who feels disconnected from his straight friends and who abides
endless pressure, as many gay men did at the time, to remain closeted and
embrace heteronormativity.
Sondheim and Furth both insisted that Bobby was never intended to
be read as gay, but the interpretation persists. Spectators often connect
emotionally with mass entertainment, drawing from it whatever helps them
negotiate their own lives. For countless gay men coming of age in the 1970s,
Bobby’s discomfort at the idea of settling into a traditional marriage was
proof enough he had been created in their image.
Like Hal Prince, Bob Fosse was an active presence on Broadway for
decades before becoming a director. He made his stage debut as a dancer in
the late 1940s and became well-known as a choreographer in the 1950s.
Through the 1960s and 1970s he combined choreography with direction,
both on Broadway and in Hollywood. Unlike many classically trained
choreographers, Fosse danced during his Chicago youth at decidedly
lowbrow venues: burlesque houses, nightclubs, late-generation vaudeville
theaters, and strip clubs (Hischak 2008, 261). His exposure to the seedier
side of entertainment fueled his work on Broadway, where he became known
for highly distinctive, often exaggeratedly playful and erotically charged
choreography. Among his trademarks were stooped shoulders and the
frequent use of top-hats (Fosse saw himself as somewhat hunched, and often
used hats to hide his premature baldness when he danced), splayed fingers
held in “jazz-hands” style, turned-in knees and other bodily contortions,
swiveling hips, and bobbling pelvises (Stempel 2010, 580–1). His style was
adapted by performers with whom he often worked, among them his wife
Gwen Verdon (1925–2000), Ann Reinking (1949–), Ben Vereen (1946–), and
Chita Rivera (1933–).
Many of Fosse’s musicals reflected contemporary issues: the sexual
revolution, the hell of war, the drive for self-actualization. His musicals
Pippin (1972) and Chicago (1975), both of which are set in the distant past,
thus resonated with 1970s audiences. Pippin, with music and lyrics by
Stephen Schwartz (1948–) and a book by Roger O. Hirson (and an uncredited
Fosse), took place in the Middle Ages but focused on its restless title
character’s search for happiness in a war-torn, sexually excessive world. The

154
 The 1960s and 1970s

more cynical Chicago featured music by Cabaret team Kander and Ebb, with
a book by Ebb and Fosse, who also choreographed and directed. A musical
version of the satirical 1926 play with the same name by Maurine Dallas
Watkins, Chicago was inspired by two unrelated women accused and
acquitted of murder in that city in 1924.
Chicago follows the amoral, celebrity-starved Roxie Hart (originated by
Verdon), who “has an affair and murders her lover; manipulates her husband,
the law, and the press to get herself acquitted; then trades on her newfound
notoriety” to develop an act with vaudevillian Velma Kelly (Chita Rivera).
Kelly, too, had been accused and acquitted of murdering her husband and
sister after catching them in bed together. Fosse conceived Chicago as an
extended vaudeville show, with song-and-dance numbers evocative of
popular styles made famous by old vaudeville giants like Sophie Tucker
(“When You’re Good to Mama”), Bert Williams (“Mister Cellophane”), and
Eddie Cantor (“Me and My Baby”). But Chicago also drew connections
between its characters’ deceitfulness and “the corruption of national life that
the Watergate scandal had recently disclosed,” ultimately finding moral
decay in every system from the press to the law to the entertainment world
(Stempel 2010, 581–3).
Unlike its 1996 revival, which currently holds the record for longest-
running musical revival in Broadway history, the original production of
Chicago received mixed reviews and ran for just over two years. While hardly a
flop, this was also not an especially lengthy run by contemporary standards.
Chicago was criticized for being too dark even for the cynical time in which it
premiered. Further, Chicago’s premiere in June 1975 was eclipsed weeks later
by an almost universally celebrated new musical that would become the hottest
ticket in town, and win most of the major Tony Awards and the 1976 Pulitzer
Prize for Drama. Chicago did not stand a chance against A Chorus Line.
A musical about dancers auditioning to win a part in the chorus line of a
fictional Broadway musical, A Chorus Line takes place in real time. As it
proceeds, audiences observe characters fretting over their chances,
simultaneously bonding and competing as they go through several rounds
of tryouts before learning whether or not they have been cast (Wolf 2011,
119). Developed and staged at the Public before moving to Broadway, A
Chorus Line, like Hair a few years prior, reflects Off Off Broadway innovation
and collective creation. Its move to Broadway also worked to correct business
mistakes that Joe Papp had made with Hair.
In allowing the rights to Hair to lapse after its inaugural production at the
Public ended, Papp and the Public lost out on the millions of dollars Hair

155
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

generated on Broadway, just when the Public was trying to find its footing
and properly fund its enormous new space. Furious at himself for failing to
reap the financial windfall, Papp resolved not to make the same mistake
again. When A Chorus Line sold out its limited run at the Public in April
1975, Papp rushed the show to the Shubert Theater, where it reopened in
July. A Chorus Line ran on Broadway for 6,137 performances, closing in 1990
after an unprecedented fifteen-year run. Some $30 million of its earning was
put into a trust that continues to support new projects at the Public to date
(Turan and Papp 2010, 392).
The concept for A Chorus Line is usually credited to Michael Bennett,
who approached Papp with recordings of some all-night rap sessions held
among a group of Broadway dancers in 1974. Intrigued, Papp gave Bennett
rehearsal space, all the time he needed, and a weekly stipend to hone the
tapes into a musical (Hoffman 2014, 146). A creative team was assembled:
Marvin Hamlisch (1944–2012) composed the score and Edward Kleban
(1939–87) wrote the lyrics. A Chorus Line was workshopped at the Public
over the course of the year until the creative team decided it was ready.
Bruce Kirle has pointed out that not since Oklahoma! “has a musical so
reflected the profound changes in middle-class ideology,” not all of which
are for the better. A Chorus Line can be seen to celebrate “the cog in
the American wheel” in its examination of chorus dancers who must
“compromise individual autonomy with the corporate establishment.” The
people depicted in the musical are not stars, nor are they vying for the
choicest roles. Rather, A Chorus Line traces the lives of “gypsies” (dancers so
named because they bounce from show to show), who are rewarded for their
hard work with “anonymity and negation of self ” (Kirle 2005, 151–2). The
audience listens, through A Chorus Line, to characters’ “detailed, moving
stories about their lives,” thereby getting to know them as individuals. But in
the final scene, the characters dance onto the stage with precision
choreography and identical outfits, singing “One”—a song devoted entirely
to the unseen star of the show they have been cast in. The audience is thus
left with the image of a chorus line of performers whose “personalities are
essentially vaporized, made meaningless by the anonymity that the line
imposes on them” (Hoffman 2014, 145).
The cynicism of the ending went blithely unnoticed by countless
spectators who flocked to see A Chorus Line in the years during which it
was the hottest show on Broadway. Misinterpreting the show was easy to
do, since the final scenes seem to celebrate Broadway performers who are
typically taken for granted. Yet A Chorus Line ultimately makes sly

156
 The 1960s and 1970s

commentary about the relationship between the individual and the collective
at a time during which “the desire for individual autonomy and alternate
lifestyles was challenged by an increasingly corporate society” that seemed
to reward conformity at every turn (Kirle 2005, 151).

New directions and new diversity on Broadway

In summer 1967, the formidably shrewd producer David Merrick (1911–

2000) began pondering ways he might keep his Gower Champion-directed
production of Hello, Dolly! running despite declining sales. Notorious for
creative publicity stunts that could stimulate interest in even the most poorly
reviewed of shows, Merrick was not willing to close his cash cow withouth a
fight. Dolly, with a book by Michael Stewart based on Thornton Wilder’s play
The Matchmaker, and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman (1931–), had been a
big hit when it opened in January 1964 with Carol Channing in the title role.
After Channing left the Broadway production to join the national tour,
Merrick replaced her with a succession of actresses including Ginger Rogers,
Phyllis Diller, Betty Grable, Ethel Merman, and Martha Raye, all of whom
had continued to draw crowds. But by 1967, interest in the show had cooled.
A typically mercenary idea occurred to Merrick: Why not capitalize on the
Civil Rights-related news of the time by recasting the entire production with
black actors?
A producer’s acquisitive ploy to squeeze every last dime out of a Broadway
show by casting black performers in roles typically played by white ones was
hardly a giant leap forward for civil rights. Yet Merrick offered the role to
Pearl Bailey, a brilliantly engaging actress who, despite her own wariness,
nevertheless grew intrigued by the idea of breaking down barriers. She took
the role, and Merrick took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, where
he characteristically overstated the casting choice as “the event of the
century.” His plan worked: ticket sales spiked and the production, which also
featured Cab Calloway, Clifton Davis, and a very young Morgan Freeman,
ran another three years before closing in 1970 (Kissel 1993, 365–6).
Mercenary or not, the Pearl Bailey-helmed Dolly spurred a new interest
in all-black or majority-black Broadway musicals, which arrived on
Broadway through the 1970s with more regularity than they had since the
1920s. Some, like Dolly, were all-black versions of musicals traditionally
performed by white actors (and, as usual, steered by all-white creative and
producing teams). Among these was a 1976 revival of Guys and Dolls

157
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

starring Robert Guillaume as Nathan Detroit. Several musical revues

celebrated black entertainers from the past; these included the Harlem
Renaissance homage Bubbling Brown Sugar (1976) and the Fats Waller
tribute Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1978). There were also a number of original
musicals featuring all-black or black-majority casts. In 1970, Ossie Davis’s
1961 plantation comedy Purlie Victorious was musicalized as Purlie by the
white creative team Peter Udell and Gary Geld; Raisin, a musical version of
Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, adapted by a team
including Hansberry’s widowed husband Robert Nemiroff, ran on Broadway
in 1975. Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope (1972), with book, music, and lyrics by
Micki Grant, focused on the contemporary black experience and became the
first Broadway production to be directed by a black woman, Vinnette Carol
(1922–2002). The Wiz (1975), an all-black version of The Wizard of Oz with
a book by William F. Brown, music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls (1943–87),
and direction (and costumes) by Geoffrey Holder reaped numerous Tonys
and ran on Broadway for four years.
One of the edgier original all-black productions to open on Broadway in
the 1970s, or really ever, was Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (1971).
This show was written and composed by Melvin Van Peebles (1932–), a
novelist and filmmaker who made the seminal film Sweet Sweetback’s
Baadasssss Song in 1971. Directed by Gilbert Moses (1942–95), Ain’t
Supposed to Die was set in a contemporary urban ghetto. Over a through-
composed funk-, blues-, and soul-steeped score, monologues and songs
were performed in a fluid, stylized manner by an ensemble portraying drug
dealers, pimps, prostitutes, junkies, hustlers, corrupt cops, alcoholics, and
beggars, as well as upright citizens whose hard work did nothing to ease the
poverty and discrimination keeping them from easier, upwardly mobile
lives. An unapologetically dark piece, Ain’t Supposed to Die ended with a
lengthy monologue titled “Put a Curse on You,” delivered by a homeless
woman who had until this point silently observed the action around her.
Delivered to the audience while the rest of the cast stood staring into the
house behind her, the monologue cursed anyone who “sits by and watches
the degradation extant in our country without becoming outraged and
moved to action.”
The city’s predominantly white critical corps was palpably uncomfortable
reviewing Ain’t Supposed to Die. Some attacked it as frightening and angry,
while others admitted that they did not feel qualified to discuss it intelligently.
After the reviews came out and attendance by white patrons plummeted,
Van Peebles dismissed the critics as products of an establishment that had

158
 The 1960s and 1970s

long prioritized sanitized, white-controlled depictions of blacks. He threw

his energies into marketing the show to black patrons. He contacted
churches, schools, clubs, fraternal organizations, and community centers all
over the tri-state area to sell tickets. He invited black actors, politicians, and
activists to host talkbacks after the matinees, and pursued television talk
shows that often featured Broadway casts but had not invited his production.
Van Peebles’ efforts paid off. Initially rumored to close at the end of the same
week it had opened, Ain’t Supposed to Die ran for 325 performances and
garnered several Tony nominations. More importantly, the show proved that
with ingenuity and effort, Broadway could reach new, diverse audiences.

Broadway and the financial crisis

Many of the musicals that ran on Broadway through the 1970s were
inventive, creative, and newly reflective of the country’s diversity, but the
decade was overshadowed by the state of the nation, and more immediately
by the continued decline of Times Square. The neighborhood’s demise was
related to New York City’s fiscal woes, which began in the late 1960s and
culminated in the 1975 financial crisis.7
Through the early 1970s, New York City suffered with the rest of the
country from stagflation, a punishing blend of inflation and stalled economic
growth that few had previously believed actually existed, but that proved
itself a reality when it settled in to make America miserable. In New York
City, stagflation, along with the rising costs of city services through the late
1960s and a declining stock market in the early 1970s, resulted in serious
financial problems. The city came close to declaring bankruptcy in 1975,
when its main source of capital, the municipal bond market, dried up.
During the height of the financial crisis, 20,000 civil servants from over 60
city agencies, the transportation authority, 19 municipal hospitals, 17
colleges, and the public school system were furloughed, laid off, or fired. The
quality of life for the city’s millions of residents sagged accordingly.
To the rest of the nation, 1970s images of New York City in crisis depicted
an urban hellscape overrun by filth and crime. Even before the height of the
financial crisis, tourism had been dropping precipitously, and since visitors
made up almost a third of audiences at the time, Broadway suffered mightily.
Producers slashed budgets, audiences shrank, and venues sat empty or were
rented out by concert promoters or traveling productions. By the mid-1970s,
most of the Broadway theaters not controlled by the Shuberts were up for

159
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

sale. Many craft and construction companies, costume shops, and scenic
painters who rented space in the theater district departed for larger, cheaper,
safer spaces in the suburbs or other American cities.8
Amid concerns that all the space abandoned by theater personnel would
be taken over by the commercial sex industry already swamping Times
Square, the Shuberts tried to buy up some of the empty theaters. In doing so,
they entered into competition with the Nederlanders, a family of theater
owners from Detroit active since 1912 and present in Times Square since
the late 1960s (Schumach 1975, 32). Still under scrutiny after their 1950s
antitrust suit, the Shuberts were not given permission to acquire new venues
in the area until 1981, by which point the Nederlanders had purchased or
become managers of ten of the empty theaters (Holland 1981, 12). Another
new competitor, the Jujamcyn Organization, had acquired five. These
companies, now the largest theater owners on Broadway, displayed amazing
foresight by acting when they did: Times Square had become such a problem
during the 1970s that the typical shrieks about the imminent death of
Broadway theater had reached a near-hysteric pitch.
Broadway was hardly about to die, but its surrounding neighborhood was
crowded, dingy, dirty, and filled with petty crime. Due to a series of mid-
century Supreme Court rulings that relaxed the definition of what could be
legally considered obscene, it had also become overrun with sex stores,
peepshows, XXX movie theaters, and massage parlors. What Times Square
was seen to lack, then, was the kind of middle-class respectability the theater
industry had once enjoyed and never stopped hoping to reclaim. The
industry found itself walking a fine line through the 1970s: How, exactly,
to lure audiences back to a troublesome neighborhood during a severe
economic decline?
Suggested remedies that were eventually enacted, many of which remain
in practice, included the elimination of Monday night performances in favor
of a Wednesday matinee, which would counter some theatergoers’ concerns
about being in Times Square at night. Student-rush tickets were introduced
and all box offices were converted to accept major credit cards. Curtain
times for evening performances were moved from 8:30 p.m. to 7:30, which
allowed audiences to get home (or back to their hotels) an hour earlier. And
in 1973, TKTS , the ticket booth that distributed same-day half-price tickets,
and which still operates just north of the old New York Times building,
opened to great fanfare and instant success.
New York State pulled itself out of crisis with Herculean effort: there were
generous tax breaks for new businesses and the linking of social welfare

160
 The 1960s and 1970s

programs with private-sector growth. A new commerce commissioner,

economic affairs cabinet, and economic development board were instituted,
and investments in the state’s infrastructure were encouraged (Klein 1992,
705). There were also new appeals to tourists.
The rebranding of New York as a tourist destination began in 1976, during
which the Democratic National Convention and several well-publicized
celebrations to honor the country’s Bicentennial took place in the city. The
result was encouraging: New York City had its biggest tourist boom since the
late 1960s, and generated around $4.5 billion in revenue. The famous “I Love
New York” campaign, still used today, was created by the State Department
of Commerce in 1977; it was no coincidence that many advertisements
featured Broadway casts singing the “I Love New York” jingle as voice-over
actors described affordable theater packages to interested viewers. By 1979,
New York City was setting records for tourism and resultant revenue.
While the increase in tourism proved wonderful for Broadway, it put new
pressure on the Off and Off Off Broadway realms, which had exerted strong
influence on Broadway in the 1960s and early 1970s. This trend began to
reverse itself by the end of the decade. Successful Off and Off Off Broadway
productions continued to transfer to Broadway, but the rising costs of real
estate and production, and the new emphasis on courting tourists, forced
many of the city’s smaller theaters to turn away from an emphasis on innovation
and toward an interest in financial stability, larger audiences, and higher ticket
prices. Off and Off Off Broadway remain less expensive than Broadway, but the
distinctions between the realms began to blur as the decade unfolded.
As the city rebounded in the 1980s, long-debated plans for the renovation
of Times Square grew more heated. Tourism would reach new heights, and
the Broadway musical, having weathered yet another storm, would reinvent
itself anew, reach an increasingly global market, cultivate bigger and younger
audiences, and continue to remain fresh, appealing, and relevant. Yet as a
result of the overhaul, the comparative freedom during the 1970s to produce
risky theatrical pieces was compromised, and theatrical production became
radically different from what it had been only a few years prior. In the 1980s,
as New York rebounded from crisis, audiences were plentiful, business
boomed . . . and risks on and beyond Broadway would become harder to take.

161
162
CHAPTER 7
THE MEGAMUSICAL TO HAMILTON

In November 1980, Ronald Reagan beat incumbent President Jimmy Carter

in a landslide election that was a culmination of the country’s slow political
swing to the right through the 1970s. Reagan’s two-term presidency saw the
“continued decomposition of the old New Deal Democratic coalition forged
by Roosevelt,” a newly galvanized Republican party stimulated by a shift in
allegiance among white southerners and conservative Christians, and a huge
increase in military spending.
Reagan continued a wave of deregulation, begun in the late 1970s, that
resulted in the intensified concentration of media ownership by fewer
corporations (Griffith and Baker 2007, 350–1). Deregulation influenced
American commercial entertainment in profound ways, since media
companies that had long been prohibited from uniting suddenly could. The
impact of deregulation was initially more evident in the worlds of commercial
film, television and music, but it also eventually influenced Broadway.
As the new president took office and the new decade began, New York
continued to recover from near-bankruptcy. California remained the top
American state for tourism in the early 1980s, but the new efforts by New
York yielded remarkable results. New York City alone attracted millions
of tourists from hundreds of countries and saw an increase in business
travel at a time when travel to other American cities was slowing (LeMoyne
1984, D11). The boom in tourism had a swift and lasting impact on the city’s
commercial marketplace, and thus on its theater industry.1 By 1983, the “I
Love New York” campaign had resulted in a 43 percent increase in tourist
spending (Klein 1992, 706–9).

Broadway in the 1980s

The early 1980s saw increases in the costs of production, steeper city and
state taxes, significant changes in the ways shows were produced, and a
growing demand for new and expensive stage technologies, all of which
caused the demands of the commercial theater to soar well above typical
rates of inflation. Between 1980 and 1982, production costs on Broadway

163
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

increased by a whopping 62 percent, while operation costs rose by 45

percent. The skyrocketing inflation had a particular impact on Broadway
musicals, which are generally more expensive to produce than dramas.
All the factors contributing to the rising cost of production, combined
with trends that placed the director in God mode, resulted in the development
of a new division of labor in the theater industry. In the past, costs were
managed solely by a producer. Flo Ziegfeld, for example, was chiefly
responsible for securing and apportioning funds during his reign. But by the
early 1980s, company managers, as well as powerful directors like Bennett,
Fosse, and Prince, had become so central to productions that they began to
have a say in controlling costs. This approach to production was not
especially cost-effective, but it was newly decentralized: more people with
artistic control became involved in the development and staging of shows
(Rosenberg and Harburg 1993, 7–18).

Depictions of difference in the 1980s

While there were important individual achievements in politics, society,

science, and the arts, the 1980s was not a very progressive one for minorities
or women. Social policies eroded as federal funding was cut, an
“individualistic, pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” mentality replaced
political centrism, and social and political agendas moved to the right in an
embrace of “traditional values” over the left-leaning social movements
popular in previous decades. The nation’s conservatism was reflected in
many Reagan-era musicals. Some of Broadway’s biggest, most popular,
lucrative productions resorted to traditional gender norms in depicting men
as active, brave, and daring, and women as passive, adoring muses or
supporters (Wolf 2011, 129–31). Nevertheless, a few Broadway musicals that
premiered in the 1980s depicted people who were not white, middle class,
and heterosexual.
Dreamgirls, which opened at the Imperial Theater on December 20, 1981,
was composed by Henry Krieger (1945–), with book and lyrics by Tom Eyen
(1940–91). Dreamgirls was directed, co-produced, and co-choreographed by
Michael Bennett; the production would be his last on Broadway before his
death from AIDS in 1987. While The New York Times critic Frank Rich, by
this point the most influential theater critic in New York City, raved about
the show, other critics were more tepid. It did not matter: Dreamgirls ran for
1,521 performances before closing in August 1985.

164
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

Loosely based on the Supremes’ ascent from struggling girl group to

Motown superstars, Dreamgirls follows the rise of a black female singing trio
from a Chicago ghetto in 1962 to the early 1970s. At the start of the show, the
Dreamettes compete in a talent show at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. They lose
but gain a manager in the ruthless Curtis Taylor, Jr. Determined to cross the
music industry’s color barrier, Taylor renames the group the Dreams, alters
their sound from R&B to pop, and replaces the group’s heavyset founder
and lead singer, Effie, with a slimmer, softer-sounding singer who
he feels will be more appealing to white audiences. As the Dreams “blunt
the raw anger of their music to meet the homogenizing demands of the
marketplace,” Rich wrote in his review, “we see the high toll of guilt and self-
hatred that is inflicted on those who sell their artistic souls to the highest
bidder. If ‘dreams’ is the most recurrent word in the show, then ‘freedom’ is
the second, for the Dreams escape their ghetto roots only to discover that
they are far from free” (Rich 1998, 124).
For the strengths of its depictions, both of black people’s struggles in a
white-dominated entertainment world and, in the case of Effie, of women
who do not conform to Western beauty standards, Dreamgirls was a
throwback to pre-1970s black musicals in that its black cast contrasted with
an all-white creative and production team. Critics were quick to point out
this irony; Dreamgirls’ plot, after all, revolves around black entertainers who
compromise to succeed in a white-driven world. “The white structure that
demands so much soul drain is never really seen; it exists as an abstract
ghost off-stage,” Stanley Crouch wrote in The Village Voice. “A harsher
examination would have symbolically questioned the way in which the
show itself reached Broadway—white generals mapping out the strategy for
singing, dreaming, and suffering black troops to take the bright hill of the
musical smash” (quoted in Wollman 2006, 135). Dreamgirls’ feel-good
ending, in which the backstabbing Curtis is driven away, the Dreams
reconcile with Effie, and the group looks toward successful solo careers after
their farewell concert, allowed the musical to evade condemnation of
structural racism in America and its entertainment systems.
A similarly contradictory Broadway musical, which simultaneously broke
down barriers and clung to old-fashioned cultural modes, was La Cage aux
Folles. La Cage featured music and lyrics by Mame and Hello, Dolly! composer
Jerry Herman (1931–) and a book by Harvey Fierstein (1954–), whose play
Torch Song Trilogy premiered Off Broadway at La MaMa in 1978 and ran
on Broadway in 1982. La Cage opened in August 1983 and ran for 1,761
performances through the height of the AIDS crisis.

165
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

La Cage aux Folles was not the first Broadway musical to focus on a gay
male relationship; the musical Sextet, which flopped in 1974, was about three
couples, two straight and one gay. And just two months prior to La Cage’s
premiere, Dance a Little Closer (May 11, 1983), which closed on opening
night, featured a subplot about two gay flight attendants who at one point
sing the duet “Why Can’t the World Go and Leave Us Alone?” Yet La Cage
was the first commercially successful Broadway musical about gay life and
romance for its time.
Based on Jean Poiret’s 1973 play of the same name, La Cage is set in Saint-
Tropez, France, where Georges, owner of the drag bar La Cage aux Folles, lives
above the club with his partner, Albin. Albin, who goes by the drag name Zaza,
is La Cage’s star performer and the leader of Les Cagelles, the troupe of
performers. The action of the musical is propelled when Georges’ son Jean
Michel, the result of a brief heterosexual liaison with a woman named Sybil
some two decades prior, announces that he has become engaged to a woman
named Anne Dindon. There is one catch: Anne’s ultraconservative, homophobic
politician of a father plans to close down the local drag clubs. Jean-Michel
begs his father to ask Albin, who has raised Jean-Michel from infancy, to stay
away when the time comes to meet the new in-laws. He also asks Georges to
pretend that he is married to Sybil. Devastated by Jean-Michel’s requests, Albin
dismisses Les Cagelles from the stage during his nightclub performance and
sings the musical’s fervent, anthemic number, “I Am What I Am,” before
throwing his wig at Georges, storming off the stage, and resolutely ending Act I.
Georges and Albin quickly reconcile, and Albin reluctantly agrees to meet
the Dindons while posing as Jean-Michel’s heterosexual Uncle Al. Yet when
news arrives that Sybil will not make it to the elaborate charade, Albin
hurriedly dons drag and introduces himself to Anne’s family as Jean-Michel’s
mother. All goes smoothly until after dinner, when Albin agrees to perform
a song. Caught up in a climactic moment, he rips off his wig, thereby
revealing his identity to Anne’s horrified parents.
The Dindons beg Anne to break off the engagement but she refuses. Jean-
Michel apologizes to Albin. The Dindons prepare to leave, but find that the
press has arrived in hopes of catching the anti-gay politician at La Cage with
Zaza. Georges and Albin agree to help the Dindons escape, provided they
give Anne and Jean-Michel their blessings. Les Cagelles disguise the Dindons,
who escape in full drag. Georges and Albin reaffirm their love with a tender
song and kiss.
La Cage Aux Folles can be seen as groundbreaking merely because it
was the first successful Broadway musical to depict a strong, loving gay

166
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

partnership. Yet some of its appeal was due to its underlying conservatism,
both in structure and its reliance on unsophisticated humor and gay
stereotypes. These have been frequently criticized by critics and historians as
tactics used to evade any real political or cultural statements about tolerance
or understanding.
The scholar John Clum argued that while La Cage was “hyped as a great
leap forward for gay men in musical theater,” it functioned more as “a fantasy
version of gay life for tourists” that appeased straight audiences rather than
attempt to educate, inform, or challenge stereotypes. La Cage, he argued,
depicted a highly heteronormative gay couple who came off as sanitized,
sexless, and thus neatly universalized instead of specifically, culturally gay
(Clum 1999, 182–4). And John Bush Jones argued that the ample use of drag
in the musical actually reinforced ignorance. Many of the characters, he
noted, “aren’t just drag performers in the club but drag queens offstage,
whose dialogue and mannerisms consistently portray them as homosexual
stereotypes,” thereby allowing audience members to leave a performance
entertained, but “with their prejudices largely intact” (Jones 2003, 340–1).
Despite the criticisms, La Cage remains a frequently revived chestnut. This is
largely due to the strengths of its central characters, who reflect a love and
mutual respect that was rare on Broadway for same-sex characters—even
despite the many gay men who, for generations, have toiled behind the
scenes to bring musicals to the stage in the first place.

Enter the megamusical

La Cage and Dreamgirls both relied heavily on human bodies in motion and
eye-catching costumes for their spectacle. Yet by the early 1980s, many
Broadway musicals were moving beyond these tried-and-true means of
wowing audiences. The approach to spectacle began to change with the rise
of new technologies that allowed the theater to emulate film, both visually
and in terms of newly sophisticated sound design. The early 1980s brought
with it trends that favored the latest in mechanically-produced stage effects.
New musicals emphasizing the technologically spectacular would eventually
help uproot theatrical production from its local confines on Broadway, and
transform it into international big business.
As noted in the last chapter, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s
Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar was not as successful as they
had anticipated. But their later productions, both in collaboration and apart,

167
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

became enormously popular with audiences on Broadway, in the West End,

and eventually across the globe.
Lloyd Webber’s catchy tunes, Rice’s clever and frequently humorous
lyrics, and their productions’ emphasis on the visually spectacular helped
spur their popularity. They also had particularly good business sense. Lloyd
Webber, in particular, spent ample time “working with productions all over
the world, learning how to solve problems of translation, casting, and staging
in any given city,” while also investigating ways to best handle his newfound
wealth (Sternfeld, 68).
After Jesus Christ Superstar, Lloyd Webber vowed to maintain “iron
control over all aspects of his productions” (Walsh 2000, AR 1), and thus
founded the Really Useful Company in 1977. An entertainment and
production company meant to oversee his theatrical productions, the
organization went public in 1985 and was renamed the Really Useful Group.
It has ventured into film, television, sound recording, publishing and
merchandising, theater ownership, and management (Sternfeld 2006, 70).
Beginning with Evita, which opened in the West End in 1978 and on
Broadway in 1979, Lloyd Webber has had the final say when it comes to how
his shows look and sound, no matter where they open or who directs them.
Evita, Lloyd Webber’s last Broadway production with Rice, was loosely
based on the meteoric rise and untimely death of Eva Perón (1919–52), wife
of the Argentine dictator Juan Perón. The composer–lyricist team took wild
liberties with their subject matter: the actions of the title character, depicted
as a power-hungry opportunist who sleeps her way into Argentine society,
were commented upon by Evita’s narrator, who is not necessarily supposed
to be the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, but who is a revolutionary
named Che nonetheless. Evita, which catapulted its leads, Patti LuPone and
Mandy Patinkin, to stardom, was the first of many Lloyd Webber productions
to get mixed-to-negative reviews and nevertheless become hugely popular
with audiences.
Evita ran on Broadway for four years, a run that paled in comparison
with Lloyd Webber’s next project. Cats would become the first in a wave of
big, technologically dazzling musicals that have since become known as
“megamusicals,” many of which were imported from Europe by the Really
Useful Group. Megamusicals dominated Broadway through the 1980s and
early 1990s. Considered a modern approach to nineteenth-century grand
opera due to their dazzling stage effects, sung-through scores, lavish
orchestrations, large casts, and emphasis on universality, social justice
themes, and sentimentality, megamusicals were frequently savaged by critics

168
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

and yet so beloved by audiences that they popularized the phrase “critic
proof ” (Prece and Everett 2008, 250–1).
Cats was the first musical for which Lloyd Webber teamed with the British
theater impresario Cameron Mackintosh (1946–), a formidable theater
producer with a knack for marketing and an eye toward the potential stage
musicals had in the global marketplace. Mackintosh and Lloyd Webber
recruited an impressive team to bring the new musical to the stage. Cats was
helmed by the esteemed Royal Shakespeare Company director Trevor Nunn
(1940), who would later direct the megamusicals Les Misérables and Sunset
Boulevard. Cats opened at the New London Theatre in the West End on May
11, 1981, and arrived, following enormous hype and a huge advance in ticket
sales, at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre on October 7, 1982.
Essentially a revue, Cats borrows from T.S. Eliot’s poetry collection Old
Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, and is held together with the thinnest of
plots. At the beginning of the show, the godlike Old Deuteronomy cat
announces that by the evening’s end, one cat will go to cat heaven (called
the heaviside layer). Cats concludes as down-and-out Grizabella sings the
show’s best-known song, “Memory,” before being granted the dubious honor
of ascending heavenward on a giant, mechanized car tire that serves as the
show’s most elaborate stage effect. What falls between the introduction and
conclusion are songs and dances in styles ranging from swing to dancehall
to operetta to rock, all performed by actors costumed and made up to look
like cats.
Many musicals fail to win audiences due to a weak plot or over-
reliance on spectacle, and critics found Cats to be guilty of both. But the
revue-like form and stunning visuals turned out to be assets. The impressive
costumes, makeup design, and imaginative set—a huge (if notably sanitary
and fresh-smelling) garbage dump filled with oversized candy wrappers,
soda cans, and worn-out shoes—arguably helped sell as many tickets as
the music itself. Cats arrived in New York in the early stages of the
contemporary tourist boom, and tapped into an international audience
that did not need to understand English to follow Cats or marvel at its
visual attributes.
By the time it closed on Broadway in September 2000 after an eighteen-
year run, Cats had become the most internationally profitable theatrical
venture in history. It spawned productions in hundreds of cities worldwide
and countless international touring companies, which have been seen by
many millions of people (Rosenberg and Harburg 1993, 59). Cats is thus
remarkable less for its artistry than its commercial impact.

169
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Cats’ success made Mackintosh and Lloyd Webber remarkably powerful

on both sides of the Atlantic. Working individually or in tandem, the two
would be responsible for a number of megamusicals to open through the
1980s and 1990s in New York, London and, via franchise, around the world.
Among them are Schönberg and Boublil’s Les Misérables (1987) and Miss
Saigon (1991), and Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera (1988) and
Sunset Boulevard (1994), all of which were produced either by Mackintosh,
Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, or both in partnership.
Megamusicals were frequently criticized for placing technical spectacle
over content, which of course would have been impossible in decades prior.
Cats’ giant ascending tire and outsized garbage dump set were just the
beginning in this respect. The Phantom of the Opera arguably drew crowds
as much for its crashing chandelier and watery underground lair as for its
plot and score. Les Misérables boasted a huge cast on a revolving stage; in the
scene depicting the fall of Saigon, Miss Saigon had a helicopter that landed
onstage and took off again.
Lloyd Webber and Mackintosh were two of the first to figure out how to
transcend specific locations to make musical theater a global business with
the potential for unprecedented profit-making (Sternfeld 2006, 79). Cats
opened a worldwide market for musicals, allowing the commercial theater
industry to mine the benefits of regional, touring, and international
productions. Lloyd Webber’s musicals might not all be remembered
hundreds of years from now, but his business model stands a chance.
As the cost of production skyrocketed in the 1980s, Broadway producers
became more reliant on the idea of spending money to make money, which
resulted in higher ticket prices for ever-larger technology-driven spectacles.
Meanwhile, smaller, less expensively produced shows became tougher to sell,
and less spectacular productions were, on the whole, not as successful on
Broadway during the decade.
The megamusical craze began to wane by the end of the 1980s, at which
point both Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice experienced major
disappointments. In 1987, Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express opened in
New York after hit productions in the West End and Bochum, Germany. A
musical about toy trains that come to life and race against one another,
Starlight featured a cast on roller-skates scooting at high speed around
an enormous track. It closed after 761 performances, which would have
been ample time to recoup in years past, but not by the late 1980s; Starlight
Express became the first Lloyd Webber venture on Broadway not to recoup
its investment. His Aspects of Love, which opened in 1990, fared even

170
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

worse, closing after 377 performances and losing its entire $8 million
investment. Chess, Tim Rice’s 1988 collaboration with former ABBA
members Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, also closed at a loss. While
Miss Saigon would do far better in the early 1990s, this relatively late arrival
to the megamusical canon did not premiere in New York City without its
share of controversy.
Miss Saigon has been called a “quintessential megamusical” because it
boasts every feature the subgenre had to offer: a lush, sung-through score by
Schönberg and Boublil, a lead producer in Cameron Mackintosh, a plot that
plays on strong emotions and elaborate, expensive, spectacular sets (and the
aforementioned helicopter). Loosely based on Puccini’s Madama Butterfly
and set just prior to the fall of Saigon in 1975, Miss Saigon was larger in scope
than the original opera (Sternfeld 2006, 293).
Miss Saigon tells the tragic tale of Kim, a seventeen-year-old Vietnamese
girl whose family is killed in the war. In desperation, she goes to Saigon to
work as a bargirl at a sleazy club owned by a mercenary half-Vietnamese,
half-French hustler known as the Engineer. During her first night on the job,
Kim meets and falls in love with Chris, a traumatized American marine
about to leave for home. Chris promises to take Kim back to the US with
him, but they are separated in the chaos when Saigon falls. Three years
later, Kim continues to hope that Chris will return for her and, now, for their
son, Tam. Chris, however, has searched extensively for Kim and has presumed
her dead. He has married Ellen, an American, though he suffers from post-
traumatic stress disorder and still longs for Kim, about whom he has
recurring nightmares.
When Chris and Ellen learn that Kim is alive, they travel to Bangkok and
find her dancing at a bar also owned by the Engineer. Kim assumes she and
Chris will be reunited, but when she meets Ellen, she realizes her hopes have
been dashed. In the final scene, the Engineer leads Chris and Ellen to Kim’s
room, where she steps behind a curtain and shoots herself. She dies in Chris’s
arms, leaving Tam to him and Ellen (Hischak 2008, 498).
Miss Saigon opened in the West End in September, 1989. Mackintosh
announced plans to bring it to Broadway in 1991 with members of the
original cast: Lea Salonga as Kim and Jonathan Pryce as the Engineer. The
show became a hot ticket well before it opened in New York, breaking
the record for largest advance in ticket sales—$24 million—before rehearsals
began. But in July 1990, complaints were filed by members of the Actors’
Equity’s ethnic minorities committee, alleging that the casting of Pryce, a
white Welshman, was offensive, especially since Pryce used “yellowface”

171
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

makeup and eye prostheses in the West End production to suggest a darker
skin-tone and Asian eyes.
Equity initially sided with the complainants, announced that it could not
“appear to condone the casting of a Caucasian in the role of a Eurasian,” and
attempted to bar Pryce from performing the role in New York. The controversy
grew as the many Equity members took sides, critics began to weigh in, and
petitions were circulated both for and against the practice of Caucasian
actors playing characters of color. Mackintosh responded by simply canceling
the production, thereby denying roles to some fifty actors, a majority of
which were to be Asian. The union hurriedly reversed its decision, welcomed
Pryce and wished the production a successful run (Rothstein 1990).
The controversy eventually subsided. Miss Saigon opened as expected,
earning typically mixed reviews and enormous commercial interest. Pryce
performed on Broadway without yellowface or prosthetics, and won a Tony
for his performance. After his departure and for the duration of Miss Saigon’s
ten-year run on Broadway, the Engineer was portrayed by actors of Asian
descent. And at the very least, the controversy helped raise awareness of the
fact that many minorities were, even at the end of the twentieth century, still
woefully under-represented and often reduced to caricature on American
theatrical stages (Sternfeld 2006, 303–4).
The megamusical craze ended in New York with the closing of Miss
Saigon, though one might argue that the subgenre was merely supplanted by
something even bigger, slicker, and more spectacular. Disney’s arrival on
Broadway in the mid-1990s resulted in changes to both Times Square and
the commercial theater industry that made the megamusical seem quaint
and old-fashioned by comparison.

The 1990s

The final decade of the twentieth century saw the definitive end of the Cold
War and a political shift to the left with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992.
Advances in technology hastened the availability of computers and cell
phones. These helped stimulate rapid increases in globalization, and reshaped
the nature of American business, commerce, culture, and leisure time. The
American economy moved away from manufacturing and toward service,
and experienced “heightened competition, rapid innovation, increased
organizational flexibility, and more fluid capital and labor markets.” This
transition to what some titled the “new economy” allowed the US , following

172
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

a recession in 1991, to enter the longest period of economic growth it had

experienced since the Second World War. Not everyone benefited from the
newfound prosperity, which was “distributed with startling inequality,
reversing the trend toward greater equality that had prevailed from the Second
World War through the 1960s.” The rich got richer and the poor got poorer as
the millennium approached, while those in the middle found themselves
newly in need of more than one household income and, in many cases, saddled
with debt (Griffith and Baker 2007, 394–5).
The country’s economic growth benefited New York City, if, again, more
its professional classes than its lower and working ones. During the tech
boom, the city transitioned into an important center for post-industrial
capital. Between 1995 and 2000, some 300,000 new jobs were added to New
York’s workforce of 3.6 million. Factory work, on the other hand, reached a
new low of 7 percent of the total. By the turn of the twenty first century, New
York City “was adding private-sector jobs at a pace ahead of the country’s for
the first time in fifty years.” Immigration picked up as well: by 2000, the city
was in full melting-pot mode, with a third of its residents born outside the
US (Klein 1992, 728–9). Crime across the five boroughs plummeted,
neighborhoods gentrified, and tourism continued to boom. Ironically, the
one neighborhood that continued to resist a viable gentrification plan was
Times Square, the very crossroads the city was trying to sell as an important
part of any tourist package.

The renovation of Times Square

In the mid-1990s, city officials announced that the Walt Disney Company
would become active in Times Square as an investor, real estate owner, and
theater producer. Disney’s new presence in the area heralded a significant
increase in business activity by other entertainment conglomerates, the
arrival of which exerted immediate influence on Broadway’s commercial
theaters in particular and American theater in general. For better and worse,
the involvement of entertainment conglomerates on Broadway at the turn of
the century allowed Broadway to extend its reach globally, and thus to work
its way back into the web of American popular culture from which it had
been severed during the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and the death of Tin Pan Alley in
the mid-1950s.
Heavy construction in Times Square did not begin until the late 1990s, but
plans to overhaul Times Square had been made, scuttled, and made again

173
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

over some thirty years, outliving “three mayors, four governors, two real estate
booms and two recessions” (Bagli 2010, A17). During the lengthy debate over
how to improve the area, proposals had ranged from the boring to the
bizarre—from extending midtown’s business district into Times Square on
the one hand, to enclosing the neighborhood in a giant glass bubble and
making it an indoor amusement park and shopping mall on the other (Traub
2005, 134–5).
Curiously, Broadway theaters were not central to most of these plans;
international tourism, after all, was not the windfall it would become late in
the century. Under the Dinkins administration (1990–93), however, an idea
took shape that envisioned Times Square as a cleaner, brighter, less porny,
more tourist-friendly version of itself. The city and state of New York, sensing
profits from an increase in tourism that international media companies
might lure to the area, began courting Disney.
City officials had tried to get Disney executives interested in Broadway
theaters before. Since the late 1980s, high-ranking politicians had approached
the company at various points, only to be put off or ignored. But in the early
1990s, Disney was having its own identity crisis. Still reeling from the
disastrous 1987 opening of Euro Disney (later renamed Disneyland Paris),
the company was also combating new competition borne of the tech
explosion, as well as a slew of international bad press that painted it as more
interested in the bottom line than in quality entertainment. Suddenly,
restoring a historic theater and developing family-friendly musicals to put in
it did not seem like such a terrible idea (Bianco 2004, 277–8).
This was especially the case after the 1991 release of Beauty and the Beast,
Disney’s first blockbuster film in a long time, and one that several film critics
wrote was more inventive and entertaining than anything Broadway had on
offer at the time (Traub 2005, 231). After so much bad press, Disney finally
had something positive to promote. Why not adapt their successful film for
Broadway, just to test the waters? By late 1992, Disney CEO Michael Eisner
had approved the development of a new branch of Disney Studios named
Walt Disney Theatrical Productions. In spring 1993, he toured the New
Amsterdam Theater, once the celebrated home of Ziegfeld’s Follies and now
host to a variety of urban flora and fauna, which had access to water dripping
steadily from holes in the roof and creating huge, stagnating puddles on the
once-lushly carpeted floor (Bianco 2004, 279).
Negotiations regarding Disney’s renovation of the New Amsterdam took
over a year and a half, and extended into a new mayoral administration.
When Rudy Giuliani took office, he pushed through zoning restrictions on

174
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

sex shops and peepshows, which were dying out with the rise of the Internet
anyway (Klein 2001, 729). Meanwhile, the Broadway version of Beauty and
the Beast opened in April 1994, at the Palace.
A record $12 million production, Beauty offered prodigious technological
spectacle, lots of smoke and lights, and cinema-style sound design (Prece
and Everett, 268). The look of the show was akin to a megamusical on
steroids, and Beauty and the Beast was similarly received. Most critics
were tepid to negative about the show, but it did not matter: the Disney
musical broke box office records previously held by Phantom of the
Opera when it sold over $1 million in tickets in a single day. Beauty and the
Beast ran on Broadway for thirteen years, only closing in 2007 when Disney
chose to replace it with a stage adaptation of their 1989 film The Little
Mermaid.
While Beauty and the Beast was just starting to draw crowds on Broadway
in 1994, Disney finalized a deal with New York City. The corporation agreed
to renovate the New Amsterdam Theater at the cost of many millions of
dollars. In exchange, it would enjoy exclusive use of the theater, which
it currently occupies under a 49-year lease. The city and state agreed to
lend Disney an additional $28 million in low-interest loans in return for
2 percent of all ticket receipts from shows staged at the theater. Because old
theaters are costly to maintain, Disney was further encouraged to expand its
presence in Times Square through the development of other properties and
productions, including a street-level studio for Disney’s ABC television, now
at the corner of 44th Street and Broadway.
Other entertainment conglomerates followed Disney into the area,
establishing new headquarters, theme stores, and restaurants, or venturing
into theatrical production. The city continued to fund the rehabilitation of
the area, not only by courting prominent companies, but by condemning old
buildings, restoring theaters, and erecting new offices, hotels, rehearsal
studios, and retail complexes (Kennedy 1995, B2).
By the end of the 1990s, an area considered a problem for decades had
been transformed into a slicker, more tourist-friendly version of itself.
Critics argued that the redevelopment would result in a loss of local flavor,
while advocates cited a more attractive neighborhood, less porn and petty
crime, and hundreds of new jobs. Both sides turned out to be right: while
some still miss the days when Times Square was home to B-movies and local
businesses, the neighborhood has become one of the city’s top tourist
destinations, and the continued home of commercial theaters that now
annually pump billions of dollars into the city’s economy.

175
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

The musical in the 1990s

The presence of Disney on Broadway was met by many theater aficionados,

critics, and historians with skepticism and concern about the “Disneyfication”
of the commercial theater. Worries that entertainment conglomerates would
somehow manage to transform the whole of Times Square into another
theme park or some generic, flavorless version of itself have, however, proven
unwarranted. Broadway offers the same kinds of entertainments—musicals,
revues, comedy acts, specialty shows, and “straight” or nonmusical plays—
that it always has.
Yet the presence of corporations in Times Square has certainly resulted in
changes in the industry, and thus in the ways American commercial theater
is conceived, produced, and staged. What has changed most is the scope:
shows cost more than they ever have, but also have the potential for a much
broader reach, longer runs, and longer lives on tour or in productions around
the world. Corporations are almost always wealthier than even the most
financially successful individual. Whereas even powerful individuals like
Cameron Mackintosh began having difficulty single-handedly producing
musicals on Broadway once corporations became active as theater producers,
companies like Disney can easily spend millions adapting commercial
properties for the stage, or developing new ones. Most entertainment
companies take losses, after all, that are far larger when one of their films or
television shows flops.
Unlike individual theater producers, entertainment corporations can also
more easily afford to advertise and market their properties internationally
and for extended periods of time. Disney owns film production studios from
which to borrow material, recording studios in which to record original cast
albums, and media outlets, theme parks, and stores from which to advertise
themselves. Such access to the mass media extends far beyond the reach of
independent producers, who have since formed extensive partnerships in
order to stage productions. Look at any Playbill next time you go to see a
show on Broadway (or visit the Broadway League’s Internet Broadway
Database, at ibdb.com), and check out the lengthy lists of producers under
any recent production.
Disney is large and lucrative enough not to need help from other
companies to produce their shows (though they did join forces with
Cameron Mackintosh for the 2006 Broadway production of Mary Poppins).
They can afford to spend more to develop productions and to cross-market
their shows, reaching more people than Mackintosh ever could. The stage

176
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

version of Disney’s 1994 animated movie The Lion King, which was the
inaugural production of the newly refurbished New Amsterdam in 1997 and
which remains a hot ticket on Broadway to date, is a case in point.
Eager to prove itself after Beauty and the Beast’s tepid critical reception,
Disney hired esteemed Off Broadway director Julie Taymor (1953–) to
direct The Lion King. Their choice was a significant departure from Beauty
and the Beast, which had been directed to look as much like the animated
film as possible. By the time Taymor came aboard for The Lion King, she was
an experienced, award-winning director with her own approach and style,
which Disney encouraged her to apply in adapting their film.
In doing so, Taymor drew on African music and culture, and borrowed
from theatrical forms she had studied in her youth, including Indonesian
wayang kulit, or shadow puppetry (Stempel 2010, 632). She also designed the
production’s costumes, puppets, and masks, some of which she stitched or
beaded by hand. Most of the actors wear masks and headdresses in the
production, but these are used less to obscure the performer than to highlight
the intimate relationship between character, actor, and audience.
The Lion King was not just a commercial smash, but a critical darling as
well. It was also, and continues to be, marketed exceptionally well in myriad
ways, all over the world. The Lion King film helps sell the Broadway musical
and vice-versa; tie-ins like books, stuffed animals, clothing, and related
merchandise sell both. Under Taymor, The Lion King was developed into a
beautiful, moving Broadway musical, but the power of the corporation
behind it helped it become the “top box office title in any medium” as of
2014, when global sales rose above $6.2 billion (Cox 2014).
Yet for all the power of entertainment conglomerates, Broadway has not
become an artless tourist trap filled with nothing but staged versions of
movies. Commercial theatrical production has become more global, more
expensive, and more intertwined with mass mediated commercial
entertainment. But in many respects, things have remained on Broadway as
they were before Times Square was renovated: new and revived musicals, as
well as new and revived plays, are still performed for audiences eight times a
week. Some shows go straight to Broadway; others are workshopped and
staged before audiences in regional theaters to test their popularity and
marketability. Still others originate Off Broadway and move uptown by
popular demand.
In January 1996, just as Disney was finishing renovations on the New
Amsterdam, the nonprofit Off Broadway venue New York Theatre Workshop
was preparing its spring musical. Rent, with music and lyrics by Jonathan

177
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Larson (1960–96), was well on its way to becoming a hot ticket even before
Larson died unexpectedly of undiagnosed Marfan Syndrome on the
morning of the first preview. A rock musical based on the Puccini opera
La Bohème and set among young artists, addicts, bohemians, and squatters
in New York’s East Village, Rent was moved in April 1996 to the Nederlander
Theater on Broadway, where it ran until 2008.
By the time Rent opened, many musical theater composers, like Larson
himself, had been raised with a love for both Broadway fare and contemporary
popular music, and were more capable than earlier generations of mixing
these influences into their scores. Out of fashion since the 1970s, rock- and
pop-inspired musicals continue to succeed on Broadway to date; one might
argue, in fact, that there are now fewer musicals that are not influenced by
contemporary popular music than there are shows with no pop music
influence at all.
Rent was no anomaly. The nonprofit world continues to have a strong
presence on Broadway, where it operates alongside enormous corporations.
Since the death of founder Joe Papp in 1991, the Public Theater has continued
to transfer productions to Broadway when demand justifies the move; so
have other Off Broadway and nonprofit theaters, including Second Stage,
Manhattan Theater Club, MCC , and Playwrights Horizons. While
globalization and corporatization have influenced the ways that the
commercial theater is selected, produced, staged, and sold, Broadway has not
died on the one hand, or become dominated by entertainment conglomerates
on the other.

A new century: From the aughts to the teens

At the turn of the century, the US continued to adjust to the impact of

globalization and the shift from an industrial to a service economy,
which was not easy since global “communication, trade, and capital flow all
grew more rapidly than either national or international political systems
could fully comprehend or control.” Worldwide income disparities rose into
sharper focus, and the influence of Western culture on all corners of the
world intensified. Questions arose as to American foreign policy following
the Cold War era: should the country act as an “imperial police officer”?
Was increased globalization “a threat to American living standards and
national sovereignty” on the one hand, or “an irreparable threat to the global
environment” on the other? Such concerns only intensified after the attacks

178
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 (Griffith
and Baker 2007, 509–10).
So have questions about American identity, difference, and acceptance. At
the turn of the century, terms like “multiculturalism,” “diversity,” and “race”
became hotly debated buzzwords (Wolf 2011, 163–4). Whether gays and
lesbians should be granted the right to marry became the subject of intense
debate on the state and federal levels. So too did the civil rights of transgender
citizens. The rise of technology has helped reveal continued civil rights injustices.
For example, videos of black Americans being treated unfairly and often more
violently than their white counterparts by police officers resulted in increased
scrutiny, debates about racial injustice, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter
movement. These debates, legal actions, and social movements continue to shed
light on the continued need for social, cultural, and political reforms in the US .

Broadway in and after crisis

In the sad, frightening weeks following September 11, 2001, tourism in New
York took a major hit, and thus so too did Broadway. Ticket sales following
the attacks plummeted. Many shows closed immediately, while others posted
closing notices.
The first week following the attacks was one of the worst in Broadway’s
history. Ticket sales dropped by as much as 80 percent industry-wide. Shows
that could afford to stay open were kept temporarily dark, or were performed
before nearly empty houses. Even the hottest musicals, like The Phantom of
the Opera, Rent, Chicago, The Lion King, and The Producers, lost millions
through the autumn.
Shortly after the attacks, Broadway’s trade organization, the League of
American Theaters and Producers (now the Broadway League), began
meeting to manage the financial strain until sales could improve. Many
producers agreed to take significant financial hits to keep shows running.
The Shuberts, Jujamcyns, and Nederlanders agreed to waive theater rents
until sales could improve (McKinley 2001, E1).
A month after the attacks, sales began to stabilize, though international
tourism remained sluggish. Due largely to marketing campaigns aimed at
luring local and national audiences back to Broadway, and encouraged by
city officials’ frequent public suggestions that the best way to help New York
was to visit and spend money in it, Broadway sales improved by the second
week of October (Bohlen 2011, E1).

179
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

By late October, critics were writing about audiences attending Broadway

comedies and musicals in a near-desperate quest for “the palliative effects
of the theater . . . the restorative powers of a night in a darkened hall—
particularly one in which comedy is promised.” Actors reported hearing
laughter from audiences that was “stunning in its explosiveness.” At
Mamma Mia!, the first musical to open after the attacks, actress Judy Kaye
observed among spectators “faces that hadn’t smiled in weeks” (Marks
2001, AR 5).
While the 2001–02 season was weaker financially than the previous year,
with grosses of $643 million down from $666 million, Broadway bounced
back in full the following season, with a gross of $721 million. Some
subsequent years have been stronger than others, but in general, grosses
continue to climb. Broadway typically earns well over a billion dollars in
ticket sales in any given year.2

Broadway today: Reflections of contemporary media,

culture, and society

Broadway musicals have long been considered middle-of-the-road

entertainments, both aesthetically and politically. As a recycler of other art
forms, and as a mass entertainment often created with one eye on art and
the other on commerce, most musicals shy away from sentiment that
might be perceived as too far to the political left or right, since such extremes
are likely to alienate potential spectators. At the millennium, the Broadway
musical, newly bound with entertainment conglomerates, newly expensive,
and newly eager to appeal to as many tourists as possible, was arguably more
middle-of-the-road than ever (Wolf 2011, 164–5).
While slow to reflect contemporary concerns about inclusiveness, some
Broadway shows nevertheless began to depict a broader diversity of
characters. Shows like the aforementioned Rent, William Finn’s Falsettos
(1992), Nicholas Hytner’s revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel
(1994), Paul Simon and Derek Walcott’s The Capeman (1998), A.R. Rahman
and Don Black’s Bombay Dreams (2004), and Tony Kushner and Jeanine
Tesori’s Caroline, or Change (2004) together reflect Broadway’s increasing
pluralism. The fact that many of these musicals were honed in the nonprofit
realm, either Off Broadway or in the regional theater, is hardly coincidental.
In the new millennium, the influence of nonprofits on the commercial
musical has continued to grow.

180
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

At the same time, the American musical continues to reflect the influence
of entertainment conglomerates, which have exerted influence on the costs
of production and the types of shows developed for Broadway. At the turn of
the century, adapted films and so-called “jukebox musicals” have become
standard Broadway fare. The influence of Hollywood on Broadway remains
palpable.
Broadway has played host to musicalized versions of popular films like
Footloose (1998), Saturday Night Fever (1999), The Full Monty (2000), and
the mega-hit The Producers (2001), all of which were adapted or produced
by people or companies responsible for the original films. Often the biggest
tourist draws, these musicals appeal to global audiences due to their familiar
titles, characters, plots and, usually, songs from film soundtracks.
In some cases, as with Hairspray (2002), Shrek The Musical (2008), and
School of Rock (2015), creative teams involving experienced musical theater
people—the composers Marc Shaiman (1959–), Jeanine Tesori (1961–), and
Andrew Lloyd Webber, respectively—were involved in reconceiving the
films for the stage. In other cases, relative newcomers to Broadway teamed
with more seasoned personnel to adapt a show, as pop star Cyndi Lauper did
with Harvey Fierstein for Kinky Boots in 2013. Critics are quick to point out
that musicalized films can seem like mercenary ploys on the part of risk-
averse producers to make money from recycled material. But the companies
or individuals who adapt films into successful musicals benefit from name
recognition, renewed interest in beloved films, and audiences eager to see
their favorite movies in a new light.
A newer subgenre known as the jukebox musical works in much the
same way. Jukebox musicals use previously-released, well-known popular
songs to make up most or all of the score. In some respects, jukebox musicals
hearken back to the days when Broadway was in its infancy, and Tin Pan
Alley songs were regularly interpolated into musical productions. Today,
jukebox musicals have become so popular that there are many different
kinds, ranging from old-fashioned revues to dance musicals to elaborately
plotted full-length comedies.
Some jukebox musicals highlight the work of specific performers or
songwriters, like the long-running revue Smokey Joe’s Cafe (1995), which
featured songs by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Others include the ABBA
musical Mamma Mia! (2001), the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons musical
Jersey Boys (2005), and Beautiful, which traces the life and career of Carole
King (2013). Other jukebox musicals focus primarily on dance. Movin’ Out,
the 2002 hit choreographed by Twyla Tharp, featured a score built of Billy

181
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Joel songs. Still others are filled with songs that evoke entire eras or subgenres,
as in the 1980s heavy metal musical Rock of Ages (2006) and Motown: The
Musical (2013).
Another more recent subgenre is the self-referential musical, which uses
inside jokes and broad humor to mock the very canon it represents. The self-
referential musical reflects a postmodern aesthetic and appeals to spectators
who are not entirely comfortable with the more stolid conceits of the musical
theater, such as characters bursting suddenly into song or otherwise
displaying high levels of emotional sentiment. Self-referential musicals do
not shy from such conceits; instead, they point them out and make fun of
them. Self-referential musicals can at times overlap with the form’s other
subgenres. For example, there have been many adapted film musicals that
are also self-referential musicals, and many jukebox musicals, like Rock of
Ages, that rely heavily on self-referential humor.
A successful self-referential film adaptation was the hit of the 2000–1
season, The Producers, adapted by the comedian Mel Brooks from his 1968
film of the same name. The Producers made constant, winking reference to the
film on which it was based, and to Broadway’s past depictions of gays, blacks,
and Jews. It featured a much-talked-about, decidedly postmodern montage at
the start of Act II , during which the actor playing Max Bialystock re-enacts
the first half of the show, including the intermission, at breakneck speed. The
Producers’ show-within-a-show, Springtime for Hitler, featured elaborate,
Busby Berkeley-style choreography, and chorines in sparkly, elaborate (and
Nazi-themed) costumes in a joking reference to Ziegfeld’s Follies.
Similarly, Monty Python’s Spamalot (2005), Eric Idle’s adaptation of the
film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, featured several musical numbers that
mocked Broadway conventions. One, “The Song That Goes Like This,” is a
sendup of romantic Broadway ballads (“Once in every show / There comes a
song like this / It starts off soft and low / And ends up with a kiss”). Self-
referential humor has been used successfully as well in original musicals like
[title of show], with music and lyrics by Jeff Bowen and book by Hunter Bell,
who also starred as versions of themselves. An ever-evolving musical, [title of
show] chronicled its own development as an entry in the New York Musical
Festival (2004), an Off Broadway production at the Vineyard Theater (2006),
and a Broadway production at the Lyceum (2008).
Musicals that rely on familiarity, nostalgia, and self-referential humor
have proven popular with local audiences and tourists alike. The appeal to
tourists has become especially important, since the ratio of locals to tourists
visiting Broadway has flipped from what it was in the mid-twentieth century.

182
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

Tourists once made up about a third of the market, but they now make up
roughly 70 percent of ticket buyers (Paulson 2015).
Yet it is incorrect to assume that all American musicals are developed for
and sold primarily to tourists looking for the biggest, most extravagant
Broadway experience. Especially since the renovation of Times Square and
new influence from media companies, the commercial theater industry has
become more sophisticated with advertising and marketing strategies, and
has improved its reach to increasingly diverse audiences. Minority groups
remain under-represented on Broadway, both on the stage and behind the
scenes, but the twenty-first century has seen the emergence of productions
more reflective of the country’s diversity in terms of race, sexual orientation,
and ethnicity. The small but growing presence of women and minorities as
directors, choreographers, composers, lyricists, and producers has helped
contribute to a Broadway that is, at the very least, less segregated and more
self-aware than it once was.
Contemporary Broadway has also become more appealing to younger
audiences than it was through the end of twentieth century. The reputation
of Broadway as corny and out of touch, especially pronounced during the
1960s and 1970s, persisted through the end of the millennium. Disney’s
presence on Broadway helped attract young audiences, but so too did
the initiatives of producers who, by the late 1990s, grew increasingly
concerned about the future of Broadway and the need to cultivate young
audiences. Rent and the tap revue of African American history Bring in ‘da
Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, both of which moved from Off Broadway in 1996,
were the first productions to court young audiences with the promise of
cheap tickets for some of the best seats in the house. The producers of
both shows initially reserved a few rows of seats each day for $20 to
students on a first-come, first-served basis (Baldinger 1996, H5). When the
demand for these tickets became overwhelming, the productions shifted to
a day-of lottery system, which continues to be emulated by many Broadway
shows to date.
Appreciation for Broadway musicals among young people has grown
significantly, especially with new emphases on youth cultures and their
concerns. The corps of mostly male (and entirely adult) New York theater
critics were overwhelmingly tepid about Wicked (2003), an alternate retelling
of The Wizard of Oz with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (1948–) and
book by Winnie Holzman. But they failed take into consideration the
musical’s feminist themes, which resonated deeply with young women and
girls. Despite poor reviews, Wicked caught on with audiences through word

183
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

of mouth, and became an enormous hit, which continues to play to sold-out

houses filled with tourists and locals alike.3
Big, spectacular shows like Wicked, The Lion King, Aladdin, and The
Phantom of the Opera reflect the presence of for-profit, commercial
producers. Yet they do not dominate Broadway, but instead compete with
nonprofit companies that remain important forces on Broadway and beyond.
Most Off Broadway, regional, and subscription houses now develop and
produce new musicals, the strongest of which move to Broadway. No longer
unique in its development of innovative new musicals that are nurtured Off
Broadway and moved uptown, the Public Theater continues sending
successful shows to Broadway when audience demand dictates. Some of the
Public’s musicals, for example Passing Strange (2008) and Bloody Bloody
Andrew Jackson (2010), were big hits at the Public but failed to connect with
Broadway audiences when they reopened in larger theaters. Yet others have
met with critical accolades and enormous commercial success, whether Off
or on Broadway.
Fun Home and Hamilton, both of which premiered at the Public and
subsequently moved to Broadway, are recent, important cases in point. The
former was adapted from cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic novel of
the same name by playwright Lisa Kron (1961–) and composer Jeanine
Tesori. Widely heralded for its artistry, emotional depth, and realistic
characters, Fun Home is a memory musical about Bechdel’s relationship with
her father, a closeted gay man who committed suicide four months after
Bechdel came out to her family as a lesbian.
Fun Home focuses on Alison’s coming of age, with songs that draw from
traditional Broadway influences, but also disco, Motown, and the singer-
songwriter tradition. Songs explore Alison’s sexual and gender identity, first
in childhood, then in college and as an adult (“Ring of Keys,” “I’m Changing
My Major to Joan,” and “Telephone Wire,” respectively). Fun Home resonated
deeply with queer spectators, many of whom lauded the unflinchingly
honest, sensitive depictions of a butch lesbian and closeted gay man. The
musical won the admiration of broader audiences, many of whom identified
with a highly realistic portrait of a contemporary American family that was
deeply flawed, yet ceaselessly loving.
Fun Home’s successful transfer to Broadway was followed by one of the
most widely praised and enthusiastically received musicals in decades.
Hamilton, a biographical musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton, was
written by composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980–). Set in Colonial
America, the musical features a score that melds hip-hop and R&B with

184
 The Megamusical to Hamilton

more traditional Broadway fare, and casts actors of color as members of the
founding generation. Hamilton sold out its run at the Public in spring 2015
and moved to Broadway in July of the same year. Over the course of the
2015–16 season, the musical won a trove of awards, from the Pulitzer Prize
for Drama to several Tony Awards to the Grammy for best Musical Theater
Album. One of the hottest shows Broadway has ever seen, tickets for
Hamilton sell out months in advance. The show has proven popular with
people of all ages, backgrounds, and political affiliations. At least until it
became associated with the Democrats during the bruising 2016 presidential
campaign, it was embraced by both the political left and right. Barack
Obama, who hosted Miranda and the original cast at the White House on
several occasions, once quipped that Hamilton was just about “the only thing
Dick Cheney and I can agree on.”4
Unquestionably an excellent, well-constructed musical that appeals to a
wide range of spectators due to its artistry, Hamilton is nevertheless, like all
musicals, very much the product of its place and time. The musical resonates
as thrilling mass entertainment, and also works on a number of sociocultural
levels. At a time when the US is experiencing growing racial and class
tensions, political fractiousness, and a sense that the American dream is
untenable, Hamilton serves as sociopolitical wish fulfillment. It has come to
symbolize a rapidly diversifying if not yet fully integrated Broadway.
Hamilton has driven the form forward with its innovative score, which is
regularly called revolutionary, just as Hair was decades prior. It has been
embraced by people of different races and cultural backgrounds and, for the
first time in a long time, different ages: the Broadway cast recording of
Hamilton debuted at number twelve on the Billboard 200 (Caulfield 2015),
brought families together to listen to selections or the entire album together
and managed to make colonial American history cool among the adolescent
set. Running on Broadway at a time when Hollywood has been lambasted
for its lack of diversity, Hamilton is not only popular in its own right, but is
helping Broadway enjoy the kind of mass popularity usually reserved for
films, pop songs, and television shows.
The availability of the album on various streaming sites is reinforced by
Miranda’s embrace of social media, which he used to build interest in his first
Broadway show, In the Heights (2008). Hamilton, and Miranda himself, have
reached audiences far and wide, generating interest among people who might
never get the chance to see the production itself, through tweets, uploaded
clips, promotional material, interviews, and articles posted on social media
sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Along with television, radio,

185
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

film, and the print media, these tools have all been incorporated by the
commercial theater industry for use in advertising and promotion.
For its immense popularity and breathless critical reception, Hamilton is
hardly unique in driving home the fact that the American musical remains
an enormously viable and important entertainment form, both in the US
and now across the world. Through wars, economic downturns, the Great
Depression, terrorist attacks, and political and social turmoil; through the
advent of radio, film, television, and the Internet; through the tenures of the
Syndicate, the Shuberts, and the Walt Disney Company, Broadway is not
only not going anywhere but has grown well beyond its borders. No longer
just a muddy patch of ugly land known for its prostitutes and stench of horse
manure,“Broadway” has become an international symbol for live productions
that charm, thrill, delight, and inspire the millions of people who, night after
night and year after year, eagerly “come and meet / those dancing feet.”
Whether said feet belong to George M. Cohan, Ethel Merman, Mary Martin,
Audra McDonald, Nathan Lane, Lin-Manuel Miranda, or some future
entertainer who is currently being spoonfed while her parents stream the
original Broadway cast recording of Kinky Boots from a speaker in the
kitchen does not matter. There will always be something for everyone on old
Broadway.

186
CHAPTER 8
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

PUTTING IT TOGETHER: A STEP- BY-STEP LOOK AT

MUSICALS FROM THE PAGE TO THE STAGE
Robert Meffe

Robert Meffe lived and worked in New York City as a professional

music director, conductor, arranger, keyboardist, pianist, and
orchestrator for twenty-two years. On Broadway, he was associate
conductor for Little Women and for the last six years of Les Misérables,
and played keyboards for Evita (2012 revival), Newsies, The Phantom
of the Opera, Avenue Q, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling
Bee, Grey Gardens, and Bombay Dreams. He was music director for
national tours of Evita and The Phantom of the Opera, and associate
conductor of Les Misérables and Sunday in the Park with George.
Off Broadway, he worked on the productions Myths & Hymns, Violet,
The Prince and the Pauper, and Gutenberg! The Musical! Television
shows he has worked on include Earth to America (TBS ) and Renee
Fleming—Live at Lincoln Center (PBS ). He is currently the head
of the MFA Musical Theatre Program at San Diego State University.
In addition to playing for San Diego musical events, including
touring companies of Wicked and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,
he has established a professional/academic partnership between
SDSU, the Old Globe, and La Jolla Playhouse to develop new musical
theater.

It all begins with an idea.

Every musical that makes it on Broadway takes a unique path from idea to
fully-realized production. In the process from page to stage, there are often
enormous triumphs and dangerous pitfalls. There is frightening drama and
remarkable collaboration. There are hundreds of people with greatly disparate
skill sets who come together to push the idea to completion. Looking back on

187
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

the history of how musicals come to fruition, it is amazing that any of

them make it at all. Even though many aspects of theater-making in the
US have changed in the past hundred years, musicals are still made
because people believe in and love them—and can make money producing
them.
In the beginning, there are two things that matter: who has the idea, and
where does the idea come from? Most musicals are based on pre-existing
stories, whether fairy tales (Into the Woods), movies (Hairspray), plays (My
Fair Lady), biographies (Jersey Boys), or television shows (The Addams
Family). And many different types of people have ideas about what might
make a good stage musical. For instance, the composer Stephen Schwartz
first thought to adapt Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked into a musical that
shares the same title. Many years prior, the producer David Merrick thought
Thorton Wilder’s play The Matchmaker would make a great show, so he lined
up a creative team that included composer Jerry Herman to write what
became Hello, Dolly!
Every idea requires two ingredients to proceed: creativity and money.
Because most musicals are based on pre-existing material, the creative team
that wants to write a musical has to get permission to use someone else’s
idea. It is not enough to think that The Princess Bride would make a great
musical—you have to get the rights to do it from the person who wrote the
original book or screenplay.
Many writers avoid this step by using ideas drawn from the public
domain. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, for example, did not have to
pay royalties to the authors of the Bible when they decided to write Jesus
Christ Superstar. Some people create musicals that are completely original, as
Rodgers and Hammerstein did with Allegro and Lin-Manuel Miranda did
with In the Heights, but this is relatively uncommon, especially now: the
current trend is to develop and promote musicals that already have a built-in
audience. Even an original musical like Avenue Q trades on an audience’s
familiarity with both Sesame Street and the Muppets.
Lots of ideas for musicals get stuck right here: someone wants to write a
show, or has sketched out an idea for one based on someone’s movie, novel,
life-story, or play. But then, the original rights-holder decides they do not
want their property to be made into a musical. In this case, the project ends
before it begins.
Then again, many rights holders are looking for ways their property can
create new revenue streams. In this case, there is very little in the way of
downside to granting an option to someone who wants to make a musical

188
 Critical Perspectives

out of their work. Granting permission does not cost anything; in fact, the
writers of the proposed musical have to pay the original writer for an option.
This is completely negotiable, so one could write in financial terms regarding
gross income of proceeds from the musical. Usually, options have time
limits, so if a musical is not completed by a certain deadline, the option
automatically goes back to the original writer. But once the legal right to
musicalize a story is established, the writing can begin.

Getting it written

Creating a musical is a collaborative effort. When someone decides to write

a book, he or she can hide away in a study, an office, or a remote lighthouse
for a month or two and come out with a great American novel. But with a
musical, the three ingredients are the score, the lyrics, and the book, all of
which are often written by different people.
The score comprises all the music for the show: the songs, overtures,
entr’actes, scene-change music, and underscoring. The writer of the music is
the composer; often, the composer does not work alone on the score. It is one
thing to be able to come up with a melody; it is another skill-set entirely to be
able to write the music down so that other musicians can play it exactly as
you want it to be played. While some composers are trained musicians who
have no trouble notating their ideas in complete, specific ways, other
composers, especially those working today, have less formal training,
and thus rely on other musicians for help with notation. Still other musical
theater composers have the training, but not the time or patience for the
laborious task of transcribing their ideas, so they assemble a staff of assistants
to help.
For example, contemporary writer Ryan Scott Oliver is a classically
trained musician and professional music copyist. His scores are notated
so well that they come to the music director ready to be published. On the
other hand, when I worked with country music legend Larry Gatlin, he
told me on the first day we met that he was “not a lines and staves kind of
guy.” Because he could not notate music, Larry played guitar and sang
his songs into his iPhone, and then sent me the recordings, which I
transcribed onto paper. This way, our cast and musicians could play and
sing his songs. On yet another hand, the contemporary composer
Adam Guettel is a tremendous musician, but he feels that the notation
process interrupts his creative flow. He thus plays his ideas into a computer

189
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

software program and hires assistants to convert the data into musical
scores.
The lyricist is responsible for all the words sung in a musical. Some
composers, such as Stephen Sondheim and Cole Porter, write both music
and lyrics. Most lyricists, however, specialize in lyric writing and form a close
collaboration with a composer. Some of these collaborative partnerships are
legendary: Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, and Kander and
Ebb. Other lyricists have worked with a number of different composers
throughout their career. Jule Styne wrote successful Broadway shows with
Comden and Green (Bells Are Ringing), Sammy Cahn (High Button Shoes),
Bob Merrill (Funny Girl), and Stephen Sondheim (Gypsy).
The lyricist–composer collaboration has many different forms, depending
on the habits of the parties involved. When he worked with lyricist Lorenz
Hart, for example, Richard Rodgers always wrote the music first, because
Hart liked to fit his clever words to a specific tune. But Rodgers always waited
for Hammerstein to write the lyrics first, because Hammerstein was more
concerned with fitting specific songs into the story (to this end, Hammerstein
also wrote the script for many of their musicals). Hammerstein’s painstaking
approach became the source of friendly frustration between the two men; he
would sometimes spend weeks getting the words to a song exactly to his
liking, only to deliver the lyrics to Rodgers, who would pound out the tune
in a single afternoon.
The book writer is the least understood yet perhaps most crucial part of
the collaborative process. The book comprises the unsung words—the
dialogue—of a musical. Book writers come from all walks of life. Many are
playwrights (Terrence McNally), though some are also directors (James
Lapine), or screenwriters (Arthur Laurents). Sometimes, a book writer is
involved from the initial idea for a show, but in other cases, a book writer is
brought to a project after the score is completed. In this case, the book
writer’s job is to string together the songs, and fashion a plot around them.
Regardless of their backgrounds, the best book writers understand the
economy of words in a show. Lyrics fit to music take time to unfold before an
audience, so a libretto for a musical typically cannot have as much dialogue
as a play might.
Some composers have a long, continuous relationship with specific book
writers. Stephen Sondheim worked with James Lapine for several shows in
the late 1980s and early 1990s; together, they created Sunday in the Park with
George, Into the Woods, and Passion. Sondheim is so indebted to his book-
writing collaborators—who also include George Furth, Arthur Laurents,

190
 Critical Perspectives

James Goldman, Burt Shevelove, Larry Gelbart, Hugh Wheeler, and John
Weidman—that he dedicated his first compilation of lyrics, Finishing the
Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles,
Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, to them all.

Hearing it out loud

Once a team—a composer, lyricist, and book writer—has completed the

initial work on a musical, the next step is hearing it. For many shows, this is
the longest and most frustrating part of the journey from page to stage.
Initially, a team needs to hear their work spoken and sung aloud. It is one
thing to create dialogue and music at home on paper or a computer. It is
another thing entirely to hear your work performed by actors.
These initial hearings are often performed by friends of the writing team.
When producers come from large, multi-media conglomerates, executives
set schedules and deadlines for official readings of a team’s work. But for
most projects, this initial work is very informal: the composer teaches the
music to a group of actors, and the book writer or lyricist helps them
understand the intention of the words.
These informal gatherings are essential to the development of a show.
Writers need to have a keen, critical ear with which to listen to their own work.
It helps to have opinionated, intelligent, honest friends who will tell writers
what is working, what is not, and why. The value of the writing and rewriting
process cannot be underestimated. The vast differences between an original
first draft and the finished product are often astounding. In many ways, the
success of a show depends on the writers’ ability to think critically, accept
feedback, and produce many versions of the work to fine-tune the property
into a musical that will succeed on both artistic and commercial fronts.
Like many forms of popular entertainment, the stage musical walks a fine
line between art and commerce. There are as many ways to achieve the delicate
balance between the two as there are stories to be musicalized. Every show
walks this tightrope; every creative team has different priorities. One might
assume that producers are only focused on the bottom line, while creative
teams are more interested in creating groundbreaking art. While it would be
easy to understand the dynamic this way, such black-and-white descriptions
fall short of the reality of producing musicals, whether on Broadway, Off
Broadway, or beyond New York City. Few writers enter into the lengthy,
endlessly frustrating process of developing a musical without the hope that

191
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

there will eventually be some compensation for the effort. Similarly, it is a very
poor producer who takes on a show they do not believe has some artistic merit.

Here’s where the money comes in

The next step in the development process involves getting the show heard by
potential investors. This requires money. At this stage, the creative staff
expands from the initial composer–lyricist–book writer trio; a financial
backer or group of backers also becomes attached to the project. On the
writers’ side, the most important addition is the director. Sometimes, a
director is involved from the beginning, but most of the time a director is
brought in when it becomes time to stage a reading of a new musical. The
director has to work with the writers to create a vision for what the final
production might look like. The relationship between the director and
writers helps determine the success of a show. Many shows try out different
directors in a number of different readings, while others stick with the same
director for the entire production.
Other additions to the creative team are the music director and the music
staff. The music director becomes the “ear” of the composer. In the same way
a director has a vision for the production, a music director works with the
composer to realize the final version of the score. Other musical staff may be
added at this point, for example an arranger to create piano arrangements of
songs, dances, scene changes, and underscores.
On the financial side, the most important new member of a production is
the producer or producers. Producers wear many hats. They are responsible
for raising the money needed to produce a show. Many producers also push,
pull, and prod writers into shaping and reshaping a show to realize its
maximum artistic and commercial value.
To get a show seen by potential backers, a reading is planned. Readings of
new musicals started in the late 1960s, but today have developed into a small
cottage industry in New York. Readings range in complexity. Sometimes,
they consist of a number of actors sitting around a table in a rehearsal studio,
but others are done in small theaters, complete with props, suggested
costume pieces, and dance routines. Readings before potential investors are
important, because at this point money needs to be raised so the people
involved with the project can begin to get paid.
Oddly, the first people to get paid are not the writers, even though they
have already put an enormous amount of time and energy into the work.

192
 Critical Perspectives

Instead, funds initially go to directors, music directors, choreographers,

arrangers, and other essential people who work for hire. These creative
forces have a vested interest in a show’s success: if it moves to a commercial
venue, they stand to gain a more lucrative position with the production.
Nevertheless, they typically do not share any royalties that come from a
successful show.
The biggest hope for the writers is that a show will break even on
Broadway. If this is the case, they will all share a certain pre-negotiated
percentage of the box office gross. This percentage is called “points.” Thus, if
your royalty agreement gave you 2 percent of the gross, you would have two
points in the show. For the writers, then, the substantial investment of time
up front is a risk that can eventually pay off in the form of royalties. Such a
payout can be substantial. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer, composer, and
lyricist of Hamilton, retains five points in the box office gross of that hit
musical. At the time of this writing, Hamilton’s box office pulls in around
$1.5 million a week, so Lin-Manuel pockets approximately $75,000 every
Sunday night.
There are two primary goals to a reading. The first is to allow a director
and creative team to hear their show performed by professional actors in
front of a small audience, so they can see how it works and get feedback to
improve it. The second goal is to attract investors willing to put up money
required to move the show to the next level of development. Even the most
experienced composers have trotted their work out to wealthy businesspeople
in hope that some will be willing to contribute money. In the early 1940s,
when their partnership was new, Rodgers and Hammerstein organized
readings of their work so the Theatre Guild, their financially struggling
producer, could raise the money to get Oklahoma! into the St. James Theatre.
In those days, money was raised by producers from independent investors
for out-of-town tryouts before a commercial run on Broadway.
The difference between then and now is that the amount of money
needed to bring a musical to Broadway (called the capitalization cost) has
increased by a staggering amount, even adjusting for inflation. In his 1974
book Contradictions, Hal Prince mentions that he had to raise $300,000 to
produce West Side Story at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1957. In 2010, Billy
Elliot opened at the Imperial at a cost of $18 million. Between 1957 and
2010, inflation rose 771 percent, but the percentage change in capitalization
cost was over eight times that increase, at 6,000 percent.
In today’s market, a more likely route is to get a nonprofit organization
involved. Many nonprofit theaters are interested in developing new musicals

193
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

for both artistic and commercial reasons. An early indicator of this

trend was when the Public Theater in New York produced Hair at their new
Off Broadway venue in 1967. The resulting production became a hit
Broadway show, but because the Public had not negotiated points in the
Broadway version, they lost out on enormous revenue. The Public was thus
very careful when it moved A Chorus Line from its Off Broadway venue to
Broadway in 1975. The Broadway production made so much money for the
Public that it continues to help fund new works there. Similarly, proceeds
from Jersey Boys, which moved to Broadway in 2005, continue to help keep
the lights on at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, which helped develop the
show.
In the 1980s, Andrew Bishop and Ira Weitzman, through Playwrights
Horizons and later the Lincoln Center Theater, mentored many new creative
teams and ushered in many musicals that otherwise would not have been
picked up by traditional Broadway producers. Because they had the security
of a subscription audience and a strong donor base, they could afford to take
chances. The results were palpable: artists like Stephen Sondheim could try
out shows like Sunday in the Park with George at Playwrights Horizons
before opening it for a commercial run at the Booth Theater on Broadway.
Other writers, including Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Once on This
Island), William Finn (Falsettos), Jeanine Tesori (Violet), and Adam Guettel
(The Light in the Piazza) were mentored and produced by Bishop and
Weitzman over the years.
In our story of how a musical gets from page to stage, the path starts to
diverge here. Some shows attract the attention of commercial Broadway
producers who option them. This gives a producer or production team the
exclusive right to produce a musical in a determined window of time. Most
large-scale productions go this route. Wicked, for example, attracted the
attention of producer David Stone, who commandeered it through many
readings and workshops, and produced the out-of-town tryout for the show
in San Francisco (which was reportedly disastrous). Despite the disappointing
run out of town, Stone persevered and raised the money for the Broadway
run at the Gershwin Theatre. It was a bet that paid off: despite poor reviews
when it opened in 2003, Wicked, at the time of this writing, is still regularly
grossing over $1 million per week and remains one of the most popular
musicals on Broadway.
Other musicals attract powerful Broadway producers who, in turn, form
partnerships with non-profit organizations to spread out the cost (and risk)
for their investment. This is the path that producer Jeffrey Seller took with

194
 Critical Perspectives

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Hamilton had a workshop at Vassar

College, then headed to the Public Theater for a short collaborative run in
February 2015 before opening on Broadway in August 2015 and becoming
the hottest ticket in town.
Getting commercial producers involved is perhaps the most difficult and
frustrating part of an already difficult journey. Fortunately, there are many
ways for creative teams to get their work seen and heard. The NAMT
(National Alliance for Musical Theatre) holds an annual New Works Festival
that brings short, excerpted readings of new shows to regional theaters. The
New York Musical Festival (NYMF ) has produced over 350 new shows with
limited runs and budgets since its inception in 2004. And the BMI Lehman
Engel Musical Theatre Workshop has been training musical theater writers
since 1961. Artists who have graduated from the BMI program include
Maury Yeston, Alan Menken, and Robert Lopez. Increasingly, other creative
teams are turning to universities for readings and workshops. Solid programs
that support new musical theater exist at Pace University, Penn State,
Northwestern, and many other schools across the country.
Once the money is in place, a limited liability partnership is created, a
managing agency comes aboard, and a hiring spree commences. The director
and producers have to round out the design team. They hire designers for
the lighting, set, costumes, sound, orchestrations, and projections (if
required). A stage management team is put in place. Advertising and press
agents and marketing experts need to be hired. Sets need to be constructed,
loaded into the theater, and safely installed. Casting decisions are made, and
actors are hired. Often, actors who participate in readings of the show are
offered parts in the commercial run, but this is no guarantee. For example,
Stephanie Block did countless readings of Wicked before being replaced by
Idina Menzel for the starring role of Elphaba. On the other hand, Kristin
Chenoweth, who was also in almost every reading, was offered the role of
Glinda in the Broadway production.
As a show is fine-tuned, it might undergo a 29 Hour Reading, a Staged
Reading, a Workshop, or a Lab. These terms are often used interchangeably,
but they each have different meanings, which relate to very specific contracts
with the Actors’ Equity Association. Such contracts either provide or deny
the protection of an actor’s creative contribution to a show. A “reading”
typically refers to the Equity 29 Hour Reading contract, which limits the
rehearsal and performance for a reading to no more than twenty-nine hours.
There are a lot of other restrictions—for example, no admission, no
advertising, no sets, props, wigs, or costumes—and performances are

195
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

typically capped at three. In return, actors receive a stipend of $100 plus

basic transportation costs. Most importantly, participating actors are not
guaranteed to continue with the show, and they agree to share no subsequent
earnings that the show accrues.
If producers want to rehearse for more than twenty-nine hours, they
must step up to a Staged Reading Contract, which stipulates that producers
have to hold required Equity Principal Auditions. Minimum compensation
levels are $500 a week for actors. Actors receive health and pension benefit
contributions. In return, producers can rehearse for longer periods, add
choreography and other elements, and retain the option to capture footage
for promotional purposes. There are no “conversion rights” (see next
paragraph) for actors, who are given no guarantee that they will go on with
the show. There is also no profit sharing.
The next step up is the Workshop Agreement, which may be used for up
to four weeks and four presentations. Actors are paid between $631 and $757
a week, depending on how many days of rehearsal there are. There are health
and pension contributions and, most importantly, contributing actors retain
what are called “conversion rights.” Normally, this means that each actor has
the right of first refusal for their role. Thus, if the show goes on, the actor
must be offered the role before any other actor is. Also, the cast shares a
percentage of the gross for the show—usually a “point” in the production.
The idea for the Workshop Agreement began with Michael Bennett, who
asked many of his colleagues and friends to contribute their stories for a new
musical based on the lives of Broadway dancers. This eventually became the
mega-hit A Chorus Line. Actors in the original cast shared one point of the
weekly gross income from the show, which turned out to be quite lucrative. This
agreement with Equity was refined later in the 1970s with Bennett’s production
of Ballroom; it eventually became part of the standard contract. This Workshop
Contract has become a great source of revenue for many actors, who have put
in a lot of work on many different shows in hopes that one would succeed.
Unfortunately for current actors, Equity has revised this agreement with the
League of Producers, and created a Lab Contract. This contract takes the essence
of a workshop: it can be used for any purpose for up to four weeks with four
performances. It pays the actors more money—at present, about $1,000/week—
but it eliminates conversion rights. With this new Lab Contract in place, it is
highly unlikely that official Workshop Contracts will ever be used again. This is
an enormous loss of protection and potential revenue for professional actors.
Once casting is completed, every set piece is built, every prop found, light
hung, wig blown dry, and rehearsal completed, a musical moves out of a

196
 Critical Perspectives

rehearsal space and into the theater for technical rehearsals, or “tech.” During
tech, changes are made around the clock. This is perhaps the tensest time in
a production. Tech rehearsals are long—often up to twelve hours at a stretch.
They are dark and messy, and often excruciatingly boring for everyone
except the people who are on the spot at any given time. And because time is
money, the stakes could not be higher.
During tech, the orchestra rehearses new music, and the sound designer
makes sure that every note from the band and every word spoken by the cast
can be heard from every seat in the house. Once tech is complete, the show is
ready for its first preview. Often, a producer will invite a special audience of
friends and people in the theater community for what is called a “gypsy run-
through” of the show. This is essentially an invited audience that comes to the
final dress rehearsal before the box office starts to sell tickets to paid previews.
I attended the gypsy run-through of Ragtime at the brand-new Ford Center
for the Performing Arts in 1996. The cast came on stage before the show, and
the lead actor, Brian Stokes Mitchell, led the cast and audience in an invocation
for the theater. It was a moving moment in a venue that had recently been
rebuilt from the ruins of two old theaters.
After the gypsy run-through, ticketed customers pass through the doors.
The writers, director, and designers watch each performance, refining and
revising the show throughout previews. Many times, major changes happen
during the preview period. In my experience with Little Women, a new song
was inserted into the show, replacing another number, during the preview
period. There was no time to orchestrate the song, so I played the
accompaniment on the piano for one performance before the writers
decided to go back to the original song. As some point during the preview
period, something magical happens: the director and creative team decide
to “freeze” the show, meaning there will be no more changes in the musical.
It is smart for a team to freeze a show long enough in advance of the
opening; it allows the cast and crew to adjust to one version of the show
before the press and other opinion makers see it just prior to the official
opening.
By the time previews start, the running crew of a theater is in place. Many
people do not realize just how many people are working behind the scenes of
a musical. The website newyork.com did some research on how many people
it takes to run Wicked; they came up with thirty-six actors, ninety-four front-
of-house employees, and eighty-one backstage workers. Backstage, there are
fourteen people in wardrobe, two company managers, thirteen carpenters,
twenty-four musicians, three sound techs, four stage managers, six in props,

197
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

five spotlight operators, five electricians, and five hair and makeup artists. In
the front of the house there are three ticket-takers, three bag checkers, four
doormen, twenty-four ushers, one lottery manager, eight treasurers, two house
managers, two directresses, one chief, twelve bartenders or concession workers,
twelve porters, cleaners, and matrons, and twelve merchandise sellers, for a
total of 211 employees.
A new musical starts with an idea, and now hundreds of professionals
have a vested stake in its success. When opening night arrives, it is celebrated
with an early curtain, many gifts, congratulatory hugs, and a blowout party.
Reviews from critics are read and discussed, marketing plans are established,
and everyone hopes the show will have a long, healthy run. Yet the chances
are not good. It is a long-shot to get this far; hundreds of new musicals vie
for the opportunity to move into an empty theater. Once they do, seven of
ten Broadway musicals fail to turn a profit.
Then again, when it works, it really works. Building a musical from
written page to Broadway stage is a long, arduous process, but magic can
happen. Hundreds of professionals work together and become a close-knit
family, while giving audiences the joy and unparalleled emotion only a
Broadway musical can provide. The odds are slim, the work is hard, but
when the result is a hit, everyone benefits from the effort.

MAKING MUSICALS FOR SERIOUS PLEASURE

Stacy Wolf

Stacy Wolf is Professor in the Program in Theater and Director of the

Program in Music Theater at Princeton University. She is the author of
A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical
and Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical
and co-editor with Raymond Knapp and Mitchell Morris of the
Oxford Companion to the American Musical.

Introduction: Junior Theatre Festival and BroadwayCon

On Martin Luther King weekend in January 2016, two events took place
in different parts of the US that signaled the importance of Broadway
musicals in contemporary American culture. The first was the Junior Theatre

198
 Critical Perspectives

Festival, a gathering of 4,000 middle school-aged kids.1 In its thirteenth year,

the Atlanta-based event was the biggest ever, and included fifteen-minute
segments from musicals performed by ninety groups from schools,
community theaters, and afterschool programs across the country. The
weekend was filled out with presentations from Broadway artists, appearances
by special guests, and workshops for the participants. Though a majority of
the groups came from the southeastern part of the US —that is, driving
distance from Atlanta—others arrived by airplane, rented a van, or car-
pooled. Some groups or schools asked parents to fund the trip, others
used profits from within their organizations, and many held numerous
bake sales to raise money. Registration for the weekend cost $675 plus
hotel rooms and food for each group, whose sizes ranged from twenty to
forty children.2
In midtown Manhattan during that same weekend, during one of the
biggest blizzards on record, the first BroadwayCon conference welcomed
5,000 people, 80 percent of them female and 50 percent under the age of
thirty.3 The event consisted of panels with actors, directors, and writers from
Broadway shows including Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, and Fun
Home, and the session BroadwayCon-goers stood in line over an hour for:
Hamilton. Other panels focused on topics like diversity on Broadway and the
jobs of lighting designers, set designers, and stage managers. There was a
merchandise hall filled with t-shirts, tote bags, scripts, and cast albums, plus
photo booth and autograph sessions for access to Broadway stars. There
were singalongs and mainstage events.
Though one of the above events promoted itself as being about
performance (the adjudicated mini-musicals are the center of the Junior
Theatre Festival) and the other celebrated fandom, they both revealed the
contiguity between fandom and participation in amateur musical theater
in the US . Many fans are also amateur artists who perform in, direct,
choreograph, design, stage manage, work backstage for, or produce musicals.
BroadwayCon, modeled on Comic-Con International, would have been
unimaginable before the existence of sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and
YouTube. It was the brainchild of Mischief Management’s Melissa Anelli and
Stephanie Dornhelm, self-designated RentHeads, who teamed with Rent
actor Anthony Rapp. Either because Rapp is a powerful enough figure in the
Broadway community that he could persuade everyone in town to show up
and speak on a panel, or because Broadway artists know their bread and
butter is ticket-sales by adoring fans—many who have seen shows numerous
times—the performers were there en masse: Celia Keenan-Bolger (The Glass

199
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Menagerie, Peter and the Starcatcher), Michael Cerveris (Sweeney Todd, Fun
Home), Jessica Hecht (Fiddler on the Roof), Lin-Manuel Miranda and other
cast members of Hamilton, to name a few. The event signaled a mass national
presence for Broadway fans, many of whom traveled from far away and paid
$250 plus hotel and food to attend.
As they chatted between sessions and sang at the Disney Singalong,
BroadwayCon attendees showed themselves to be amateur musical theater
performers as well as fans. Some dressed as their favorite characters were
actually costumed in what they wore when they played the roles themselves.
Many attendees could rattle off the parts they played in high school or
community theater as quickly as they could name their favorite performer,
show, or number from Hamilton. It did not take much of a leap to the see the
tweens at the Junior Theater Festival gathered at BroadwayCon in a few years.4

Why amateur musical theater?

Both the Junior Theater Festival and BroadwayCon foster and rely on the
presence of the amateur. The word derives from the Latin amator (“lover”)
from the verb amare (“to love”),5 but also carries negative connotations: “a
person considered contemptibly inept at a particular activity.”6 Nonetheless,
hundreds of thousands of people in the US participate in musical theater for
pleasure—children and adults of every race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic
background, in every city and town from Maine to Hawaii, Alaska to Puerto
Rico. Amateur musical theater is a national performance practice.
Amateur musical theater sustains the Broadway musical, which feeds
touring shows and regional theaters all over the US . Were it not for amateur
musical theater, there would be no Broadway musical. Why? First, there
would be no artists, as virtually every professional actor, director,
choreographer, and designer began in a high school musical, a summer
camp show, or a community theater production. Second, there would be no
Broadway audiences, because a vast number of spectators see musicals on
Broadway that they already know from seeing or performing in them at
home. Third, there would be no Broadway repertoire, because licensing
companies gain considerable profit through amateur musicals—50 percent
of their gross. Even a musical that flops on Broadway—and 80 percent do—
can earn back its investment through amateur productions.
But amateur musical theater is also an activity to be valued for its
contribution to the community, and to individuals’ lives. As Tim MacDonald,

200
 Critical Perspectives

President of iTheatrics, says, “I estimate that 99% of Americans will never see
a show on Broadway. Their Broadway experience takes place in school
theaters, community theaters and regional theaters. . . . [W]e’ve experienced
musical theater programs in inner city schools, suburban schools and rural
schools. These folks don’t know who Stephen Sondheim or Christen [sic]
Chenoweth are (nor do they care) but they do have a great time putting on a
musical for their community.”7 As a low-tech, live, intimate, hands-on
collaborative practice, amateur musical theater is more akin to other direct,
unmediated events like amateur sports teams, orchestras, and choirs than to
other entertainment forms like movies, television, or video games. In this
way, amateur musical theater counters the anti-communitarian trends of
contemporary culture noted by sociologists such as Robert Putnam, who
observes that “the bonds of our communities have withered” over the
twentieth century.8 To the contrary, musical theater brings people together
in the same room, often across generations, to make something new together.
It adds art and culture to the life of the community. For the individual, it
invites imaginative creative expression; for children in particular, it develops
intellectual skills of reading and interpretation, and emotional skills of
patience, perseverance, and cooperation.9
Amateur musical theater in the US exhibits unique traits that differ from
other leisure activities and from professional theater. In most amateur
contexts, the actors and artistic team know the audience, and vice-versa. In
some situations, people move back and forth over the course of a season, at
times onstage or backstage, and at times into the audience, blurring the
distinction between those who produce and those who consume. This
community component intensifies investment and connection on and
offstage. Also, with a repertoire of Broadway musicals such as In the Heights,
Les Misérables, and The Sound of Music, amateur artists must navigate what
theater scholar Marvin Carlson calls the production’s “ghosts.” Theater “is the
repository of cultural memory,” writes Carlson. “The present experience is
always ghosted by previous experiences and associations.”10 Well known,
popular, or iconic performances, which abound in musical theater, leave a
trace. We are “haunted by the memory of that interpretation, and all actors
performing the role must contend with the cultural ghost of the great
originator.”11 A production team almost always knows the show they are
doing through the cast album, Broadway production or film version, or
YouTube clips, so they must decide whether to work against the original,
ignore it, or emulate it. On the other hand, the canon of musicals forms a
national repertoire to which amateur productions contribute.

201
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Every amateur production of a musical takes on the flavor, accent, and

racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic demographics of the local setting. Within
one place, a range and variety of theaters might be found at schools,
afterschool programs, and community theaters, each saturated with that
region’s idiosyncrasies. People move across these venues. For example, kids
perform in school shows and also participate in afterschool programs;
summer camp counselors are high school drama teachers during the school
year; a director of one community theater show produces another and acts
in another and designs another. Over time, cycles continue: a child performer
in community theater plays a lead role in her high school musical, and then
opens her own studio. Her child learns to stage manage in her studio, then
oversees musicals at a summer camp, and so it goes. Each type of theater
feeds into the local culture, and they all sustain each other.

The repertoire and licensing

Even though most of the participants in amateur musical theater are unpaid,
the scripts, scores, and musical arrangements of every show must be licensed
from the company that owns the property and distributes shares to the
composers, lyricists, and librettists. The publishing company Samuel French
was founded in 1830. The Tams-Witmark Music Library Inc., which licensed
the first high school musical (an operetta of Robin Hood), was established in
1925, and Dramatists Play Service was founded in 1936. The Rodgers and
Hammerstein Organization, the first licensing company owned by the
musicals’ own creators, began in 1944.12 As the musical theater repertoire
grew through the middle of the twentieth century, so did the licensing
companies’ properties. The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which
owned Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1950), and later
The Sound of Music (1959), profited handsomely. The pair’s repertoire was
filled with valuable cultural products that amateur artists, including schools
and community theaters, wanted to perform.
Tams-Witmark and R & H controlled most amateur musical theater
licensing until 1952, when composer and lyricist Frank Loesser (Guys and
Dolls) opened a new licensing and publishing company, Frank Music
Corporation, to control and profit from his titles.13 Two years later, Loesser
joined with orchestrator Don Walker to found Music Theater International
(MTI ) to deal with Loesser’s properties and compete with R & H and Tams.14
In 1988, former entertainment lawyer and music producer Freddie Gershon

202
 Critical Perspectives

bought the company. In 1990, he teamed up with the producer Cameron

Mackintosh, who backed Les Misérables and most of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
musicals. MTI eventually became the largest musical theater licensing
company in the world. As of 2015, it owned 300 titles, R & H owned 100,
and Tams-Witmark owned 150.15 Amateur rights account for 50 percent of
MTI ’s gross income,16 and almost anyone who directs a musical deals with a
licensors’ amateur division.
What follows is an overview of some of the most common venues for
amateur musical theater production in the US .

High school musicals

A group of 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds stands in a clump center stage. Two
boys are dressed as peasants with loose pants and suspenders and one in a
tweed hat. Two more boys are decked out as fairytale princes in velvet
frontispieces, leather boots, and swords. The girls’ characters are easier to
identify: Cinderella in her ball gown, Rapunzel with ridiculously long blond
hair, and a witch in a green mask with a hooked nose and all-askance hair
dyed purple in places. At this final dress rehearsal for Into the Woods, the
teens are attentive, arms crossed or on hips, slouched in their teenage stance,
listening to the director who stands on the floor in front of the stage. Off to
the side is a small ensemble also made up of students: piano, clarinet, flute,
violin, cello. Their leader, a teacher in the school, perches on a stool, baton in
hand, waiting for the director’s instructions. “Okay, guys,” the director says.
“We open tomorrow night. I know everyone will be nervous and excited, and
I know the energy will be there—I’ve seen it before. But I need to see it today,
too. You’ve got the notes and lines down. And you’ve worked hard to create
these characters. But let me feel your energy out here, even in the back!” She
backs up the aisle, the students’ eyes following her. This moment took place
in February 2016 at the Garrison Forest School in Baltimore, Maryland, but
it could have been at any of the many schools that did Into the Woods
in recent years.
Virtually every high school in the US, whether public, private, parochial,
urban, suburban, or rural, produces a musical each year, whether in an
auditorium, multipurpose room, or well-equipped theater, accompanied by a
single piano or a full student orchestra, wearing costumes poached from home
closets or professional, rented ones.17 Depending on the school, the musical
might be an activity kept afloat by a few enthusiastic students and a volunteer

203
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

teacher, or it might be a schoolwide extracurricular activity. It might be rehearsed

during the school day as an elective taught by a teacher, or it might be solely an
afterschool activity. It might attract young people who are not interested in
athletics, or the students involved might be equally at home on stage and the
sports field. Either way, the school musical brings the community together and
often provides a counterbalance to a school’s investment in athletics.
Teenagers learn the basics of music, theater, dance and how a show is
produced by participating in a high school musical. Most professional actors
get their start in high school musicals, though few high school stars go on
professionally. And yet, as many teachers of all age groups attest, musical
theater teaches innumerable intellectual, social, and emotional skills.
Teacher-directors welcome students with backstage interests to stage
manage, build sets, hang lights, organize costumes, help with advertising and
selling program ads. Schools in socioecomically affluent towns frequently
see parents and guardians get involved as boosters and fundraisers.
Regional awards recognize the achievements of high school musicals,
and the stakes are high in areas with large public high schools and sufficient
resources for specialty teachers. The National High School Musical Theatre
Awards, sponsored by the Broadway League and the Shubert Organization,
gathers hundreds of high schoolers whose performances have been vetted
by thirty-one local contests of 1,000 schools to compete for the Jimmy
Award.18 Students’ choice of songs to perform and each school’s representative
musical number reveal the popular shows of that year. A National Public
Radio analysis of Dramatics magazine, which has published a survey
of the most frequently produced plays and musicals since 1938, found
that Beauty and the Beast, Into the Woods, and Grease were the top musicals
in the 2010s.19 In some conservative or religious schools or communities,
parents and administrators regulate the appropriateness of certain
musicals, not infrequently censoring productions of, for example, Rent,
Sweeney Todd, and Spamalot.20 That fact that high school musicals
frequently come under attack underlines their importance in the life of a
community.

Middle school and afterschool programs

While most high schools produce a musical of some sort, middle school
productions are less consistent. Adolescents with interest in musical theater
typically participate in one of thousands of afterschool programs across the

204
 Critical Perspectives

country, some of which are free and sponsored by the YMCA , a community
center, or a church. Others are pay-to-play programs. In many ways, these
musical theater programs imitate sports programs like soccer leagues, Little
League baseball, or swim teams; similarly, they support the development of
a hobby and encourage lifelong interest. For some, they offer the potential
for a professional career.
Some of these ventures grew out of dance studios. Most are led by women
who earn their living teaching classes and directing shows. Like high school
musicals, virtually every town in the US has at least one afterschool program
of some sort.
Marilyn Izdebski’s vibrant operation in affluent Mill Valley, north of San
Francisco, is a good example. Trained as a dancer, she opened a studio and
then started directing musicals in 1979. She has directed 146 shows,
including Evita four times, Annie six times, and Guys and Dolls seven times.21
She usually casts 80 or 100 kids of all ages in a show, always in elaborate
costumes. Even the chorus members have several costume changes and
sometimes wear tap shoes. Izdebski produces at least six shows a year, one
each semester for different age groups, and two in the summer. During the
school year, the children rehearse in her studio once a week over a period of
ten weeks, and then move to a different space for tech and dress rehearsals.
Most of “Marilyn’s kids,” as they call themselves, go on to do high school
musicals and community shows, and a few become professional actors, most
typically in the Bay Area.
Marilyn is a fixture in the community, though not the only youth musical
theater game in town, and her influence over children’s lives is significant.
Children often do their first “Marilyn show” when they are six or seven and
continue through middle school, performing in twenty or more. Some
return from college or as adults to help out in the theater. Marilyn treats the
children with love and respect, and she is strict and demanding. Even a
seven-year-old knows how to audition by walking onto the stage, saying
their name and which song they are singing, and ending with a “thank you.”
For her part, Marilyn nods, says “thank you,” and writes two scores on her
worksheet: one for singing, one for “expressiveness.” Once the show is cast,
she never stops pushing, coaxing the display of emotion and passion at every
turn. One girl said, “She wants the show to get done but she’s so kind to
people and so loving underneath this rough, go-getting exterior. She’s such a
sweetheart underneath it all.”22 Her assistant, a twenty-something former
performer said, “She’s like a second mom. I’ve learned so much about how to
be in the world, if that makes sense.”23

205
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Broadway JR. licensing and materials

In 1995, MTI , under the leadership of president Freddie Gershon, launched

the Broadway JR . series of scripts and scores. According to Gershon, Stephen
Sondheim and Arthur Laurents came to his office fretting about the legacy
of classic musicals because young people were no longer performing
them in schools. Gershon had an idea: “Let’s adapt your shows for kids.
Let’s make them shorter and re-do the score to be in the range of young
voices.”24 Gershon decided to start with Into the Woods because its first
act would be playable on its own and appropriate for kids.25 He quickly
realized that kid-friendly scripts and scores ready for use by teachers
and community theater directors would sell. If MTI could provide a
“musical in a box,” schools would benefit by having readymade, pro-
fessionally edited scripts and scores, and MTI and the artists whose work
they licensed would profit for years to come.26 At the same time, MTI was
busy digitizing its materials and developing ancillary products, such as
“Rehearse Score,” a proprietary application in which a score has been
converted into Musical Information Digital Interface (MIDI ) files, which
teachers or directors can rent and use in rehearsal or share with kids to learn
their parts.27
Into the Woods took two years to make it to production, so the less
musically complicated Annie JR. was the first show MTI piloted, in a tiny
town in upstate New York. The adaptation process that was later regularized
began with Annie: a writer on MTI ’s staff (for Annie JR. it was playwright
and lyricist Jim Luigs) drafted a sixty-minute script and crafted the lyrics for
shorter musical numbers. The digitized music files simplified transposition
to kid-friendly keys, melodies, and easier harmonies. All changes were
approved by Annie’s composer Charles Strouse, lyricist Martin Charnin, and
librettist Thomas Meehan, who made revisions as necessary. The ready-to-
try version was sent to a school, community theater, or summer camp to see
if the script was easy to understand and follow, and the music appropriate
for kids’ voices. Included was an “Accompaniment CD” that could replace a
rehearsal pianist, and later, demo cd’s with children singing to help kids learn
their parts. (For Annie JR., a full orchestra recorded the score, but for Fiddler
on the Roof JR., their second show, they opted for less expensive synthesized
music.)28 Then-teacher Cindy Ripley (now iTheatrics’s Lead Educational
Consultant) directed the first production and wrote the first Director’s
Guide—a model for the how-to book that now accompanies every licensed
Broadway JR . title.29

206
 Critical Perspectives

Over the next few years, MTI reached out to other composers and
lyricists who agreed that trimming their shows for youth was worth it to
keep the properties selling, and the Broadway JR . catalogue grew.30 Other
new titles ranged from The Pirates of Penzance JR.and The Music Man JR. to
Seussical JR. and Willy Wonka JR .31 In 2004, the Disney Theatrical Group
(DTG ) began adapting their animated musicals into JR . and thirty-minute
KIDS ’ versions, expanding the catalogue even more with musicals that
kids already knew and loved, including The Jungle Book JR. and KIDS , The
Little Mermaid JR., Aladdin JR. and KIDS (both English and bilingual
English/Spanish editions) and The Lion King JR. and The Lion King KIDS .32
From 1997 to 2005, MTI licensed 20,000 productions of JR . and KIDS ’
shows.33
In 2006, Tim McDonald, who oversaw MTI ’s JR . division, left MTI (with
Gershon’s encouragement and blessing) to found iTheatrics, the company
that creates all of the Broadway JR . scripts, scores, and supplementary
materials (except for the Disney shows, which Disney Theatrical Group
constructs in-house), and organizes and produces the Junior Theater
Festival.34 Other licensors followed suit: in 2010, Tams-Witmark Library, Inc.
hired iTheatrics to develop their Young Performers’ Editions, including
adaptations of The Wizard of Oz and Bye Bye Birdie. The Rodgers and
Hammerstein Organization launched the Getting to Know Collections,
whose titles include The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, Once Upon a Mattress,
and The King and I. Both Tams and R & H also distribute supplementary
materials similar to MTI ’s.35
The Broadway JR . scripts and scores differ from full-length versions in
ways that are attuned to the needs of young people’s performances.36 First,
teachers and directors who work with kids need a show that is shorter in
duration.37 The sixty-minute format (or thirty minutes for KIDS ’ shows) is
designed to fit into a school day’s schedule. Dialogue is reduced, songs are
transposed to keys that are comfortable for kids’ voices, harmonies are
simplified, and the songs are shorter. Because most children cannot sustain
a song for two or three minutes, lyrics are edited to capture the essence
and meaning of the song in a minute or so.38 For The Music Man JR., for
example, six songs were cut, including Harold Hill’s song of seduction,
“Marian the Librarian,” and several love songs.39 In addition, shows for
young people need larger casts to accommodate as many kids as possible.
Characters with names and lines are at a premium, so minor parts are
divided into multiple roles in a JR . script. Ensembles are given as much as
possible to do.

207
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Schools and afterschool programs and community theaters that produce

musical theater with children interact with MTI and its subsidiaries across
a continuum of intensity. At one end are groups that eschew licensing
and knowingly or not perform musicals illegally without permission. To
be sure, it is easy enough to find a script, download some sheet music, and
look for choreographic and staging inspiration on YouTube. But MTI
aggressively warns prospective theater makers that doing a show without
a license is stealing. Many of its branding and outreach efforts are meant
to make doing musical theater as easy and inexpensive as possible, and
to encourage directors to purchase a license and do a show legitimately.
Most groups buy the license, rent the scripts, and do the show on their own
without further engagement with the company. Other directors take
advantage of the supplementary materials, especially when the group is
young and new. MTI strives to make amateur musical theater production
possible for any situation, even as they make money hand over fist in
the process.

Elementary schools and Disney’s influence

In 2004, Disney Theatrical Group began adapting their animated films into
thirty- and sixty-minute KIDS and JR . versions appropriate for elementary
and middle schools.40 MTI licenses their shows—eleven JR . and eight KIDS
titles as of 2016—and the package includes elaborate ShowKits with detailed
instructions on how to produce a musical from auditions through the
final performance with few resources and little or no experience. It also
includes a fully-orchestrated accompaniment cd that eliminates the need for
a pianist (or teacher with musical expertise). Though elementary school
teachers have always gathered their crew to do little plays and sing
songs from musicals, especially for holiday assemblies, Disney and MTI
have upped the ante, effectively enabling a new generation of musical
theater artists. This product was a major shift in Disney’s philosophy, as the
company began to see young people as producers of musicals, not only as
consumers.
Musical theater production in elementary schools often involves the
whole grade. At E.K. Powe Elementary School in Durham, NC , for example,
music teacher Jessica Tanner and newly-hired theater teacher Sara Bader
joined forces in spring 2016 to present The Lion King KIDS .41 The entire fifth
grade class took part, and each child could choose to perform or contribute

208
 Critical Perspectives

backstage. Auditions were intentionally low-key, and everyone who

auditioned was cast. Other kids were involved making papier maché masks,
painting the jungle backdrop, applying makeup or moving set pieces, which
consisted of brown fabric draped over chairs and tables to represent rocks.
The cast was racially diverse and at the rehearsal I watched, the children
were fully engaged. After the show, eleven-year-old Lia Pachino told me, “I
learned responsibility when I was making the hyena’s mask because I knew
it was a performance for the whole school. I had to talk to my model, and I
had to run around and get all of the materials because I wanted it to be
good.” She said of her classmates, “We put a lot of effort into it and it paid off.
We were relieved that it went so well.” She is eager to do another show, either
in the chorus or behind the scenes.42

Disney Theatrical Group’s outreach

In 2009, the Disney Theatrical Group launched Disney Musicals in Schools

(DMIS ), a program to support musical theater production in ten underserved
New York City (NYC ) public schools. By 2016 the program had expanded to
ten additional cities, where it was administered by local performing arts
centers.43 DMIS ’ gift to participating schools consists of three parts: free
licensing rights to one of the thirty-minute Disney KIDS titles, including
scripts and scores for the whole cast; the ShowKit with Director’s Guide and
the other bells and whistles; and the semester-long presence of Disney
teaching artists to work with teachers to produce the show. The Disney
Theatrical Group education team prioritized all three components, which
they deemed necessary for a school to produce its first musical. But DMIS
aims to seed self-sustaining musical theater programs—that is, “to develop a
culture of theater production within high-need urban elementary schools.”44
Disney’s model is to slowly decrease support in subsequent years, forcing
each school to harness local resources and find ways to sustain its production
of musicals. Remarkably, almost every school initially funded by DMIS has
continued to produce shows. “Disney is the gateway art,” said Kristin Horsley
of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, the site of the first out-of-NYC
program.45
While a production is taken on with the utmost seriousness and highest
expectations, every adult with whom I spoke stressed the importance of
“process over product,” and the fun of the children’s experience above all. To
be sure, every child’s answer to, “What did you think about doing the Disney

209
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

show?” was, “It was fun!” “We got to learn new dances, we got to sing
fun stuff,” said a fourth-grade Nashville girl.46
Here lies a contradiction in Disney’s engagement with musical theater and
kids: on the one hand, every aspect of the Disney Musicals in Schools program
is designed to allow Disney to control its product. On the other, the home
office knows that theater is messy and each production unique. Moreover, for
many children, there is a steep learning curve for both performance skills and
theatrical culture. The teachers at Buena Vista Elementary School in Nashville
explained that their students knew the story and songs from the movie of The
Jungle Book, which was their first play in 2014, but that none had ever been to
the theater or knew what a live play was.47 They did not know what it meant
to learn lines or blocking, portray a character, or wear a costume especially
made for them in front of an audience. Team leader and teacher Joe Ashby
found another school’s production on YouTube, which the teachers watched
with the children before starting rehearsals, and each student followed along
in his or her script. By the second year’s auditions for Aladdin KIDS, the
whole school had experienced The Jungle Book KIDS and had seen their first
play.48 This is how cultural capital is acquired.
By loosening its famously tight grip on its product and allowing schools
to produce the shows legally, Disney has increased revenue and become an
instigator of social change and youth empowerment through musical theater.
At the same time, DTG oversees its product with a sharp eye. In this way,
Disney shifted its vision to accommodate a new populist agenda. Disney
Musicals in Schools balances profit and corporate interests with philanthropy
and grassroots artistic activism.

Summer camps
Amateur musical theater production for youth continues in the summer at
sleepaway camps like the pre-professional Stagedoor Manor (attended by
Lea Michele and Natalie Portman, among others) and French Woods; at all-
around camps; and at religiously-affiliated camps, such as Jewish Ramah
camps, where they perform musicals in Hebrew, or Christian camps that
include bible study and stress social justice activities. Private schools and
community centers supplement the year-round pay-to-play programs (like
Marilyn’s), and operate short-term day camps that specialize in theater and
culminate with the performance of a musical or a revue.
The area surrounding Sebago Lake in southern Maine, for example, is
home to many sleepaway camps, including a number of all-girls, all-around,

210
 Critical Perspectives

and non-Orthodox Jewish summer camps.49 (Androscoggin, the all-boys

Jewish camp that Stephen Sondheim attended for years, is also nearby.)
Tapawingo, Tripp Lake Camp, Fernwood, and Camp Walden were all founded
in the early twentieth century by female Jewish progressive educators, and
have a predominantly privileged, predominantly Jewish population of
campers, many of whose family members have gone to the camp for
generations. Though musical theater is only one activity, all girls are required
to participate as they have since the early 1900s, so musicals ultimately shape
the girls’ experiences in profound ways. Directed and overseen by university-
age theater-major counselors, girls aged seven to fifteen present mini versions
of Broadway musicals alongside regular activities of swimming, soccer, and
arts and crafts. Each week a different age group or bunk works on their show.
They produce the show—six musicals per summer, with a few hundred
dollars’ budget per show—in five days from page to stage.
Summer camp is a special and consciously created community, a home
away from home, and the excitement, pressure, and camaraderie of musical
theater production create an even more intense bubble in its midst. Whether
or not girls are interested in musical theater, their participation inculcates
them into a middle-class habitus and gives them a window onto theatrical
production. Moreover, musical theater production is intimately tied into the
larger project of girls’ summer camp: to instill bravery and risk-taking and
develop confidence, and to encourage group cohesion and loyalty to the
camp. During my visits to camp, I heard over and over, “It’s okay if you mess
up” and “no one laughs at your mistakes,” and “everyone cheers you on.”50 As
fourteen-year-old Emma wrote, “Theater at [camp] plays a big role in our
day because it is one of the only times the whole camp is together. I think
that theater here is much more personal [than at home] because it’s imperfect
and you know everyone on stage so well.”51 The literal place exchange of
actors and audience week by week with few outsiders present makes this
occasion more than just a play.

Community theaters

By the time they reach adulthood, many people who have participated in or
seen musicals as youth are passionate about the form and elect to dedicate
countless hours outside their workday to participate in amateur productions.
The label “community theater” applies to the thousands of not-for-profit
amateur groups across the country that are typically run by a few paid staff

211
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

but mostly operate on volunteer labor. Community theaters produce

between one and eight shows a season; some have their own space; about
half belong to the 7,000-member American Association of Community
Theatres.
Every community theater incorporates the quirks and tendencies of that
region’s theater scene, whether it is the Mormon-inflected practices at the
huge family-owned Hale Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, the edgy repertoire
of Stillpointe Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland, or the wide-ranging seasons
at the Kelsey Theatre in central New Jersey, where a consortium of ten
community theaters, some of which have been running since the 1950s,
share the space.52 Community theaters are a locally-flavored national
phenomenon. Most rely on ticket sales for income, so they tend to choose
shows that appeal to their audience demographic.
Community theaters started in the US in the early twentieth century as a
way to engage citizens in their towns, promote patriotism, and instill civic
pride through performance. Today, people participate in community theater
for various reasons. Some performers, especially in communities closer to
big cities like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, see community theater as
a stepping stone to a professional career. Others did theater as children or
teens, and while they make a living doing something else, still enjoy the
creative outlet. As Kyrus, a regular director and performer who was 2016
president of the Pennington Players said, “It’s a release, we work 9-5, and
then we have a choice: go home and watch tv or take the opportunity to be
someone else and do something. And a live audience, nothing beats it.”53
Many appreciate the community aspect of musical theater and, as one actor
told me, its “forced camaraderie.”
Indeed, creating a musical is intense. As Jared, who played Seymour in
Little Shop of Horrors, said, “It is like a family. We spend so much time
together and we’re all working for something, for the same goal of making a
great show, together. We have to depend on each other and we’re very
vulnerable. By the end, it’s just devastating for it to be over.” Another actor,
Nikema, added, “Yea, post-partum.”54
Because acting in a community theater is almost always unpaid (directors
occasionally get a small stipend, and musicians, who are fewer and in
demand, often do, too), the performers are volunteers, which creates a
particular dynamic. Rehearsals must be fun, and the performer’s time must
be respected. Many community theaters accommodate the presence of
children at rehearsals, or choose shows that feature actors of all ages. Directors
who succeed in a community theater environment stress the “professionalism”

212
 Critical Perspectives

of comportment (it is easier to control than aesthetics), encouraging their

cast and crew to be on time, responsible, and to take the production seriously.
Directors also need to be teachers and coaches for actors with a broad range
of skills and experience. Everyone is expected to pitch in, load in and strike
the set and generally help out, and those who can do community theater
must have a job that accommodates weeknight or Saturday rehearsals.
In addition to the thousands of year-round community theaters across the
country, many cities also support outdoor theaters, typically in unique natural
settings, which produce shows in June. Zilker Summer Theatre in Austin,
Texas, offers a free musical each summer on a hillside that attracts thousands
of spectators, many of whom would not otherwise see a play. The Mountain
Play in Mill Valley, California, is a 100-year-old organization that produces six
performances of one show each summer in a 4,000-seat amphitheater on the
top of Mount Tamalpais. The Open Air Theatre in Washington Crossing State
Park in New Jersey, founded in the 1960s, presents thirteen shows (three
geared toward children) each summer to more than 18,000 spectators.

The amateur’s longevity

Amateur musical theater is at once grassroots, local, hands-on, and inevitably

tied to commercial interests and corporations seeking to make money at
every turn. This important contradiction tempers the utopian ideals of the
nonprofessional who does it for love. Both of the examples that opened
this article—the Junior Theatre Festival and BroadwayCon—reveal how
corporations support and enable fandom and participation. Both events
were organized and created by corporations—iTheatrics, Playbill, MTI ,
Mischief—yet formed and consolidated an engaged community. There is an
interdependence between musical theater fans and corporate capitalism.
In spite of the advent of screens, technology, simulated reality and big
data, amateur musical theater’s intimate, live, local practices are here to stay.
Whether people do it for enjoyment, cultural knowledge, community, or
professional aspirations, they gain artistic skills and knowledge of Broadway’s
repertoire. Amateur theater builds knowledgeable, enthusiastic audiences
for professional theater. When amateur artists see Hamilton, Wicked, or
Shrek on Broadway, on tour, or at the local high school, they can appreciate
how musical theater is made and the labor it requires. Involvement with
amateur musical theater as an artist or spectator is a form of civic
participation as well. What’s happening in your town?

213
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

OFF OFF OFF OFF BROADWAY: MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT

OUT OF TOWN AND REGIONALLY
Laura MacDonald

Laura MacDonald is Senior Lecturer in Musical Theatre at the University

of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. Her articles and reviews have
appeared in Studies in Musical Theatre, The Journal of American Drama
and Theatre, New England Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International,
Theatre Journal, and Theatre Survey. She is preparing a monograph
investigating the making and marketing of long-running Broadway
musicals. She has held research fellowships at the Shanghai Theatre
Academy in China (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council) and at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea
(funded by the British Council’s Researcher Links program).

In the backstage murder-mystery musical Curtains (2007), set in 1959, the

company and creative team behind the show-within-a-show Robbin’ Hood
not only have to finish their new musical and prepare it for Broadway, but
must also recast a star role when the leading lady is murdered. They are
joined at the Colonial Theatre in Boston (where many Broadway hits were
first performed) by local detective Frank Cioffi, who investigates the murder
but also becomes a show doctor, helping the creative team improve a difficult
number. The audience is also introduced to the show’s producer, a financial
backer, the choreographer, composer, lyricist, director, and a theater critic for
The Boston Globe—key figures in the development of new musicals. The
murder mystery propels the plot of Curtains, but during the performance,
audiences also witness the rehearsals, writing sessions, casting discussions,
and contract negotiations that contribute to the development of any new
musical playing “out of town” in preparation for a Broadway run.
Curtains’ self-reflexivity showcases the traditional out-of-town tryout, a
strategy adhered to for decades. In the past, it was common practice for
Broadway musicals to be at least partially written, composed, and cast in
New York City, and then dispatched (typically by train) to a tryout city like
Boston, New Haven, Washington DC , Detroit, or Philadelphia. The theaters
in these cities that hosted Broadway tryouts were otherwise filled with
national tours of hit Broadway plays and musicals, and could thus be relied
upon to attract audiences for new, untested musicals. As commercial theater

214
 Critical Perspectives

in the US struggled from the 1960s onward to compete with film, television,
and rock ‘n’ roll, taking shows out of town became increasingly expensive,
and producers keen to economize began previewing their new musicals in
New York City. Fewer national tours traveled the country. Megamusicals,
imported from Europe in the 1980s, were proven hits, and their spectacular
technical elements would only get scaled down for the road after opening on
Broadway.
At the same time, regional theaters across the US had been growing and
developing mandates that increasingly allowed for the development of new
musicals. The Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut, was
an early regional developer of musical theater, sending Man of La Mancha to
Broadway in 1965. Other regional theaters, including the American
Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the La Jolla Playhouse
in San Diego, California, continued the trend when they each presented
versions of Big River prior to its Broadway opening in 1985. By the early
twenty-first century, foreign investment was a well-established source of
financing on Broadway, and out-of-town tryouts shifted much, much further
out of town: new musicals are now tested in Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo, and
Seoul before potentially opening on Broadway. New development models
also emerged, such as Off Broadway, regional and festival laboratories,
workshops, and productions, as exemplified in [title of show], a post-modern
Off Broadway musical that transferred to Broadway in 2008.
[title of show] opens with its songwriters’ composition of the show’s first
notes and includes a conversation with the blank paper they write on.
“Broadway?” Blank Paper asks the songwriter Jeff, played by the musical’s
actual composer and lyricist Jeff Bowen. “Let’s start with off or off-off and
then you can think about the Great White Way.”55 Jukebox musicals, revivals,
or musicals with recognizable stars or source material often have an easier
road to Broadway, Blank Paper explains, but original musicals in particular
need to be developed and tested in other venues and in front of other
audiences before being deemed worthy of Broadway. By staging the writing
and rehearsal of the actual musical being performed, [title of show] chronicles
the development of an original American musical in the twenty first century.
During the show’s run at the very first New York Musical Festival (NYMF) in
2004, the company sings, “Did we do enough to get someone with money?”56
As the development process continues, the writers deliberate over casting
and writing adjustments in the song “Change It, Don’t Change It.” [title of
show] progressed from a festival favorite to further development at the
Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, before runs Off, and eventually on Broadway.

215
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Broadway has long been viewed as the site where American musicals are
made, but for more than a century, a key portion of the development process
for many of the most popular and successful musicals has involved writing,
rehearsals, and performances beyond Times Square. Though Jeff and Hunter
write [title of show] from their New York City apartments, they might as well
be in Boston like Curtains’ tryout company. For while the traditional out-of-
town tryout is now exceptional, a new musical’s road to Broadway remains a
long and difficult one, with new musicals sometimes getting stuck in
“development hell.” As this chapter explores, and as musicals like Curtains
and [title of show] demonstrate, the places musicals are tried out prior to
Broadway openings, and the reasons producers and creative teams conduct
their work out of town, have changed over the course of the twentieth
century. Pre-Broadway tryouts have become regular features of major
regional theaters’ seasons, in relationships that have the potential to benefit
both the host theater and the musical’s Broadway producers. This chapter
seeks to establish to what degree these relationships may or may not benefit
the contemporary American musical theater.

The out-of-town tryout

In the 1980 Broadway musical 42nd Street, the company of the show-within-
a-show, Pretty Lady, sings about “Gettin’ Out Of Town” as the performers
prepare to travel to Philadelphia to try their show out for audiences and
critics before opening on Broadway. Upon their arrival “out of town,” the
leading lady is injured and the unknown chorus girl Peggy Sawyer is
promoted to the star role in order to save the production. In reality, such
last-minute casting changes have helped make new Broadway stars: per-
formers like Andrea McArdle (Annie, 1977) and Sutton Foster (Thoroughly
Modern Millie , 2002) were promoted to lead roles while the musicals they
performed in were being developed out of town. The short-lived backstage
television series Smash also depicted an unknown actress, in its show-
within-a-show, being promoted to leading lady during an out-of-town
tryout in Boston. Along with casting changes, new songs are written,
characters are expanded or cut altogether, second acts are completed, and
titles are revised during out-of-town tryouts (as was the case when Away We
Go became Oklahoma! in New Haven in 1943).
In the past, tryout cities were traditionally close to New York City (Boston,
Baltimore, Washington DC , Philadelphia, and New Haven). The proximity

216
 Critical Perspectives

of these cities made it affordable for producers to transport creative teams,

performers, and sets after several weeks of rehearsal and construction in
New York City. Though West Side Story is notable for arriving in Washington
DC requiring few revisions or adjustments in 1957, creative teams and
performers typically welcome the tryout period as one during which to gain
confidence in the project, undertake revisions, rehearse new songs or
dialogue, and, most importantly, test a new musical in front of an audience
to establish how good it is and what elements might still need work. During
the tryout period, union rules traditionally permit some rehearsals of up to
ten hours in a twelve-hour period (known as 10 out of 12s). The tryout is
often the first time the company rehearses on a completed set, and may also
be when the sitzprobe—the first rehearsal with the orchestra—happens.
When tryout performances begin—whether in the past in New Haven or
at present in La Jolla, California; Hamburg, Germany; or Seoul, South Korea—
performers will typically rehearse during the day, learning new material
before implementing it into that evening’s performance. Creative teams may
be holed up in hotel rooms or the offices of out-of-town theaters, drafting
revisions based on the previous evening’s performance, while choreographers
might be running additional dance rehearsals in hotel ballrooms or the
theater’s bar, and wardrobe teams might be fitting costumes in the lobby.
Tryout theaters need a seating capacity large enough to carry the cost of
taking a musical out of town, and cities need to have a large enough theater
scene to lure experienced theatergoers to new musicals. Out-of-town tryout
audiences know that they are attending a pre-Broadway performance; the
cachet of seeing a potential hit before anyone else does can help sell tickets,
though it is not abnormal for tryout tickets to be discounted. Tryout
audiences tend to be considered useful but less discriminating than New
York theatergoers and critics, and particular cities are chosen by creative
teams and producers depending on what they feel they need to accomplish
during the tryout. Boston audiences are viewed as intelligent and valuable
for tryouts of more serious and challenging musicals, such as Stephen
Sondheim’s Company (1970). Reviewing that tryout, David Sterritt
acknowledged, in Boston After Dark, the potentially different audiences and
mused, “I don’t know if New York is ready for Company yet, but we in the
hinterlands can be grateful for another good opportunity to see where the
musical theater is and should be going.”57
Chicago remains an important commercial theater city, and its audiences
are affluent, older, and female in majority, with a good amount of tourists—
just like the audience for musicals in New York City. The Producers (2001)

217
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

tried out at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago, and during the tryout,
actor Ron Orbach, cast as Franz Liebkind, had to leave the production and
undergo knee surgery. Understudy Brad Oscar went on in his place, was
reviewed positively by the Chicago critics, and went on to premiere the role
on Broadway. Kinky Boots (2013) also benefited from a tryout run in Chicago,
at the Bank of America Theatre, where critic Chris Jones concluded: “If the
work that needs to be done gets done, ‘Kinky Boots,’ reviewed Wednesday
night, will be a good, solid, highly enjoyable Broadway hit.”58 Jones was not
wrong: Kinky Boots won the Tony Award for Best Musical and at the time of
writing is entering its fifth year on Broadway.
Producers hope for good tryout reviews from the local press, as these can
be useful in hyping a musical before it opens on Broadway. Simultaneous
with an out-of-town tryout, press and marketing campaigns will be launched
in New York to generate word-of-mouth and sell tickets for the opening on
Broadway.
Though gossip and buzz often make their way back to the Main Stem,
New York City critics generally stay away from tryouts, knowing that if one
is successful, they will eventually be invited to assess the finished product on
Broadway. The local critics reviewing tryouts are often highly regarded; the
Boston critic Elliot Norton (1903–2003) was known as the Dean of American
theater critics. Former Chicago Tribune critic Richard Christiansen was
succeeded in 2002 by Chris Jones; both writers’ opinions have been valued
by creative teams and producers. In his Kinky Boots review, Jones reported,
“The other main problem with the show at this juncture is that the stakes are
just not high enough for the [shoe factory] workers, who are a likable crew
(the ensemble is a huge asset in this show) but who dramaturgically are
overly passive. There has to be more at stake for them when the factory
nearly goes under; right now, it feels mostly like another day at the office,
except drag queens are showing up.”59 By offering such practical advice on
how to improve new musicals, many out-of-town critics effectively become
play doctors, adding their voices to the team of professional writers, directors,
and choreographers called to tryout cities to offer assistance when creative
teams struggle to resolve problems in a musical’s libretto, songs, or staging.
Aware, perhaps, of the out-of-town critic’s function, Jones followed up his
review of Kinky Boots with an article, “These ‘Boots’ Are Made for Reworkin’,”
in which he discussed the show’s challenges with its director-choreographer
Jerry Mitchell, as well as changes that had already been implemented during
the tryout. While in Chicago, the show’s book writer, Harvey Fierstein, wrote
thirty-seven new pages of script, reordering and intensifying scenes to focus

218
 Critical Perspectives

in on the lead character, Charlie Price, “whose trajectory through the story
was being eclipsed by the ebullient transvestite Lola, played with great
vivacity by Billy Porter.”60 Re-writing scenes and composing new songs can
sometimes be easier out of town, because writers and composers,
comparatively free from distractions, know the cast and have seen how the
director and choreographer are staging a new musical. Stephen Sondheim
wrote the opening number “Comedy Tonight” for A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum (1962) at show doctor Jerome Robbins’ suggestion,
after the musical had been poorly received during its Washington, DC
tryout. Robbins recommended a number telling the audience what to expect
from the musical, so Sondheim came up with a list song that Robbins
built on to physically stage jokes (George Abbott and Jack Cole were the
production’s director and choreographer).
Critic Elliot Norton once called tryout cities the cutting-room floor for
all the discarded songs and rewriting that takes place. But even with ruthless
cuts, casting changes, and show doctors, not every musical makes it from a
tryout to a Broadway opening. “Bombing in New Haven,” despite the loss of
investment, may be preferable for producers who would rather lose money
than tarnish their reputations and lose even more money by opening a flop
on Broadway.
Minimizing these risks has been a major motivation behind commercial
producers’ partnerships with regional theaters. “Enhancement money”
provided to regional theaters guarantees a producer’s involvement in any
commercial transfer, while providing an opportunity to develop and test a
new musical in the relatively safe environment provided by a regional theater’s
distance from Broadway and its reliable subscriber base as a test audience.

Early regional and Off Broadway development

In 1959, Dale Wasserman adapted Miguel de Cervantes’ life and works, the
novel Don Quixote in particular, as a television play entitled I, Don Quixote,
to great success. He returned to the material in 1965, this time to write the
musical Man of La Mancha in collaboration with composer Mitch Leigh and
lyricist Joe Darion. Numerous backers’ auditions in New York failed to attract
any producer except Albert Selden, whose family owned American Express,
and who happened to be chairing the committee in charge of restoring the
Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut. Selden offered
the creative team the chance to preview the new musical at Goodspeed at

219
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

the beginning of the summer season, close it for rewrites, and open a revised
version at the end of the summer. Broadway performers and designers were
hired, and while the initial run was not a huge success, the revised version,
with songs cut, set elements redesigned, and the intermission eliminated,
generated enough buzz to attract New Yorkers to the small-town theater.
Man of La Mancha ultimately struggled to secure a Broadway theater; it
ended up downtown at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre Off Broadway
in 1965 before an eventual move to Broadway in 1968. But the out-of-town
development in Connecticut undoubtedly made all the difference in
improving the show, and without the costs associated with a traditional out-
of-town tryout.
Developed in New York City but relatively far from Broadway both
geographically and artistically, Hair was inspired by Greenwich Village
hippies and war protests observed by the young actors James Rado and
Gerome Ragni. While participating in workshops and performing in
experimental theater downtown, the actors observed the youth culture
around them, making notes and developing their project while performing
in the play Viet Rock at the experimental Off Off Broadway Open Theatre.
Joseph Papp, founder of the Off Broadway Public Theater, selected Hair
as the inaugural production at his new downtown venue in 1967. The
director Tom O’Horgan came aboard and further shaped the musical for its
Broadway transfer in 1968. Two Gentlemen of Verona, a musical adaptation
of Shakespeare’s play with music by Hair composer Galt MacDermot, also
transferred to Broadway, from the Public’s New York Shakespeare Festival in
Central Park, in 1971. It won the 1972 Tony Award for Best Musical, and its
profitable 614 performance run helped subsidize the Public’s productions of
plays. The same approach was applied to the blockbuster hit A Chorus Line,
which was developed at the Public and transferred to Broadway in 1975,
and again to Fun Home and Hamilton in 2015. By introducing this relatively
new model, in which shows that are transferred to Broadway can help support
the Off Broadway theaters in which they are developed, Papp “and his
institution had succeeded in doing what no regional theatre had been able to
do. They were occupying Broadway as conquerors; they had seized the
initiative, and they seemed to be getting (or taking) the power.”61 Navigating
the commercial, popular realm of Broadway, Joseph Zeigler suggests, Papp
“worked by the rules of the New York game,” but was storming the citadel
from within.62 Papp and the Public thus introduced new models of musical
theater development that would eventually be taken up at regional theaters
across the country.

220
 Critical Perspectives

Zeigler calls regional theaters “an alternative theatre to Broadway,”63 and

points out how much of Broadway’s recovery in the mid-1970s could be
attributed to the energy and creativity of regional theaters: “These infusions
(some see them as transfusions) have played a part in the regeneration of
Broadway itself.”64 The Regional Theatre Tony Award, presented annually
since 1976, not only indicated that the commercial center and regional
institutions had struck a kind of peace accord, but also seemed to confirm
the regionals as a new source for new work. “The award symbolized an
embrace of the regional theatre by Broadway – and a quick hug back.”65
Unlike the single-direction out-of-town tryout, whereby Broadway-bound
productions were polished in a tryout city before returning to the center
of production in New York City, these institutional relationships are
mutually beneficial, prompting the comparison to a hug.
While regional and Off Broadway theaters have, since the 1960s,
independently generated musical theater productions that have caught the
eye of commercial producers looking for new shows to produce and
successfully transfer, the pre-Broadway development of new musicals,
sometimes with more than one regional institution collaborating, has
increasingly been negotiated by commercial producers in the very early
stages of a new musical’s creation. Though funding from the National
Endowment for the Arts or the Ford Foundation initially stimulated the
development of many regional theaters, enhancement money in the twenty
first century typically comes from commercial producers rather than the
public or a charitable sector. In turn, the not-for-profit Off Broadway or
regional theater provides a fairly sheltered creative environment and a
friendly, enthusiastic audience for musicals. The commercial producer
supporting the regional or Off Broadway development will likely serve as a
lead producer, and will help recruit additional producers and investors to
transfer the new production to Broadway. The incubating theater will also
serve as a presenter of the production on Broadway, thereby diverting
Broadway profits back to the development of new work Off Broadway and in
the regions. The institutional theaters benefit from the prestige of Broadway,
as well as the talent and reputation of the Broadway-caliber performers and
creative teams working on a new musical. These can help recruit ticket buyers
and new subscribers. Those who are rewarded with the Regional Theatre
Tony Award benefit further from national recognition.
Though this mutually beneficial, typically public–private partnership
model has been well established for decades, it has been criticized over the
years. Robert Brustein, former artistic director of the American Repertory

221
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Theater (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has argued that the commercial

arena of Broadway should ideally be entirely separate from the work of not-
for-profit theaters. “Once you confuse popularity and art, you’ve effectively
muddied important distinctions,”66 he suggested in 1992. While Brustein
acknowledged that not-for-profit theaters might struggle with limited funding,
and that it can be tempting to welcome wealthy commercial producers, he
believes that to do so is to compromise. “Commercial theaters are looking for
tryouts and you can’t make New York a final destination . . . It’s juicy, it’s
seductive and it’s very dangerous indeed. Regional theaters begin to look for
that product to bring them more income and into prominence, and it becomes
confused about its purpose and why it exists.”67 Counter to Brustein’s concerns,
the most recent leader of the ART, Diane Paulus, has sent multiple musicals
from Cambridge to Broadway, including revivals of Porgy and Bess (2011) and
Pippin (2013), as well as new musicals such as Finding Neverland (2015),
Waitress (2016), and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (2016).
Though her choices to have playwright Suzan-Lori Parks adapt Porgy and
Bess, and to collaborate with the contemporary circus company Les 7 Doigts
de la Main on Pippin, were both criticized for diluting iconic musical theater
work by George and Ira Gershwin and Bob Fosse, respectively, Paulus’s
musical productions at ART appeal to a range of theatergoers, which is an
essential criteria for a successful Broadway run. Waitress has recently followed
the trend of conventional film-to-stage musical adaptations such as Hairspray
and Kinky Boots; ART has also further developed the immersive electropop
opera, The Great Comet, following its Off Broadway premiere in 2012. Such
range in musical theater programming and development at the same
institution suggests there is scope for musical theater experimentation and
innovation to take place in the regions and at not-for-profit theaters Off
Broadway, and for these to be circulated to wider audiences through
Broadway’s commercial apparatus.
Of the twenty-eight musicals running on Broadway at the end of the
2015–16 season, half included productions developed at regional American
theaters or Off Broadway not-for-profit theaters: Aladdin, Bright Star, the
revival of Chicago, Finding Neverland, Fun Home, Hamilton, Jersey Boys, Tuck
Everlasting, and Waitress. A few, as well, have been developed by not-for-
profit theaters in Paris and London (An American in Paris, American Psycho,
Les Misérables, Matilda, and The Color Purple revival). Just six musicals were
the result of traditional commercial out-of-town tryouts in American cities:
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, The Book of Mormon, Kinky Boots, On
Your Feet!, The Lion King, and Wicked. And the long-running The Phantom

222
 Critical Perspectives

of the Opera, a holdover from the megamusical phenomenon of the 1980s,

originally transferred from the West End.68

Major regional players and further development

Chicago is now one of the most popular American cities for commercial
out-of-town tryouts, with large, well-equipped theaters ready to host new
productions, and an enthusiastic audience for musical theater. While the
out-of-town tryout is still used—as it was for Wicked, The Addams Family,
and The Last Ship—new Broadway musicals are increasingly being developed
at regional theaters across the United States. Washington DC remains a
popular tryout city, as much for commercial tryouts as for the excellent
development opportunities provided by the local regional theaters Arena
Stage and the Signature Theatre. California’s La Jolla Playhouse (Big River,
The Who’s Tommy, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Jersey Boys) and Seattle’s 5th
Avenue Theatre (Jekyll & Hyde, Hairspray, The Wedding Singer, A Christmas
Story) are both seasoned collaborators with commercial producers, and are
regular credited themselves as Broadway producers. La Jolla has even
formalized a new musical development program, where audiences are
invited to attend early workshops and provide feedback to creative teams.
Collaboration also occurs between regionals and not-for-profits, with, for
example, La Jolla and 5th Avenue co-producing Memphis after an initial
development period at the North Shore Music Theatre in Massachusetts.
Thus, before reaching Broadway, that new musical had already been tested
before three different regional audiences. Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and
Seattle’s Intiman Theatre Company similarly collaborated to develop and
produce The Light in the Piazza prior to its 2005 Broadway premiere at the
not-for-profit Lincoln Center Theater.

Who wins?

While the regional development model provides time, funding, and distance
from Broadway, it is not a guarantee of success, as regionally developed
musicals continue to flop on Broadway (Jane Eyre, Cry-Baby, Bonnie &
Clyde, Chaplin, Hands on a Hardbody, Catch Me If You Can, Scandalous, The
Wedding Singer). Some do not make it to New York City at all (First Wives
Club, Little Miss Sunshine). These failures to launch are evidence of the

223
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

value of pre-Broadway development. But while deciding that a musical’s

book, score, staging, or cast may not be ready for Broadway, theatergoers are
increasingly known to quickly spread reports and bootleg recordings
of these productions on the Internet, potentially further jeopardizing a
successful Broadway opening.
The regional development of Broadway musicals is exciting for theaters
and theatergoers across the United States. It can be a win-win situation for
the regional host and Broadway team. But with some regional theaters’
increasingly intense focus on landing a Broadway-bound musical, do local
and regional musical theater writers and composers lose out on the
opportunity to have their own work nurtured? Do regional theater audiences
consequently experience less provocative and/or relevant theater because of
the commitment to developing a musical with nationwide, if not worldwide,
appeal? Or, with the absence of a dedicated national theater in the US , and
with so many regional theaters developing Broadway-bound musicals, has
the physical grounding of the American musical in their buildings created a
kind of national theater circuit? Musicals developed in the regions and Off
Broadway have been succeeding far beyond Broadway, on national tours, but
also in licensed productions, both amateur and professional.
Conversely, British not-for-profit theaters have been redefining the
American musical canon, producing daring revivals of classic American
musicals, and transferring these productions to Broadway. Broadway benefits
from these theaters’ financial and creative resources, but the innovation
driving them is not American. The National Theatre (Carousel), the Donmar
Warehouse (Cabaret), and the Menier Chocolate Factory (Sunday in the
Park with George, La Cage aux Folles, A Little Night Music, The Color Purple)
have contributed some of the most exciting reinterpretations of American
classics in recent decades. A further shift in musical theater production also
has the potential to erode any national, American foundation, as the
development of new Broadway musicals begins to be outsourced. After
productions in Pasadena and Atlanta, Sister Act, produced by a Dutch
production company, premiered in London prior to Broadway, despite
being developed as an American musical. While written and directed
by Americans, Rocky, in German, premiered in Hamburg, Germany, and
has been embraced by its foreign incubator. It has been branded a
“German” musical by its European producers, who launched a “Rocky Goes
Broadway” marketing campaign once its Broadway opening (or transfer)
was confirmed; once on Broadway, the much-hyped production bombed
and quickly closed.

224
 Critical Perspectives

Knitting on the bus and truck tour of [title of show] is the future one
character, Heidi, dreams of. She recognizes that New York City and Broadway
are no longer necessarily a musical’s final destination. Having been drafted,
developed, previewed, and perfected far from Broadway, the most popular
and successful musicals go back on the road, whether on national tours or
scattered across regional, community, and student-run theaters. At the time
of this writing, new companies of five different musicals developed at
regional or not-for-profit theaters were being prepared for national tours.
While the originating institutional theater and the commercial producers
certainly benefit from such national tours, these companies also spread
innovation and advances in the musical theater form to an even wider
audience—whether it be the multi-ethnic casting and exciting hip-hop score
in Hamilton, first developed Off Broadway at the Public Theater, or the
stunning contemporary ballet created for An American in Paris that director-
choreographer Christopher Wheeldon first tested before audiences in Paris.
Musical theater that is created and tried out miles from Times Square may
eventually enjoy a Broadway premiere, but without what has long been seen
as crucial development and tryouts conducted Off Broadway, in the regions,
or in another country, the musical would likely not be thriving as it is into
the twenty-first century.

TODAY, BROADWAY; TOMORROW, THE WORLD: THE

“AMERICAN” MUSICAL AND GLOBALIZATION
Jessica Sternfeld

Musicologist Jessica Sternfeld received her PhD at Princeton

University in 2002. She is Associate Professor and the Director of the
B.A. in Music program at Chapman University. Her book The
Megamusical (2006) examines hit shows of the 1980s. She has chapters
on a wide range of musical theater subjects in The Cambridge
Companion to the Musical and The Oxford Handbook of the American
Musical (with Elizabeth Wollman), among others. She has written
articles and served as a guest editor for Studies in Musical Theater. She
contributed a chapter on performativity issues for Glee to Gestures of
Music Theater (2013, ed. Dominic Symonds and Millie Taylor) and

225
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

another about the musical and disability for The Oxford Handbook
of Music and Disability (2016, ed. Joseph Straus et al.). She has a
chapter in the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook to Musical Theater
Producers. Her current work focuses on the relationship between
musicals, trauma, and societal narratives of disability and over-
coming.

In 1987, the co-director of Les Misérables, John Caird, who had taken the
show from London to Broadway, helped open the “Les Mis School” in Japan.
At the time, the musical was still quite new; Caird and his fellow director
Trevor Nunn had, in conjunction with producer Cameron Mackintosh,
taken the score by Schönberg and Boublil from a modest French-language
version to British megamusical proportions in 1985, and then restaged it as
a record-breaking Broadway hit in 1987. Despite the buzz around the show
both in the West End and on Broadway, no one could have known for sure
that Les Misérables would become the long-running, internationally-
accepted cultural mainstay that it did. Mackintosh, fearless impresario that
he was, took a chance, and before the show had barely settled in for its
sixteen-year run in New York City, he sent it abroad. To put his plan in
action, he sent Caird to Japan repeatedly, for a month or so each time, over
the course of three years. At the time, there was little interest in Western-
style musical theater in Japan. The success of Les Mis would, however, change
that; Japan has since become an important musical theater center.
The Toho Company, a large entertainment conglomerate, supported the
Japanese Les Mis production, as well as the “Les Mis School.” Its goal: to teach
promising candidates “the art of musical theatre/rock opera” (Behr 1996,
144). This was no small feat; as Caird reported, “Revolution is not basically a
Japanese concept, nor is there a strong Christian tradition. We had to start
from absolute grass-roots” (quoted in ibid., 145). The trainees, some of
whom would end up in the production, studied religion, the notion of
radical protest, and nineteenth-century European history. Caird directed the
production through a translator, and worked with a team to translate the
libretto into a text that would sound native and comprehensible, while still
conveying the story and emotions of Les Misérables. The result was a Japanese
Les Mis that looked—in its sets, costumes, and production elements—just
like it did on Broadway, except for its all-Japanese cast, which performed
the piece in Japanese. As a result, Japanese audiences had an experience that

226
 Critical Perspectives

was simultaneously entirely Broadway and entirely Japanese. This feat

was the work of Cameron Mackintosh, and represented the onset of a first
wave of Western musicals that were internationalized for audiences across
the globe.
Over the next two decades, Les Mis went on to Hungary, Poland, the
Czech Republic, Israel, Australia, Iceland, Norway, Austria, Sweden, the
Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Scotland, the Philippines, Singapore,
Germany, South Korea, South Africa, Belgium, Finland, Argentina, Brazil,
Mexico, Serbia, and France. Curiously, the last was among the least likely
countries, since there was virtually no interest in large-scale Broadway-style
musicals in France—even those written by native sons. Les Mis productions
across the world were often enormous successes and major cultural events,
while the one in France was only moderately successful. Yet the occasional
box office disappointment hardly mattered: as of 2015, the official Les Mis
website boasts that the musical has been heard in twenty-two languages, and
staged in forty-four countries and a whopping 347 cities worldwide.69
More international productions of Broadway musicals followed Les Mis,
though not right away. Mackintosh staged some of his other megamusical
properties across Europe and Asia well into the 1990s; Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s Cats and The Phantom of the Opera were especially popular. Very
few producers were quick to follow Mackintosh’s example.70 Yet around
2000, the global market boomed, and since then, the international audience
for American musicals has grown at a rate so fast that some places can barely
build theaters or import shows quickly enough to satisfy demand. Leading
the way are a handful of cities in Asia.

Asia

In 1992, entrepreneurs Simone Genatt and Marc Routh founded the

Broadway Asia Company, which was among the first companies to follow
Mackintosh’s example by exporting musicals for the Asian market. Genatt
and Routh began with shows that relied more on dance and visuals than
on lyrics, and thus required little in the way of translation. Their early
ventures included Stomp and Swing, both of which were more dance concerts
than musicals. In a reverse of this exporting trend, they also imported the
Korean show Cookin’ (also known as Nanta)—in which four chefs cook
percussively to pop music—to New York’s children’s theater, the New Victory,
in 2003.

227
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

After these dance-based shows allowed Asian audiences to become

acquainted with Broadway-style productions, the Broadway Asia Company’s
focus shifted to book musicals. In 2004 they opened Rodgers and
Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music in Shanghai, and then sent it on tour to
five more cities in mainland China, and then to South Korea, Singapore,
Taiwan, and Japan over the course of a record-setting twenty-five-week tour.
This was the most ambitious tour of a Broadway musical in Asia to date. Les
Mis had visited several cities by then, but not as many and for much shorter
runs in each place (Hofler 2004). Similarly, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
played in Shanghai in 1999. But the Broadway Asia Company showed that
word-heavy musicals—whether classic or more contemporary ones—could
generate enough of an audience to support more imports and increasingly
extensive tours.
By the mid-2000s, Broadway musicals in Asia—tours, sit-down runs, and
an increasing number of home-grown productions—were hugely successful
with audiences and were thus reaping enormous financial rewards. A
journalist for the Korea Times reported in 2005 that for the Korean market—
which is currently stronger than Japan, China, or any other Asian country in
terms of interest in the genre—the trend began with a production of The
Phantom of the Opera in 2001. A production of Elton John and Tim Rice’s
Aida arrived in 2005, directed by westerner Keith Batten, featuring a cast of
Korean actors who spoke and sang in Korean. Batten told the Korea Times
that he hoped this sort of production would lead to more musicals not just
being performed and directed by local talent, but created by them as well
(“Bringing Broadway to Korea” 2005). Yet the transition from imported fare
to entertainments developed in Korea has been slow in coming—a vast
majority of musical theater in Asia is still imported from Broadway and
subsequently translated.
Nevertheless, the popularity of Broadway-style musicals has been
growing by leaps and bounds over the course of the last two decades. Korea
Times gave a rough but telling account of how the Broadway musical
has become, with shocking speed, a huge favorite in Korea: in 2002, about
120 musicals were staged around the country. In 2005, an estimate of
462 shows were staged and, in 2006, approximately 670 (ibid.).
The nexus of the Korean musical theater world is Seoul, South Korea.
Indeed, it may be safe to declare Seoul one of the most active commercial
musical theater cities outside of New York, if for no other reason than
its sheer number of theaters—a whopping 300. In contrast, Hamburg,
Germany—which is currently the leader of musical theater in Europe

228
 Critical Perspectives

outside London—has four. The target audience in Seoul is young people,

especially “young women raised on the bombast of Korean pop and the
histrionics of television soap operas” (Healy 2013, A1). These young women,
often with friends or dates in tow, arrive at theaters early so they can take
photos and videos, not just of the cast members, but of the crew and the
theater itself, as well. Runs tend to be short by Western standards; often, a hit
will run for only a few months, and then close with the aim of reopening a
year or two later, once fresh excitement can be generated.
Part of that excitement comes from what Broadway calls “stunt casting”:
using celebrities from film, television, or the pop music realm to stir interest
in a theatrical production. This practice is not occasional in Seoul—it is the
norm. A newly reopened production allows new “celebrities to be added to
the casts, which fuels repeat business; stars from popular K-pop bands
routinely sell out their performances and can earn as much as $50,000 a
night in a musical,” explains The New York Times reporter Patrick Healy
(ibid.). The musical theater culture in Korea has eagerly embraced Western
stage musicals, whether they be Broadway hits like Wicked, Grease, and
Mamma Mia!, flops like Ghost and Bonnie & Clyde, or classics like Guys and
Dolls and Man of La Mancha.
Despite what seems to be unabating demand from young Korean
audiences, most musicals lose money in Seoul, just as most do in New York.
But the industry thrives nevertheless due to those musicals that do particularly
well. Marketers have learned very quickly how to sell particular entertainments.
Most musicals are marketed as love stories or dramatic family tales, and are
aimed squarely at young adults. As a result, the musical version of The Lion
King, which is the biggest international money-maker of all time, did not fare
particularly well in Korea because most target audience members viewed it as
a children’s show. Though the threat of oversaturation looms, the market
shows no signs of flagging. In 2000, sales for musicals in Seoul were estimated
at $9 million; by 2013 that number had skyrocketed to $300 million (ibid.).
In 2005, China became a new and very promising—if still somewhat
uncertain—market for Broadway musicals. During that year, the Chinese
government passed a law granting foreign investors entry into the Chinese
entertainment industry. Although the Broadway Asia Company had already
established itself in other Asian countries and would quickly venture into
China, it was not the first to take advantage of the new law. The first to
make the leap was the Nederlander Organization, one of Broadway’s
largest production companies and theater operators. The Nederlander’s
international branch, Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment, partnered

229
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

with a Chinese production group called Beijing Time New Century

Entertainment. The joint group, newly named Nederlander New Century,
began bringing show after show to China.
In The New York Times, theater journalist Campbell Robertson noted that
in the past, China had been relatively slow to embrace the Broadway musical
trend sweeping Asia. This tentativeness was due in part to the fact that
previous ventures, which were granted no government support, had to be
produced cheaply and in English. Yet once international investors were
permitted to stage live entertainments as they wished, full-scale Broadway
productions arrived, and were performed in Mandarin and a variety of other
local languages.
Another challenge to staging Broadway musicals in China was a lack of
suitable theaters. Elaborate performing arts centers could easily accommodate
visiting dance companies and orchestras, but were typically too large for
musical theater productions. Other theaters were either too small or did not
have appropriate sound systems, or both. When musicals began to boom in
China, many theaters were built or hastily converted for use as appropriate
venues. The Broadway Asia Company (sometimes called Broadway Asia
Entertainment) followed the Nederlanders into China and began building
an infrastructure for Broadway-style musical theater there. Also, like the
“Les Mis School” that established a footing in Japan two decades prior,
“theatrical training schools” have grown up in various parts of China. These are
designed to help populate casts with Chinese (rather than visiting) talent, so
that tours can cast performers who will be understood by Chinese audiences
(Robertson 2007, E1).
The Nederlanders opened schools in China, too. In 2008, Christian
Science Monitor journalist Nancy Pellegrini reported that the Nederlander
Organization was partnering with the Central Academy of Drama (CAD ) in
Beijing to train musical theater performers. Arts training is extensive in
China, though in the past focus was typically placed on artistic endeavors
that had long been popular there: acrobatics, dance, and especially Chinese
opera traditions. Yet the CAD was designed to create musical-theater-style
“triple threats” who could sing, dance, and act in Western-style musicals.
Though China has slowly begun to embrace tours of Western musicals, they
had, at first, very little incentive to invest in home-grown talent. Generally
speaking, the Chinese have often supported artists who could prove their
worth through winning contests and prizes. There are international
competitions for classical musicians, dance companies, and other art forms,
which the country has long supported. But there are no high-profile

230
 Critical Perspectives

international prizes for musical theater performers. As Pellegrini notes, “while

violinists and ballerinas can return home with competition gold medals, actors
have fewer opportunities to win tangible accolades abroad. Without
‘international certification,’ stars don’t get born, audiences don’t buy tickets,
shows don’t get mounted, actors stay unemployed, and the theater industry lies
dormant.” With this challenge in mind, the Nederlanders developed a three-
part plan. First, they would tour Western musicals through China in hopes of
developing familiarity with and interest in the form among local audiences.
They would then develop Chinese-language versions of said musicals. Finally,
they would help develop original, sustainable Chinese musical theater. Step
one was, for the most part, successful. As of the mid-2010s, the Nederlander
New Century is working on step two, with a Mandarin-language version of the
American property Fame (ibid.) and plans for other translated shows.
The Nederlander Organization, Broadway Asia, and other similar
companies continue their work in China, seeking audiences for tours and
building a local culture of performing artists. While the former goal seems
to have been met, the latter remains very much in process. Not surprisingly,
cultural differences abound. These affect not only the content of the shows
(the adaptation of Fame mentioned above as the CAD’s first venture only
barely resembles the 1980 American film or subsequent television series),
but the rehearsal process, as well. The Vice Headmaster of the CAD, for
example, expressed great surprise about the fact that praising the performers
he taught made them work harder and strive to improve—not stop bothering
to work. Similarly, Western creative teams quickly discovered that when a
performer was late to rehearsal, he or she was accustomed to offering a
formal and elaborate apology with numerous bows.
By 2009, with China having fully embraced the imported musical, the
demand for theaters became so enormous that Beijing created a brand new
theater district, like Broadway or the West End, with thirty-two houses of
various sizes, ranging from 300 to 2,000 seats. More musicals in Mandarin
and higher ticket prices also made the Chinese market look more like
Broadway in terms of catering to a well-off, local audience (Coonan 2009).
But the creation of a truly self-sustaining, local musical theater culture in
China remains elusive; the Chinese still seem more interested in imported
shows than in supporting or training local talent and developing home-
grown ones.
As of 2015, this lack of saturation into Chinese culture has led Cameron
Mackintosh to back away from the Chinese marketplace. Nick Allott,
managing director of Cameron Mackintosh Ltd., told Bloomberg.com that

231
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

China seemed more interested in building theaters than training local talent
or creating Mandarin-language productions. The Chinese government and
private investors alike apparently saw the theaters as sound investments, but
without the talent to put on the stage or the audiences to fill the houses, there
are no profits to be had. The market is too young, added Allott, and data as
to whether or not musical theater will truly catch on in China is not yet
conclusive.
The Nederlander Organization, unlike Cameron Mackintosh, has continued
to try to make inroads in China. “The level of sophistication is growing
significantly,” Robert Nederlander Jr. noted in the summer of 2015. “We’re
confident that the Chinese market will be second only to the American
market for musical theater” (Einhorn 2015). Recent statistics support the
Nederlanders’ conviction that the time is indeed right for supporting the home-
grown boom. In 2011, over 300,000 people saw Mamma Mia! in Mandarin. Into
the Woods also had a successful run in Mandarin, and The Lion King will soon
be opening next door to Shanghai Disneyland, which is still under construction
but which promises to be a powerful tie-in to the stage musical. And The
Phantom of the Opera, a Mackintosh production that has appeared and
succeeded in most parts of the world, will arrive in the late 2010s via Andrew
Lloyd Webber’s company (ibid.). Should these productions succeed com-
mercially and critically in China, a new and increasingly large market for
homegrown productions does not seem impossible. Nevertheless, it remains to
be seen if China—such a new market with so little infrastructure to support
it—will emulate Korea in becoming a lasting home to American and American-
style musicals.

Hits and flops in Europe

One unexpected result of the international success of Broadway and

Broadway-style musicals is the potential to rework and restage shows in
other countries, even if they failed to make an impact on Broadway. Much
like Hollywood films that do not become commercial blockbusters in the
US but that connect with audiences abroad, Broadway flops—or shows that
were mildly, but not wildly, successful—can now find new homes, and more
enthusiastic audiences, far beyond Broadway. “Flops on Broadway? Fix
Them Overseas” advised a headline in The New York Times in 2011, once the
trend had become firmly established. Indeed, since the growth of the
international market for American stage musicals, productions such as

232
 Critical Perspectives

Shrek The Musical, Legally Blonde, and Tarzan have fared better in European
cities than they did in New York.
When musicals that do not fare well on Broadway are restaged elsewhere,
they are typically reworked, sometimes extensively. Problems that plagued
the original productions are addressed and, ideally, fixed. Because production
costs on Broadway are so high—typically starting at $10–$15 million, and
often costing far more than that—producers are highly motivated to
earn their investors’ money back, especially if the Broadway production
fails to turn even a small profit. Disney’s Tarzan serves as a good example
here. The musical, with a score by Phil Collins and a book by David Henry
Hwang, cost $15 million to stage on Broadway in 2006. While it ran for 15
months, it received middling to poor reviews, struggled to connect with
audiences, and closed at a loss on Broadway. But the musical found a more
loyal audience—and thus more commercial success—in Europe beginning
in 2007.
Tarzan first opened abroad in the Netherlands. Before it did, producer
Joop van den Ende and his team, with Disney’s support, made the staging
more immersive, thus covering the entire audience in what appeared to be a
dense, leafy jungle. Because Phil Collins remains very popular in western
Europe, he heavily promoted the score. Rather than a show for families with
children, the Dutch version of Tarzan was marketed to adults as the locale
for a great date night.
The new approach worked: Tarzan ran from 2007 to 2009 in a large
2,000-seat theater, pleasing Dutch audiences and turning a handsome profit.
The same production of Tarzan opened in 2008 in Hamburg, Germany,
where it saw even greater commercial success, due in part to the fact that
local excitement was generated with a television tie-in: its original leads were
chosen by the German public via a reality show titled Ich Tarzan, Du Jane.
Tarzan ran in Hamburg for an enormously successful five years, closing in
2013 and subsequently moving on to other German cities.
It was likely no coincidence that producers chose to bring Tarzan to
Hamburg; that city has become something of an important center for
musicals in Europe. In some respects, this is surprising: Hamburg is an
expensive city, and the costs of doing business there are often as steep as
bringing shows to Broadway. Theater rents are expensive, and production
crews are traditionally very well-paid. Further, Hamburg is not a capital city
that readily draws tourists for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, Hamburg’s
status as a musical theater center seems to stem entirely from savvy
marketing: it has become promoted unflaggingly as the place to see musicals

233
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

in Europe. In The New York Times in 2012, Patrick Healy reported that the
connection between Hamburg and musical theater had been steadily
“encouraged by 25 years of producers splashing television ads and billboards
across Germany, with its population of 82 million, to market Hamburg as the
home of Broadway-style shows” (Healy 2012, C1). Similar to the marketing
strategies that target young adults (but not children) in Seoul, advertisers in
Hamburg now champion musicals as entertainments that are ideal for date
nights or getaway weekends.
Hamburg’s relationship to the musical theater began earlier than it did
in most other cities. The businessman Friedrich Kurz, who was familiar with
and fond of megamusicals, brought Cats to Hamburg in 1986, and followed
it with The Phantom of the Opera in 1990. Just as some in the United States
have spoken out against the “Disneyfication” of musicals as money-making,
middlebrow entertainment, so too did intellectuals and university students
protest the coming of “bourgeois musicals” to Hamburg. While Kurz was
thrilled by the free publicity, the cultural debate continues in Germany as it
does in the US and elsewhere.
At present, there are four commercial theaters that host musicals in
Hamburg without government support. There are two government-
supported theaters, which tend to stage classic German and English plays
instead of American-style musicals. There are also more temporary
structures: the sellout production of The Lion King is housed in a large tent-
like theater that can be seen for miles up and down the Elbe River. “I worry
that these musicals aren’t producing anything of cultural significance,”
noted a local government representative (ibid.).71 Clearly, however, many
visitors to Hamburg are not as concerned; the city continues to welcome
Broadway shows, whether they made millions or lost their entire investment
in New York.
Longtime resident of Hamburg T.J. Hee has been a dancer and dance
supervisor in the thriving Hamburg theater community since 1988. He
began as a performer in Cats (Mr. Mistoffelees), then moved on to Starlight
Express, La Cage aux Folles, Beauty and the Beast, Miss Saigon, and The Lion
King. He became the permanent “Resident Dance Supervisor” for The Lion
King in 2003. His experience verifies that Hamburg’s economy partly drives
the interest in large-scale shows: “Of course there are other smaller shows
around,” he notes, but when audiences pay a lot for tickets, they want
“spectacle.” He considers The Lion King’s long-term success to be a result of
its broad appeal and the idea that the visual elements are as interesting as the
musical ones. After “more than 10 million visitors,” he reports, “it becomes

234
 Critical Perspectives

kind of like an institution.” In his experience, most of the audience is semi-

local; they come from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Many Germans
have seen the show multiple times, he adds; like long-running megamusicals
in New York, some of the stability—the institutionalization—comes from
life-long fans. When asked about the possible American or British aspects of
these hits, he says those elements are generally consumed by a German
aesthetic and the simple fact that the shows are performed in German. The
shift to a German-feeling tone rather than an imported one may be supported
by the increased local talent pool; Hee says in the mid-1980s, when the trend
began, most performers came from the US and England, but now there is a
large population of German performers.72
Long before Hamburg became a musical theater center, there was
London’s West End, where some shows that fare poorly on Broadway find
more enthusiastic audiences. For example, Legally Blonde ran for a lackluster
eighteen months on Broadway from 2007 to 2008. It was generally
disliked by critics and ignored by the Tony Awards, but it succeeded both
commercially and critically in London, where it ran from 2009 to 2012.
Jerry Mitchell, the director of both productions, did not change anything
about the show; he credited its success in the West End to a more
receptive audience and a smaller (not larger or more elaborate) theater.
It was also helpful, of course, that in the West End, production costs to
mount and run the show are a fraction of what they are on Broadway because
of steep US union fees and other production factors (including
the fact that some West End shows receive government support) (Healy
2011, AR 1).

Brazil

Joining the American musical theater import game gradually, but in recent
years very enthusiastically, is Brazil, by far the most popular place in South
America for musicals. In 2005, The Los Angeles Times reported that Brazil
supports both imported American products and “home-grown, often quirky
Brazilian musical shows” (Johnson 2005). Productions tend to share
performers, producers, and directors, and the audience supports both types
of theater as well, apparently caring more “about the quality of the finished
product than the ‘purity’ of its pedigree” (ibid.). Brazil has a long-standing
interest in musical theater, staging Follies-like revue shows in the 1930s and
1940s, and bringing in Broadway standards as early as the 1960s. Politics,

235
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

including a distinctly anti-American view, squelched the trend for decades;

megamusicals like The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, and Beauty and
the Beast recently brought interest back. A small handful of impresarios also
served as translators, directors, and performers, creating a small but active
theater scene.
The boom grew into the 2010s, then hit a severe setback with a national
recession around 2014. “Before the recession,” The New York Times noted in
2015, “producers feverishly licensed musicals, and Brazilian television stars
clamored for the prestige of starring in a Broadway import or a Brazilian
original” (Wolfe 2015). But thanks to the economic problems, ticket sales
plummeted, costs rose, and the industry had to figure out how to cut corners
to survive. Performers now often work for no salary, taking a cut of the box
office instead. But box office income alone cannot support a show; usually
large corporations—now no longer interested—sponsored theater. The
Times noted that in 2015, Nice Work If You Can Get It and The Full Monty,
both with themes of economic hardship, continued to draw crowds while
other spectacle-based shows struggled (ibid.). It remains unclear what will
happen to the Brazilian theater scene but if the economy recovers, and
interest in American culture continues, it may yet thrive again.
Seoul is expensive but the market is thriving; Hamburg serves a smaller
and more captive audience; Brazil supports large-scale entertainment when
it can. Yet in all cases, franchising shows makes sense, especially considering
the changes that have taken place in the commercial theater realm in the
United States. In the 1990s, Times Square was renovated and made more
appealing to national and international tourists. To redesign the famously
grungy and unwelcoming area, the city invited entertainment conglomerates
to develop and stage entertainment properties on Broadway. While this
certainly helped Broadway expand its appeal to a global market, the downside
has been enormous increases in costs—not only to secure a theater, but to fill
bigger and newly renovated houses, pay competitive salaries, and fill
thousands of seats. Tickets now cost much more, and producers need to
keep shows running for longer and longer stretches just to break even, let
alone turn a profit.
In such a hotly competitive and enormously risky field, franchising
is logical, if also distressing to some, who have condemned the practice
of “ ‘McTheater’: a soulless chain of identical productions that destroy
local creativity and deprive individual companies of artistic freedom.” In
response to such concerns, many productions now allow for stagings to be
updated and changed. But regardless of whether they are or are not,

236
 Critical Perspectives

the musical theater industry continues to thrive, not just on a local level,
but newly on a global one that is growing all the time (Sternfeld and
Wollman 2011, 118).
At the moment, as we have seen, the global market thrives (or is at least
undergoing all sorts of growth and experimentation) in the Netherlands,
Hamburg, Seoul, some cities in Japan and China, and Brazil. But international
expansion happened remarkably quickly, in only a few decades. Thus, a few
decades from now, the global market for American musicals is likely to have
shifted entirely, and grown exponentially. Where will new markets develop,
and how will they, in turn, influence Broadway? At the moment, Broadway
musicals are here to stay—not just in New York City, but across the globe, as a
thriving and culturally influential commercial and creative American export.

INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO STUDYING THE

STAGE MUSICAL
Elizabeth Titrington Craft and Joanna Dee Das

Elizabeth Titrington Craft is Assistant Professor of Music at the

University of Utah, where she teaches courses on twentieth-century
music, music of the United States, and musical theater. Her research
appears in the journal Studies in Musical Theatre and the volume
Crosscurrents: American and European Music in Interaction, 1900–
2000, ed. Felix Meyer et al. (2014). She is currently working on a book
tentatively titled Yankee Doodle Dandy: George M. Cohan’s Broadway
and the Making of American Identity.

Joanna Dee Das is Assistant Professor of Dance at Washington

University in St. Louis, where she teaches dance history, performance
studies, and modern dance technique. She received her PhD in history
from Columbia University and subsequently held two postdoctoral
fellowships in dance studies at Stanford University and Williams
College before joining the WU faculty. Her research interests include
dance in musical theater, African diasporic dance, and the politics of
performance in the twentieth century. She is the author of Katherine
Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (2017). Her writing has also

237
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

been published in the Journal of African American History, Journal of

American History, Dance Research Journal, Studies in Musical Theatre,
and TDR .

What comes to mind when you think of studying a stage musical—say, The
Sound of Music? To quote from that show, were we to “start at the very
beginning,” we would turn to the production itself. Yet when it comes to
musicals, what constitutes “the production itself ” is not immediately clear.
The stage musical is a multifaceted form, made up of drama, music, and
movement. It is also ephemeral and unfixed, in that one musical can have
multiple productions, all of which are different.73 The Sound of Music, for
instance, premiered on Broadway in 1959, and since then has toured, been
revived both professionally and in student and community theater
productions, and been made into a beloved Hollywood film. All of these
versions of The Sound of Music are different—so which will you choose to
investigate? When you decide, you might then want to consult some kind of
text or artifact, such as a published script, published score, or sound
recording. Yet these sources, too, have limitations. After all, what occurs in a
performance may not be precisely what is written in a script and score. The
stage musical’s openness and multidimensionality make research about the
genre a challenging as well as fascinating and creative endeavor.
Until very recently, most scholars dismissed musicals as middlebrow
popular entertainments that were not worth serious consideration.74 At
the turn of the twenty-first century, however, scholars from a range of
disciplines—including musicology, ethnomusicology, theater, performance
studies, dance studies, and American studies—began producing books and
articles on the significance of musical theater. This essay introduces some of
the approaches scholars have taken. It invites you to consider ways to analyze
and interpret the stage musical—in other words, to examine what makes a
show work and what questions it raises about our culture.

Analyzing a show: Book, music, movement, and visual elements

Imagine sitting down in a theater for a performance. The usher has just
handed you a program, and you have a few minutes to flip through it before
the show starts. While doing so, you are likely to see a list of the acts, scenes,

238
 Critical Perspectives

and/or musical numbers. Much like the table of contents in a book, the
program conveys important information to the spectator about how a
musical is structured. When you set out to study a musical production, take
note of its form. It may be divided into acts and scenes or organized in some
other fashion. Consider also the list of characters, noting how many there
are, what roles they play, and how they relate to one another.
Surveying a musical’s form is a step toward understanding its message
and purpose. Like other types of theatrical productions, the musical’s script,
frequently called the book, offers the most direct explanation of the show’s
story, or plot. As you would with a play or another piece of literature, ask
yourself how the book writer employs literary elements and techniques to
create layers of meaning. What themes emerge? How do the various
characters speak, and what does their dialogue say about them? What
broader messages does the story seem to offer?
Of course, the musical numbers are the hallmark of a stage musical.
Unlike a “straight play,” a musical’s plot points, character arcs, and emotions
are often revealed through song. Musical numbers can bring us into the
world being depicted onstage or give us access to the inner realm of a
character’s thoughts. To study a show’s music, musicologists and other
scholars might use a written score, along with recordings like a cast album.
Those with musical training may turn to techniques like formal analysis,
which they apply to examine the musical structure; harmonic analysis,
which they apply to chord progressions; or motivic analysis, with which they
consider how musical ideas in the score are linked and developed. But one
need not have extensive musical training to incorporate musical analysis. We
can all make useful observations that help us better understand the functions
and importance of a show’s music.
To begin, listen to the songs and consider the lyrics. Whether by making
the audience chuckle at a witty line or by vividly painting a mental image,
musical theater lyricists use rhyme, imagery, and other poetic and literary
devices to catch a listener’s ear and convey meaning. Listen also for elements
of the music. Sound conveys emotions and ideas beyond what can be
expressed in words. Can you identify any musical instruments? What effect
do they have? Consider what musical styles the show employs overall. It may
be a rock musical, for example, with electric guitars and drums, or its music
may be influenced by jazz, opera, or other genres. Are the individual songs
written in similar or contrasting styles? See what observations you can make
about melody (the singable tune), harmony (the different notes or voices
that support the melody), tempo (the speed of the music), rhythm (the beats

239
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

or stresses used), dynamics (the volume of the sound), texture (the number
and layering of voices and instruments), timbre (the quality of the sounds),
and form (the song’s structure). Notice whether there are reprises—musical
numbers that repeat and recall earlier ones—and what function they serve.
Take note of how many songs there are, who sings them, and the vocal ranges
of the different characters. The leading man, for example, may be a tenor
with a higher voice, or a baritone or bass with a lower voice, with different
implications for how that character is perceived as a result. Ask yourself
what decisions the composer made and how they serve the musical’s story
and themes.
If you are able to compare the written book or score with a cast album or
live performance, you might notice differences. Performers often take
liberties with musical directions, pitches, or even words as they add their
own touches. Stars like Ethel Merman, Nathan Lane, and Audra McDonald
have always held great power, both to attract audiences and to shape the
meanings of songs and shows through their interpretations. Two stars may
deliver the same song very differently. Performance, whether live or on film,
provides another realm in which to consider words and music.
Studying a musical’s choreography can also shed light on the production
as a whole. Thinking about choreography means examining not only the
formal dance numbers, but also how people use their bodies throughout
the show. Dance and movement can advance the plot, communicate
emotion to the audience, and reveal aspects of characters’ personalities or
relationships. Unlike dialogue, lyrics, and music, however, choreography is
rarely written down. So, how do we study the choreography without a textual
record?
As you might suspect, attending a live performance of a musical is ideal.
When you do, you can see patterns onstage and sense the energy produced by
moving bodies. Witnessing a live performance is not always possible, however,
so film is another option. Photographs and reviews can also be valuable.
Though photographs depict performers in static poses, they often reveal the
choreographic style of the show. And some dance and theater critics are good
at describing movement and making it come alive on the page.
To analyze movement, begin with description. As you watch a live
performance or film, or look at photographs, record your observations about
what the performers are doing. Look at the actual steps being performed. Are
there lots of turns, kicks, or leaps? What about the shapes the dancers’ bodies
make—are the movements curved or angular? Do the performers form
patterns on the stage? How do the characters interact physically? Think, also,

240
 Critical Perspectives

about the tempo of the movement: Do the dancers move slowly, or do they run
and jump with excitement? Once you have made your observations, take a step
back and reflect on how dance and movement seem to serve the show overall.
The visual elements of a show—sets, lights, costumes, props, and special
effects—are also indispensable to telling a musical’s story. Sets help establish
the time, location, and atmosphere of a show: the small Russian village of
Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof (1964); the gritty New York City streets in
West Side Story (1957); the enormous junkyard in Cats (West End, 1981;
Broadway, 1982). The lighting design can also help define the space. It
concentrates the audience’s attention on certain parts of the stage or on
certain characters: if one character stands in a spotlight while another
crouches in the shadows, we are being told something. Lighting, like a set,
indicates something about the mood. Do the lights saturate the stage in
warm colors, giving a sense of brightness and happiness? Or are the
characters bathed in depressive, dark blue light?
Costume design helps ground the audience in a specific location and
historical moment while communicating something about the characters.
Whether a character is old-fashioned or a trendsetter, a conformist or a rebel,
his clothing will provide clues before he opens his mouth. Special effects serve
similar functions to set, lighting, and costume design while also dazzling the
audience with spectacle. The falling chandelier in The Phantom of the Opera
and helicopter in Miss Saigon drew attention in the 1980s and early 1990s,
while the numerous LED video projection screens and aerial stunts in Spider-
Man: Turn Off the Dark attempted to take theatrical special effects to a new
level in 2011.
Let us take a look at a specific scene to practice analyzing the various elements
of a production. In the Heights (2008) tells the story of a Latino community in
early twenty-first-century New York City. In Act I, the character Abuela Claudia
sings “Paciencia y Fe” (“Patience and Faith”), in which she recalls moving from
Cuba to New York City in 1943.75 Visual elements, music, and choreography
convey Claudia’s experiences as an immigrant and help the audience understand
what she means by “patience and faith,” a phrase her mother often used. As
Claudia begins the song, the lighting changes. A spotlight focuses exclusively on
her, making the background set, a cityscape of Washington Heights, disappear
from view. The new lighting also shows the audience that this scene takes place
not in the present, but instead in Claudia’s memory.
As Claudia sings, the chorus enters, donning period costume to signal a
shift to this earlier era. They occupy the shadows: they are ghosts of Claudia’s
past, not live characters. Music and dance aid in setting the scene. The song

241
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

is a mambo—a musical style originally from Cuba—and it is punctuated

with harsh brass chords when Claudia sings of the discrimination she
experienced as a newcomer to the US . The dance chorus mixes mambo steps
with aggressive, sharp gestures symbolizing the unwelcoming culture she
encountered. Using more than just words, the scene shows how “paciencia y
fe” helped Claudia bridge old and new worlds in 1943, and how they help her
face new challenges in the present.76

Charting a show’s development

Although the analytic tools discussed so far focus on a musical’s final

product, many scholars have studied a show by focusing on its creation and
development. Entire books have been written about how specific musicals
made it to the stage.77 Most musicals go through extensive development and
revision before the official premiere, whether on Broadway, in London’s
West End, or elsewhere. Looking at how a musical evolves can help you
understand it not only as a finished product, but also as a creative process
where many factors must be balanced and compromises made to achieve a
single, coherent vision. You might trace a show’s trajectory from early drafts,
readings, workshops, or “out-of-town tryouts” through to a later stage.
The business of musical theater is also important to a show’s development.
You might investigate, for example, how a show was financed, or which
entertainment company was behind it. The stories of many musicals come
from another medium—novels, plays, or movies—and the process of
adaptation offers yet another area for study. For example, how did La Bohème,
a nineteenth-century Italian opera by Giacomo Puccini, become Jonathan
Larson’s 1996 rock musical Rent? What changes were made when Disney’s
1994 animated movie The Lion King was adapted for Broadway in 1997? A
musical’s backstory can shed light on both the musical itself and, more
broadly, the commercial theater industry.
You can further understand a musical by studying the people who created
it, including the composer, lyricist, director, choreographer, and designers.
Composer George Gershwin started out as a song plugger for a Tin Pan
Alley music publishing company—that is, he would promote songs by
playing and singing them for buyers and performers looking for material.
Knowing this bit of personal history not only gives us insight into Gershwin’s
biography but also might spur us to look for stylistic elements of Tin Pan
Alley in the scores of his shows. You may also want to take into account the

242
 Critical Perspectives

education and training of members of the creative team. A set designer with
a background in architecture, for example, may bring a different sensibility
than one trained in visual art. The lives of performers also reveal much about
a musical. Their accounts of the rehearsal process and the experience of
performing onstage bring the vibrancy of human experience to the story,
making the musical come alive in our imaginations.
Researching individual lives is perhaps the easiest way to learn about a
musical’s development. Several composers, directors, choreographers, and
performers have written memoirs or have had biographies written about
them. Online websites contain biographical information and photographs.
Newspapers and magazines often publish profiles of artists. Some more
prominent figures, such as Richard Rodgers or Jerome Robbins, even have
their own archives, where you can view their notes, letters, and other material
from their lives and careers.

Analyzing consumption and reception

Thus far, we have looked at approaches to studying the musical that focus
on the show itself and the processes that developed it. By analyzing
consumption and reception, you can also consider the relationship between
a show and its audiences. This approach helps you learn more about how
stage musicals function as commercial enterprises and fit into the broader
culture.
In consumption studies, scholars analyze how a show is marketed and
how people “consume” a show as a commodity. As the term “show business”
implies, musical theater is not only an art form but also a business venture
that needs a paying audience to survive. Though not all musicals are for
profit, even those performed in not-for-profit or community theaters must
appeal to audiences. Producers and members of the creative team frequently
consider how their show will appeal to audiences and develop marketing
strategies to convince potential theatergoers to buy tickets.
How a show is marketed can tell you more about to whom a particular
musical appeals and why. The 2009 show Memphis, which centered on an
interracial romance between a white man and a black woman in the 1950s,
made deliberate attempts to attract a black audience. The marketing team
played clips of the female lead singing the number “Colored Woman” at sites
in predominantly black neighborhoods in New York City, including street
fairs, beauty salons, churches, and community centers. The producers also

243
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

created the “Inspire Change” program, which brought students from city
public schools to the musical, and encouraged their parents to attend as well
(Healy 2010, A1).
Images or graphics featured in advertisements can be informative. A
poster for the 1996 revival of Chicago showed six women in fishnet stockings
and cleavage-revealing black tops, suggesting that the musical had an erotic
element and was geared toward adults. The posters for 2008’s Shrek
The Musical, on the other hand, featured characters from the family-
friendly Dreamworks film, signaling that the musical was appropriate for
all ages.78 The rise of social media in the early twenty-first century has given
marketers a new promotion tool. When the musical Next to Normal, a
show about mental illness, opened on Broadway in 2009, the topic initially
seemed to scare off audiences. After six weeks, the box office was only
filling about 72 percent of seats. In a daring move, the producers hired a
digital marketing agency to start a Twitter campaign, and an adapted version
of the show was “tweeted,” 140 characters at a time, over the course of
35 days. By the end of the campaign, Next to Normal had over a million
followers on Twitter and was filling 90 percent of its seats on a regular basis
(Newman 2009, B4).
Reception studies address how various audiences receive and interpret a
musical within their own social contexts. Theater critics form the first line of
reception, evaluating productions for their readers. Examining reviews is
thus an important way to understand a show’s popularity and how well (or
poorly) it captures the zeitgeist of the era. Opinions may vary: one writer
might extol a musical for its depiction of contemporary gender dynamics,
while another might focus instead on the unoriginality of a musical’s
choreography.
It is important to balance critical reviews with other aspects of reception,
such as statistics on ticket sales. While the financial records of many shows
have been lost or discarded, magazines such as Variety report on sales figures.
Similarly, you can learn the number of weeks a show played in a Broadway
theater through the Internet Broadway Database (IBDB.com) or Playbill
Vault (playbill.com/vault). Critics might dislike a show that audiences
absolutely love, as was the case with the 2003 musical Wicked (Dvoskin 2011,
374–6). In such cases, you may seek to understand the reasons for the
disparity.
You can also attempt to gauge consumption and reception by studying
audience demographics. By looking at ticket prices for a particular show, for
example, you may be able to estimate the audience’s average income level.

244
 Critical Perspectives

Producers and theater owners have adopted techniques to help them learn
about the age, gender, race, income, educational background, ethnicity, and
other characteristics of a show’s audience. There are challenges to be aware
of when trying to analyze demographics, however. The Broadway League
(the trade association for the Broadway theater industry) only began
collecting and studying audience data in the 1990s (Lyman 1998, E7).
Previously, musical productions had few ways to learn about their audiences.
Furthermore, the Broadway League publishes data for Broadway as a whole,
not for particular plays or musicals, and it relies on voluntary audience
surveys to learn such information (Hauser 2013, 52).79 Therefore, it may not
be entirely accurate or comprehensive. Beyond Broadway, it can be difficult
to glean information about audience demographics, but reviews in local
newspapers are often at least a starting point.
Ultimately, studying reviews, financial figures, marketing materials, and
demographics can tell you only so much about why a musical succeeded or
failed and what kind of impact it made more broadly. In order to answer
these questions, you may want to follow the lead of scholars who have
studied shows’ historical and social contexts.

Evaluating historical, social, and cultural contexts

Musicals speak to their times, whether directly or indirectly, and thus a

show’s historical context is critical to understanding its meanings. Oklahoma!
and On the Town, for example, both opened on Broadway during the Second
World War. On the Town told of Navy sailors on wartime leave in New York.
The context of the Second World War was equally important, though, for
Oklahoma! Even though its early twentieth-century frontier setting was far
removed from the global conflict raging outside the theater walls, Oklahoma!
promoted homespun values in the heartland, and many spectators viewed it
with wartime concerns in mind.80 As you study a musical, ask yourself what
was happening around the time of its performance that might have affected
its creation and reception. This can be true for revivals as well as original
productions: the 2002 revival of Oklahoma! carried new resonances in the
wake of 9/11.
In addition to considering the historical context, you may delve into a
musical’s treatment of social issues such as race, class, or gender. Many
musical theater scholars use social and cultural analysis, in which they apply
a particular critical lens—such as feminism or literary criticism—to the

245
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

study of a musical. Because musicals often respond to the concerns of

contemporary society, they are fertile ground for such approaches.
When looking at musical theater through a sociocultural lens, consider
who has had access to the industry through its history and which roles they
have occupied on both sides of the footlights. Race and ethnicity, critical
issues in twentieth-century history, are important to musical theater history.
It is a telling coincidence that another name for Broadway is the “Great
White Way,” as Caucasian Americans have long held positions of power in
the industry and filled seats in the theaters. Other groups, however, have
played important roles. Jewish American creators and performers have been
prominent in the history of the American stage musical since its inception.81
There is a rich tradition of African American musicals, despite the fact that
they were relegated to segregated spheres of creation, production, and
reception for much of their history.82 And vital traditions of ethnic theater—
productions by and for immigrants, in their native languages—flourished
from the nineteenth century well into the twentieth alongside the
“mainstream” stage.83
Consider also the gender identities of a musical’s creators and performers.
Like Jewish Americans, gay men have been disproportionately represented
among musical theater’s creators, performers, and audiences, and several
scholars have looked at musicals through the lens of gay culture.84 Class is a
less studied but important barrier to participation in musical theater,
especially as ticket prices have increased throughout the twentieth century
and into the twenty first.
In addition to thinking about participation and access, you might also
consider issues of representation—how characters and groups of different
races, ethnicities, genders, or other modes of identity are depicted onstage.
What messages does a particular musical send regarding contemporary
societal debates? How might those messages differ for audience members of
different backgrounds and identities? Minorities are often depicted through
stereotypes, whether positive or negative, and musicals tend to reflect the
limitations of the era in which they were created. When Show Boat first
premiered in 1927, it was considered progressive, but from a twenty-first-
century perspective, its depictions of African Americans are mired in
stereotypes. Whiteness has historically been considered a default—stories
about white characters are seen as universal rather than as being about a
particular racial or ethnic group—but recent scholarship shows that
whiteness, too, is represented in significant ways through particular
strategies.85 Issues of gender and sexuality offer another fruitful realm of

246
 Critical Perspectives

study, especially given the musical’s traditionally strong emphasis on

heterosexual romance.86 How does a musical reinforce or challenge social
norms?
Finally, you might consider alternative readings of a musical. One book
on the American musical, for example, explores the genre’s potential
for queer affinity for lesbians.87 Other scholarship describes how early
twentieth-century African American musicals spoke to black and white
audiences in different, even coded ways. The 1921 show Shuffle Along,
for example, reproduced many egregious stereotypes of minstrelsy,
including the use of blackface, but also included satirical or “signifyin(g)”
commentary on white American culture through jokes that only African
American audiences understood (Johnson 1987, 133).88 If you adopt
different perspectives, you will likely find varying, subtle meanings beneath
a show’s surface.
You need not limit yourself to the issues listed here. While race, ethnicity,
class, gender, and sexuality are tremendously important lenses, so too are
depictions of disability, age, religion, region, and politics. Follow your own
observations and instincts.

Collecting evidence

As you have probably noticed, studying a musical’s many facets involves a

wide range of types of evidence. Further, sometimes even basic texts and
evidence are not readily available. Carrying out research on musicals requires
ingenuity, flexibility, and determination.
Viewing a performance is an important way to gather evidence about a
musical. A live performance gives you a sense of the show’s style and mood.
You can see and hear how all of the elements—visual, choreographic,
musical, verbal—come together. You can observe an audience’s reaction to
the show and get at least a sense of the demographics represented.
Yet there are some problems with relying on live performance as your
only source of analysis. One is obvious: the performance disappears as soon
as it is over. You have to hold tight to your memories as you write about a
show after the fact, and memory can be notoriously fickle. In addition,
directors and performers often make different decisions about how to
interpret and perform a musical. Dance, costumes, lighting, and even
elements of the music and script may vary widely from production to
production. Further, if you write about a show solely based on your one-time

247
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

observation, you may miss how the show comes across overall. Perhaps the
performers were having an off night the evening you attended, and the songs
fell flat. Maybe a snowstorm prevented more people from attending, and so
the theater seemed empty.
Watching a film of a stage musical, whether a glossy Hollywood movie or
an unauthorized fan video posted online, eliminates some issues with live
performance and creates new ones. Because you can watch a film repeatedly,
you do not have to rely on your memory as much. This may allow you to
write a more precise analysis of a choreographic sequence or correctly copy
down the lyrics of a song. Yet films cannot capture the energy of a stage
musical, because a crucial element is missing: the audience. A stage musical
involves give-and-take with audience members; as mentioned above, stage
performers will sometimes improvise lyrics, dialogue, or movement based
on the mood in the theater. Also, a film musical can differ dramatically from
a stage version. The 1972 movie Cabaret, based on the 1966 Broadway
production, changed the nationality of the main character, Sally Bowles;
eliminated a subplot about a budding romance between an elderly couple,
Herr Schultz and Fräulein Schneider; and cut several song-and-dance
numbers. Finally, viewing a film cannot solve one of the main problems
with viewing a live show: you only see one iteration of the performance.
Whether you examine a stage or movie version, you must balance the
authority of your analysis with the knowledge that other versions of the
show exist.
Along with performances, published scripts, scores, and cast albums are
indispensable sources. Still, keep in mind that performances may not follow
published scripts and scores precisely, and a studio-produced cast album has
been edited for audio-based circulation and only captures one particular
performance. Moreover, the published score is usually a piano-vocal score that
condenses the full score, performed by a variety of instruments in the pit
orchestra, to one that can be played on a piano. Delving into a musical entails
creative use of both published and unpublished materials.
When studying contemporary musicals or those in the relatively recent
past, ethnographic approaches and oral history can be valuable sources of
evidence. Ethnography involves the study of a human society or culture,
usually through some kind of firsthand, experiential research. You might use
participant-observation fieldwork to learn about the practices and culture
surrounding musical theater, watching and taking notes on rehearsals and
performances, conducting interviews with people involved in the production,
and even participating as you research (a fun excuse to sing along to your

248
 Critical Perspectives

favorite show tunes!). Oral history similarly involves interviews. You might
talk with members of a musical’s creative team, cast, or audience to learn
about a production. Audio recording equipment can help you preserve
interviews. Ethnographic practices involve ethical responsibilities, especially
obtaining the permission of those to be observed or interviewed ahead of
time.
Archival sources, generally taken to mean unpublished or out-of-print
historical documents and objects, also give insight into a musical. Whether
contained in an official archive or a shoebox in someone’s garage, materials
such as letters between members of a creative team, pieces of original sets
and costumes, program booklets, or reviews in a local newspaper provide a
road map through the world of a show. Archival sources are particularly
valuable for studying the creative process. A published score or cast recording
tells you about the final product, but the archive tells you how the musical
was made: it might include lyrics that were dropped, a sketch of a costume
idea that was discarded, or a photograph of a performer doing a dance that
the choreographer cut before opening night. Archival documents can aid
you in studying elements of a musical such as lighting design, which may be
difficult to chart from viewing a performance alone. And if a musical’s score
or script was never published, archival research may be the only way to
obtain a written record of what audiences saw and heard.
The digital revolution has changed the nature of research. Many archives
have been digitized, making their materials widely accessible for the first
time. One such archive, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, includes the
collections of over forty newspapers dating back to the eighteenth century,
including many African American newspapers as well as The New York
Times, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. Websites like
Playbill.com, Broadway.com, and BroadwayLeague.com offer news and
information on current and past Broadway productions.
With all of these sources, you must keep in mind whose history is being
told and what other stories are overlooked given the current limitations of
scholarly evidence. The voices of the creative team ring loudest in published
materials and archives; we have few records of the stagehands and crew
members who made the production happen. We have memoirs of star
performers, but not of chorus-line dancers. We rarely know individual
stories of audience members—what their motivations were for attending
and how they felt about a performance. Musicals that made it to Broadway
and had successful runs are more documented than those in smaller venues
or those that “flopped.”

249
A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical

Conclusion

The interdisciplinary nature of the stage musical and range of available

approaches makes musical theater research a challenging, exciting field of
study. There are countless ways to “read” a musical. The subject invites
creative, wide-ranging, or even collaborative scholarship—like this essay,
co-written by scholars trained in music and dance history.
The ways of studying stage musicals continue to expand as new sources
and approaches emerge. Although this art form is predicated on live
performance, the digital revolution has transformed the art, business, and
scholarship surrounding musical theater. Technicians can mix sound in
a theater in real time, affecting the audience’s aural experience. Motion-
capture technology promises new options for documenting choreography.
Technology has also allowed for new types of spectacle, even as it has shown
its limitations. Websites like YouTube.com and social media platforms like
Facebook have opened new avenues for marketing and research, while tools
like ProQuest Historical Newspapers have transformed the landscape for
studying older musicals. Scholars in the twenty-first century have more
options than ever for combining and creating approaches to make new
contributions to this thriving field of inquiry.

250
NOTES

Chapter 1

1. The terms “Broadway,” “Times Square,” and “New York’s Theater District”
are often used interchangeably, but there are geographical distinctions to all
three. A small segment of the avenue named Broadway cuts through Times
Square, a neighborhood located in midtown Manhattan. Many of the large
commercial theaters that have been built in or near this neighborhood are
not, in fact, located on Broadway proper, but instead on various side streets
to the east or west of the avenue; they are nonetheless referred to, both
collectively and individually, as Broadway theaters. The “Broadway theater”
designation has been assigned to any theater in New York that has more
than 500 seats and hosts productions eligible for Tony awards. While the
majority of so-called “Broadway theaters” are located in or near the Times
Square neighborhood, some are not. The Vivian Beaumont Theater, for
example, is located at Lincoln Center on West 65th Street, far north of
Times Square.
2. http://www.theatrehistory.com/american/hornblow01.html (accessed July 30,
2013).
3. The first census in the United States was not taken until 1790, and estimates
vary widely regarding the population of New York in the mid-eighteenth
century, especially since some take into consideration the entire metropolitan
area and some, like the one offered here, only include New York County. The
population of the entire metropolitan area in 1849—including New York, Kings,
Queens, Richmond, and Westchester counties—was, by Jackson’s estimation,
approximately 36,000 people.
4. http://www.granburyisd.org/cms/lib/TX01000552/Centricity/Domain/287/
Fact_Sheet_U5_Growth_in_Population.pdf (accessed August 1, 2013).
5. These figures are for Manhattan only; the five boroughs that currently
comprise contemporary New York City were not consolidated until 1898.
6. Mates notes that there was “no stigma . . . attached to a lady seen at a play” in
the early years of American theater, and that women in fact contributed to
the code of conduct within the theater through behavior and particularly
flamboyant dress (1962, 64–7).

251
Notes

Chapter 2

1. My thanks to Gillian Rodger for her advice and assistance on this section. For
a more in-depth discussion of nineteenth-century burlesque in the US , see http://
www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195314281.001.0001/
acref-9780195314281-e-1270?rskey=uYIhbW&result=38.
2. Pastor’s early life is inconsistently documented. Some sources list his birthdate
as 1834, others as 1835 or 1837. His father was either a Spanish or Italian
immigrant who worked either as a barber, a musician, a grocer, or a perfumer.
All early biographical details about Pastor should be taken with a grain of
salt.
3. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraid=9.
4. In the first decades of the twentieth century, during the onset of the Great
Migration, the population of black New Yorkers in the five boroughs nearly
tripled, growing from approximately 60,000 in 1910 to approximately 152,000 by
1920. The population more than doubled in the next decade, leaping to
approximately 328,000 by 1930.
5. Charles Hamm notes that musically and stylistically, coon songs are difficult to
distinguish from ragtime songs, since both were “brash, spirited, slightly
syncopated, breezy [and] almost always humorous,” though coon songs were
written and performed in dialect, “with a text somewhat less than complimentary
to blacks” (1979, 321).

Chapter 3

1. Seasons on Broadway begin in the fall and continue through the spring of the
following year.
2. Special, star-studded editions of the Follies appeared on Broadway as well in
1927, 1931, 1936, 1943, and 1957.
3. The Shubert Organization controls seventeen of the forty Broadway theaters
currently in operation; several that the Shubert brothers did not build were
acquired later in the twentieth century.
4. http://www.ascap.com/100.aspx#1914
5. http://www.actorsequity.org/aboutequity/timeline/timeline_1919.html
6. http://archives.nypl.org/scm/20858#bioghist.
7. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200038853/default.html.
8. Contemporary demographic breakdown courtesy of the Broadway League’s
2013–14 audience study: http://www.broadwayleague.com/index.php?url_
identifier=the-demographics-of-the-broadway-audience.

252
 Notes

9. Cinderella musicals focused on working-class female characters who—as the

result of hard work, optimism, and gumption—succeed in love and business by
the end of the show. Often named for their female protagonists, Cinderella
musicals were enormously popular through the 1920s, and are seen to reflect
both the country’s robust economy and the changing roles for American
women during that decade.

Chapter 4

1. http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression. (accessed October 27, 2015).

2. The Hippodrome itself proved too big to sustain during the Depression era, and
was razed in 1939.
3. http://www.broadwayleague.com/index.php?url_identifier=season-by-season-
stats-1 (accessed November 5, 2015).
4. All statistics culled from ibdb.com (accessed November 5, 2015).
5. Show titles and dates all from Woll 1989, 135–53.
6. My thanks to Ryan Donovan for his input on the subject of dance in 1930s
Broadway musicals.
7. Like many American folk tunes, “Frankie and Johnny” was based on actual
events. In the song, Frankie learns that her man has been sleeping with another
woman, so she kills him. In Gershwin’s adaptation, she does so in error.
8. Founded in 1918, the Theatre Guild was an organization run by a board of
directors, which selected and produced “high quality, noncommercial American
and foreign plays.” http://thetheatreguild.com/about/ (accessed December 7, 2015).
9. A new wave of controversy began after the composer Stephen Sondheim wrote
a letter to The New York Times arguing that the changes playwright Suzan-Lori
Parks and the director Diane Paulus made to Porgy and Bess were foolish and
condescending to audiences. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/
stephen-sondheim-takes-issue-with-plan-for-revamped-porgy-and-bess/
(accessed January 20, 2016).
10. http://www.kwf.org/foundation/marc-blitzstein/50-foundation/blitzstein/641-
the-cradle-will-rock (accessed December 10, 2015).
11. http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/
presentations/timeline/depwwii/unions/ (accessed December 21, 2015).
12. http://www.illinoislaborhistory.org/labor-history-articles/memorial-day-massa
cre?rq=memorial=20day=20massacre (accessed December 21, 2015).
13. http://www.coleporter.org/bio.html
14. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2012/07/6132084/lorenz-hart-
inside-out (accessed January 13, 2016).

253
Notes

Chapter 5

1. For more information on Hollywood’s response to the Second World War, see
Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World
War II Movies (Koppes and Black 2000). For more information on the radio
during the Second World War see Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of
Propaganda During World War II (Horton 2002).
2. http://www.shmoop.com/civil-rights-desegregation/timeline.html (accessed
February 23, 2016).
3. http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/summer/irving-berlin-1.
html (accessed February 24, 2016).
4. Ibid.

Chapter 6

1. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/198559?redirectedFrom=teenager#eid
(accessed April 12, 2016).
2. Information provided in this section is drawn from my previous work on Off
and Off Off Broadway’s contributions to the American stage musical in the
postwar era, in my books The Theater Will Rock (2006) and Hard Times
(2013).
3. Much of the material in this section is adapted from my book The Theater Will
Rock, as well as my article “Busted for Her Beauty: Hair’s Female Characters,”
which can be accessed at: http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/academics/
centers/hitchcock/publications/amr/v43-2/wollman.php (accessed May 3,
2016).
4. This section is adapted from the introduction to the article “Women in the
Music Industry in the 1970s,” which can be accessed at: https://www.
gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/seventies/essays/women-and-music-
industry-1970s (accessed May 3, 2016).
5. Material from this section is drawn from chapter two of my book Hard Times
(2013).
6. This lyric has been changed by Sondheim in revivals to “I could understand a
person / If he said to go away / I could understand a person / If he happened to
be gay.”
7. The material about the city’s fiscal crisis is drawn from chapter nine of my book
Hard Times.
8. For more on the departure of craft and industry workers from Times Square in
the 1960s and 1970s, please see chapter six of Timothy R. White’s book Blue
Collar Broadway: The Craft and Industry of American Theater (2015, 162–200).

254
 Notes

Chapter 7

1. http://www.nycgo.com/articles/nyc-statistics-page (accessed June 2, 2016).

2. Statistics courtesy of the Broadway League: https://www.broadwayleague.com/
research/grosses-broadway-nyc/ (accessed July 12, 2016).
3. For more on the reception history of Wicked, see chapters six and seven
of Stacy Wolf ’s Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical
(2011).
4. http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/272964-obama-hamilton-
is-the-only-thing-dick-cheney-and-i-agree-on (accessed July 14, 2016).

Chapter 8

1. Some of this material appears in a different form in my chapter, “Broadway

Junior,” in Childhood and the Child in Musical Theatre (Leve and Ruwe,
forthcoming).
2. http://itheatrics.com/jtf/ (accessed July 26, 2016). The Junior Theatre Festival
has proven to be so successful that they are launching a West Coast version in
2017.
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/theater/a-multitude-of-fans-with-a-
high-regard-for-broadway.html?_r=0 (accessed July 26, 2016). http://www.
nytimes.com/2016/01/25/theater/broadwaycon-carried-on-even-as-broadway-
went-dark.html (accessed July 26, 2016). http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/
theater/broadwaycon-to-expand-to-javits-center-next-year.html (accessed
July 26, 2016).
4. BroadwayCon surpassed all expectations and moved to the Javits Center in
2017 to accommodate more attendees. http://www.broadwaycon.com/
(accessed July 26, 2016).
5. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/amateur
(accessed July 24, 2016).
6. Ibid.
7. Tim MacDonald, personal email, April 24, 2013.
8. Putnam 2000, 402.
9. See Cerniglia and Mitchell 2014, 129–45.
10. Carlson 2003, 2.
11. Ibid., 66.
12. http://www.samuelfrench.com/; http://www.tamswitmark.com/about/; http://
www.dramatists.com/text/contact.asp; http://www.rnh.com/our_history.html
(accessed August 31, 2015).

255
Notes

13. Riis 2008, 245.

14. http://www.mtishows.com/content.asp?id=1_2_0 (accessed August 31, 2015).
Also see Riis 2008.
15. http://www.tamswitmark.com/shows/ (accessed August 31, 2015).
16. Carol Edelson, personal interview, New York, October 19, 2012. The other half
is professional productions.
17. See Chapman 2011, 392–407. The National Public Radio analysis of Dramatics
magazine estimates 12,000 high schools have theater programs. See http://www.
npr.org/sections/ed/2015/07/30/427138970/the-most-popular-high-school-
plays-and-musicals (accessed July 26, 2016).
18. https://www.nhsmta.com/pages/participating-theaters (accessed July 26, 2016).
19. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/07/30/427138970/the-most-popular-
high-school-plays-and-musicals (accessed July 26, 2016).
20. Commentator Howard Sherman has been on the front lines of these issues. See,
for example, http://www.americantheater.org/2015/01/06/why-i-care-about-
censorship-on-school-stages/; http://www.splc.org/article/2014/08/censorship-
takes-the-stage-topical-plays-draw-criticism-from-officials; http://www.
broadwayworld.com/article/Two-High-School-Theater-Controversies-Make-
National-Coalition-Against-Censorshipss-List-of-Top-40-Free-Speech-
Defenders-of-2014-20141027 (all accessed July 26, 2016).
21. http://www.marilynizdebskiproductions.com/past-shows (accessed July 16,
2015). I thank Marilyn for her generosity in speaking to me and allowing me to
observe auditions and rehearsals.
22. http://www.marilynizdebskiproductions.com/marilyn-short-film-sam-stoich
(accessed July 1, 2015).
23. Ibid.
24. “Who Is Freddie Gershon?” (June 2012). http://www.freddiegershon.com/
FreddiePrintBioJune2012.pdf (accessed June 10, 2013).
25. Quoted in Papatola 2005, 13–14. Also see Perlov 2009, 6–7.
26. Robert Lee, personal phone interview, August 27, 2015.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. http://schools.nyc.gov/offices/teachlearn/arts/Bway%20JR/Why_We_Tell_
FINAL-LD.pdf (accessed August 23, 2015); http://itheatricals.com/bio_pdfs/
Cynthiabio.pdf (accessed August 23, 2015); http://www.itheatricals.com/
history.html (accessed August 24, 2015).
30. MTI has also developed School Editions of some titles—full-length, cleaned-
up versions for high schools. These include Rent and Les Misérables, for
example. On the pilot production Rent School Edition at Stagedoor Manor
summer camp, see Rapkin 2010.

256
 Notes

31. http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2006/May/html/mad-lettheshow.
html (accessed November 29, 2015).
32. Though MTI licenses and sells the product, Disney creates their own JR . and
KIDS ’ scripts as well and their “ShowKit” materials. See my article, “Not Only
on Broadway: Disney JR . and Disney KIDS Across the US ,” in The Disney
Musical: Stage, Screen, and Beyond ( Rodosthenous 2017).
33. Papatola 2005, 13.
34. Gershon, personal interview, December 11, 2014. I thank Freddie Gershon for
his generosity in speaking to me and Carol Edelson at MTI for her help.
35. http://itheatrics.com/adapting-broadway-musicals/ (accessed August 27,
2015).
36. For a description of the process, see http://itheatrics.com/adapting-broadway-
musicals/ (accessed August 28, 2015).
37. I also discuss the difference between full-length and JR . musicals in my article
on Disney JR. and Disney KIDS .
38. Robert Lee, personal interview, August 27, 2015.
39. http://www.mtishows.com/show_detail.asp?showid=000223 (accessed August
30, 2015).
40. Some of this material appears differently framed in “Not Only on Broadway:
Disney Junior Across the US ,” in The Disney Musical: Stage, Screen, and Beyond
(Rodosthenous 2017).
41. http://www.opendurham.org/buildings/west-durham-graded-school-no-2-ek-
powe-school-elementary-school; http://museumofdurhamhistory.org/
beneathourfeet/landmarks/EKPowe (accessed July 27, 2016).
42. Lia Pachino, phone interview, July 27, 2016.
43. DMIS resembles another successful NYC -based musical theater outreach
program: Broadway Junior. Supported by the Shubert Foundation, Music
Theater International, and the New York City Department of Education,
Broadway Junior was the brainchild of MTI Cofounder and CEO Freddie
Gershon and supports the production of Broadway Junior titles, including
some Disney shows, at a handful of NYC public middle schools each year.
44. Cerniglia and Mitchell 2014, 140.
45. Kristin Horsley, personal communication, May 5, 2015.
46. J. Ashby, personal communication, May 29, 2015.
47. The Tennessee Performing Arts Center sponsors school visits to its theaters for
kids to see a professional play, but some schools lack the resources to organize
permission slips, bus rental, and so on to get the children downtown. Joe
Ashby, personal communication, May 7, 2015. I thank TPAC and DMIS
participating teachers for their generosity in welcoming me to Nashville, and
Lisa Mitchell for her help and advice.

257
Notes

48. Buena Vista Enhanced Option Elementary 2015, personal communication,

May 7, 2015.
49. Some of this material appears differently framed in my article “ ‘The Hills Are
Alive with the Sound of Music’: Musical Theater at Girls’ Jewish Summer
Camps in Maine, USA ,” Contemporary Theatre Review (forthcoming).
50. Personal correspondence, July 2012. I want to thank the camps’ directors for
welcoming me to observe rehearsals and performances.
51. Emma, personal correspondence, July 2012. Most of the girls to whom I spoke
and who wrote me notes did not share their last names.
52. https://www.hct.org/online/; http://www.stillpointetheatre.com/; http://www.
kelseytheatre.net/ (all accessed July 27, 2016).
53. Kyrus, personal interview, January 23, 2015. I thank the community of artists at
Kelsey for their time and generosity, and for welcoming me and allowing me to
observe auditions and rehearsals.
54. Jared, Nikema, personal interviews, October 2012.
55. Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell, [title of show] Original Cast Recording (New York:
Ghostlight Records, 2006); https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/dmusic/cloudplayer/
web?ie=UTF8&albumAsin=B002O4W9G8&playNow=1&ref_=dm_ws_pm_
bb_pa_xx_xx#albumDetail/%5Btitle+of+show%5D+−+Original+Cast+Record
ing/TITLE+OF+SHOW+ORIGINAL+CAST+RECORDING/
TITLE+OF+SHOW+ORIGINAL+CAST (accessed March 6, 2016).
56. Ibid.
57. David Sterritt, “ ‘Company’: Amusing, Inventive, Hummable,” Boston After Dark,
April 1, 1970, 4.
58. Chris Jones, “REVIEW: ‘Kinky Boots’ at Bank of America Theatre,” Chicagotribune.
com, October 17, 2012. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-kinky-
boots-review-chicago-column.html (accessed March 10, 2016).
59. Ibid.
60. Chris Jones, “These ‘Boots’ Are Made for Reworkin’,” Chicagotribune.com,
November 1, 2012. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ott-1102-
jones-loop-20121101-story.html (accessed March 10, 2016).
61. Zeigler 1977, 229–30.
62. Ibid, 231.
63. Ibid, 1.
64. Ibid, 268.
65. Ibid, 269.
66. Alvin Klein, “State Is a Testing Ground for Broadway,” The New York Times,
April 19, 1992, sec. N.Y. / Region. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/19/nyregion/
state-is-a-testing-ground-for-broadway.html (accessed March 10, 2016).
67. Ibid.

258
 Notes

68. Two not-for-profit theaters—Lincoln Center Theater and Roundabout Theatre

Company—each had a revival running on Broadway, and five musicals had
opened cold on Broadway.
69. http://www.lesmis.com/uk/history/facts-and-figures/ (accessed October 13,
2015).
70. For more on the early days of sending identically staged copies of shows
abroad, see Joe Brown, “McMiz: Mass Marketing the ‘Musical Sensation’,”
Washington Post, July 3, 1988; and Prece and Everett 2008.
71. Michiko Kakutani, in an editorial for The New York Times, agrees. She laments
that where we once sent the world our best cultural material, like My Fair Lady
and plays by Eugene O’Neill, we now export Cats and Baywatch, and myriad
“trash.” She makes no room for the notion that anything contemporary (she
writes in 1997) has artistic merit. See “America Used to Put Its Best Cultural
Foot Forward . . .” The New York Times, June 8, 1997.
72. Hee, personal communication.
73. We would like to thank Elizabeth Wollman for inviting us to co-author this
essay and Ryan Bañagale for his thoughtful feedback on an earlier draft.
On the unfixed nature of musicals, see Kirle 2005, xx, 1–20, 125; and
Lovensheimer 2011, 20–31.
74. “Highbrow,” “lowbrow,” and “middlebrow” are terms describing cultural levels
with both class and racial connotations. “Highbrow” refers to the purported
taste of the intellectual and cultural elite for arts such as the opera, symphony,
or classic works of literature. “Lowbrow” refers to cultural products associated
with the working classes, or the masses, like comic books, professional
wrestling, and tabloids. “Middlebrow” culture falls in between. The term
“middlebrow,” which like “lowbrow” is generally considered derogatory, arose
in the mid-twentieth century to refer to cultural products that enjoyed
widespread popularity, such as musicals and Book-of-the-Month clubs. For
more information, see Levine 1988 and Rubin.
75. “Abuela” is Spanish for “grandmother,” and Abuela Claudia is a grandmotherly
figure for several characters in the musical. You can view a short clip of
“Paciencia y Fe” from the Broadway production of In the Heights, posted by
“In the Heights Broadway,” May 19, 2009, at https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=qo911wdE3rk
76. For further discussion of themes of immigration in this scene and In the
Heights as a whole, see Craft 2014, 274–303.
77. Examples include bruce mcclung, Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musical
(2007); Tim Carter, Oklahoma! The Making of an American Musical (2007);
Dominic McHugh, Loverly: The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (2012); and Paul
R. Laird, Wicked: A Musical Biography (2011).
78. “Chicago Broadway Revival (1996),” accessed January 27, 2017, ovrtur.com/
production/2882788, “Shrek The Musical images,” accessed January 27, 2017,

259
Notes

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/shrek-the-musical/images/18754962/title/
shrek-musical-poster-photo.
79. In addition to publishing on the demographics of the Broadway audience, the
League publishes reports on audience demographics for touring Broadway
productions, Broadway’s economic impact on New York City, and the economic
impact of touring Broadway. “Research Reports,” The Broadway League, http://
www.broadwayleague.com/index.php?url_identifier=research-reports-1,
accessed July 24, 2014.
80. Many discussions of Oklahoma! comment on its historical context. Scholarship
focusing especially on how it spoke to wartime concerns includes Wilsch Case
2006; Kirle 2003; and Schiff 2014.
81. See for example Bial 2005 and Most 2004.
82. See for example Riis 1989 and Woll 1989.
83. See for example Haenni 2008 and Koegel 2009.
84. See for example Miller 1998 and Clum 1999.
85. See for example Hoffman 2014.
86. See for example Wolf 2011.
87. Wolf 2002.
88. See also Krasner 2002, 239–88. For more on Henry Louis Gates’s term
“signifyin(g)” as it applies to African American performance, see Dagel Caponi
1999, 22–3.

260
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. Chapel Hill
and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Atkinson, Brooks. “The Play: Design and Dance in an ‘American Revue’ That
Represents Modern Taste in Artistry.” The New York Times, October 6, 1932, p. 19.
Bagli, Charles V. “After 30 Years, a Rebirth Is Complete.” The New York Times,
December 4, 2010, P.A17.
Baldinger, Scott. “Marketing Broadway as a Cool Spot.” The New York Times, April
14, 1996, H5.
Barnes, Clive. “ ‘Hair’—It’s Fresh and Frank.” The New York Times, April 30, 1968,
p. 40.
Barron, James. “100 Years Ago, an Intersection’s New Name: Times Square.” The New
York Times, April 8, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/nyregion/100-
years-ago-an-intersection-s-new-name-times-square.html?pagewanted=print
Beckert, Sven. The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the
American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2001.
Behr, Edward. Les Misérables: History in the Making (New York: Arcade Publishing,
1996).
Bernheim, Alfred L. The Business of the Theatre: An Economic History of the
American Theatre, 1750–1932. New York: Benjamin Blom, [1932] 1964.
Bernstein, Iver. The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American
Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990.
Bial, Henry. Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Bianco, Anthony. Ghosts of 42nd Street: A History of America’s Most Famous Block.
New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
Block, Geoffrey. “The Melody (and the Words) Linger On: American Musical
Comedies of the 1920s and 1930s.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Musical,
edited by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird. Second edition. Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 103–23.
Block, Geoffrey. Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to
Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. Second edition. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009.
Bohlen, Celestine. “Broadway Shows Rebound, But With Fewer Tourists.” The New
York Times, October 11, 2001, p. E1.
Bordman, Gerald. American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle. Third edition. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001.

261
Bibliography

Bowen, Jeff and Hunter Bell. [title of show] Original Cast Recording. New York:
Ghostlight Records, 2006. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/dmusic/cloudplayer/
web?ie=UTF8&albumAsin=B002O4W9G8&playNow=1&ref_=dm_ws_pm_
bb_pa_xx_xx#albumDetail/%5Btitle+of+show%5D+-
+Original+Cast+Recording/TITLE+OF+SHOW+ORIGINAL+CAST+RECOR
DING/TITLE+OF+SHOW+ORIGINAL+CAST (accessed March 6, 2016).
“Bringing Broadway to Korea,” Korea Times, September 1, 2005.
Brinkley, Alan. “The Legacies of World War II .” In Major Problems in American
History Since 1945, edited by Robert Griffith and Paula Baker. Third edition.
Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2007, pp. 16–24.
Bristow, Eugene K. and J. Kevin Butler. “Company, About Face! The Show That
Revolutionized the American Musical.” American Music 5, no. 3 (Autumn 1987):
241–54.
Brown, Thomas Allston. A History of the New York Stage, From the First Performance
in 1732 to 1901. Volume I. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1903. https://play.google.
com/books/reader?id=CDALAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader
&authuser=0&hl=en&pg=GBS.PR2
Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898.
New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Burston, Jonathan. “Theatre Space as Virtual Place: Audio Technology, the
Reconfigured Singing Body, and the Megamusical.” Popular Music 17, no. 2
(1998).
Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage: Theater as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2003.
Carter, Tim. Oklahoma! The Making of an American Musical. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2007.
Cerniglia, Ken, and Lisa Mitchell. “The Business of Children in Disney’s Theater.” In
Entertaining Children: The Participation of Youth in the Entertainment Industry,
edited by Gillian Arrighi and Victor Emeljanow. London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014, pp. 129–45.
Caulfield, Keith. “Hamilton’s Historic Chart Debut: By the Numbers.” Billboard,
October 7, 2015. http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-
beat/6722015/hamilton-cast-album-billboard-200 (accessed January 9, 2017).
Chapman, Jennifer. “Knowing Your Audience.” In The Oxford Handbook of the
American Musical, edited by Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris, and Stacy Wolf.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 392–407.
Charyn, Jerome. Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the
Birth of Broadway. New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2003.
Chesluk, Benjamin. Money Jungle: Imagining the New Times Square. New
Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2008.
Clum, John. Something for the Boys: Musical Theater and Gay Culture. New York:
Palgrave, 1999.
Coonan, Clifford. “Beijing Seeks a Broadway of Its Own; $686-Million Project Will
Feature 32 Theatres,” Edmonton Journal (Alberta, Canada), January 8, 2009.
Covach, John and Andrew Flory. What’s That Sound? An Introduction to Rock and
Its History. Fourth edition. New York and London: WW Norton, 2015.

262
 Bibliography

Cox, Gordon. “Broadway’s The Lion King Becomes Top Grossing Title of All Time.”
Variety, September 22, 2014. http://variety.com/2014/legit/news/broadwayslion-
king-box-office-top-title-1201310676/ (accessed June 23, 2016).
Craft, Elizabeth Titrington. “Becoming American Onstage: Broadway Narratives of
Immigrant Experiences in the United States”. PhD dissertation, Harvard
University, 2014.
Dagel Caponi, Gena. “Introduction: The Case for an African American Aesthetic.” In
Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’, & Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American
Expressive Culture, edited by Gena Dagel Caponi. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1999.
“Dahomey on Broadway: Williams and Walker Make an Opening at the New York
Theatre and Hold It.” The New York Times, February 19, 1903.
Dalzell, Rebecca. “The Gilded Age Origins of New York City’s Rooftop Gardens.”
Curbed, July 16, 2014. http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/07/16/the_gilded_
age_origins_of_new_york_citys_rooftop_gardens.php (accessed June 8,
2015).
Decker, Todd. Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013.
Domosh, Mona. “Those ‘Gorgeous Incongruities’: Polite Politics and Public Space
on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century New York City.” Annals of the Association
of American Geographers 88, no. 2 (June 1998): 209–26.
Dorbian, Iris. Great Producers: Visionaries of the American Theater. New York:
Allworth Press, 2008.
Dorman, James H. “Shaping the Popular Image of Post-Reconstruction American
Blacks: The ‘Coon Song’ Phenomenon of the Gilded Age.” American Quarterly,
40, no. 4 (December 1998): 450–71.
Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1995.
Dvoskin, Michelle. “Audiences and Critics.” In The Oxford Handbook of the
American Musical, edited by Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris, and Stacy Wolf.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 365–77.
Einhorn, Bruce. “Broadway in China! It’s a Mess!” BloombergBusiness, Bloomberg.
com, June 9, 2015. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-09/
broadway-in-china-it-s-a-mess-
Erenberg, Lewis A. Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of
American Culture 1890–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Farber, David. “Introduction.” In The Sixties: From Memory to History, edited by
David Farber. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press,
1994, pp. 1–10.
Fass, Paula S. Review of A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile
Delinquent in the 1950s by James Gilbert. History of Education Quarterly 27,
no. 1 (1987): 152–22.
Forbes, Camille. Introducing Bert Williams: Burnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of
America’s First Black Star. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
Freeman, John W. “Opera.” In The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth
T. Jackson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995, pp. 865–6.

263
Bibliography

Frick, John W. and Martha S. LoMonaco. “Theater.” In The Encyclopedia of New York
City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1995, pp. 1165–76.
Friedman, Andrea. Prurient Interests: Gender, Democracy, and Obscenity in New
York City, 1909–1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
“George M. Cohan, 64, Dies at Home Here.” The New York Times, November 6, 1942,
p. 20.
Graebner, William. “The ‘Containment’ of Juvenile Delinquency: Social Engineering
and American Youth Culture in the Postwar Era.” American Studies 27, no. 1
(1986): 81–97.
Gray, Christopher. “Streetscapes/Astor Place: It’s Only Two Blocks, But It’s Full of
Literary History.” The New York Times, March 2, 2003. http://www.nytimes.
com/2003/03/02/realestate/streetscapes-astor-place-it-s-only-two-blocks-but-it-
s-full-of-literary-history.html
Graziano, John. “Images of African Americans: African American Musical Theatre,
Show Boat and Porgy and Bess.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Musical,
edited by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird. Second edition. Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 89–102.
Great Migration. http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration
(accessed May 28, 2015).
Green, Stanley. Broadway Musicals of the 30s. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.
Green, William. “Burlesque.” In The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth
T. Jackson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995, pp. 168–9.
Greher, Gena R. “Night & Day: Cole Porter, Hip Hop, Their Shared Sensibilities
and Their Teachable Moments.” College Music Symposium 49/50 (2009/10),
pp. 158–63.
Griffith, Robert and Paula Baker, eds. Major Problems in American History Since
1945. Third edition. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2007.
Grimes, William. “Ezra Stone, 76, Henry Aldrich on the Radio.” The New York Times,
March 5, 1994, p. 12.
Haenni, Sabine. The Immigrant Scene: Ethnic Amusements in New York, 1880–1920.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Hamm, Charles. Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. New York and London:
WW Norton and Company, 1979.
Hammack, David C. “Consolidation.” In The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited
by Kenneth T. Jackson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995,
pp. 277–8.
Hardy, Camille. “Bringing Bourrées to Broadway: George Balanchine’s Career in the
Commercial Theater.” World Literature Today 80, no. 2 (March–April 2006),
pp. 16–18.
Hauser, Karen. The Demographics of the Broadway Audience 2012–2013. New York:
Broadway League, 2013.
Healy, Patrick. “Broadway on the Elbe.” New York Times, December 9, 2012, p. C1.
Healy, Patrick. “Broadway Sees Benefits of Building Black Audience,” New York
Times, June 28, 2010, p. A1. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/
theater/28diverse.html

264
 Bibliography

Healy, Patrick. “Musicals Couldn’t Be Hotter Off Broadway (by 7,000 Miles),” The
New York Times, December 8, 2013, p. A1.
Healy, Patrick. “Flops on Broadway? Fix Them Overseas,” The New York Times,
July 31, 2011, RAR 1.
Heroux, Gerard H. “George M. Cohan.” Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame Historical
Archive. http://www.ripopmusic.org/musical-artists/composers/george-m-
cohan/ (accessed March 19, 2015).
Hirsch, Foster. The Boys from Syracuse: The Shuberts’ Theatrical Empire. Carbondale
and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998.
Hischak, Thomas. Off-Broadway Musicals Since 1919: From Greenwich Village
Follies to The Toxic Avenger. Lanham, Toronto, and Plymouth, UK : Scarecrow
Press, 2011.
Hischak, Thomas. The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film,
and Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Hoffman, Warren. The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical. New
Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 2014.
Hofler, Robert. “B’way’s 2-Way Street,” Variety, March 14, 2004. http://variety.
com/2004/legit/news/b-way-s-2-way-street-1117901255/
Holland, Bernard. “Court Permits Shuberts to Buy More Theaters.” The New York
Times, September 5, 1981, p. 12.
Holmes, Sean P. “All the World’s a Stage! The Actors’ Strike of 1919.” The Journal of
American History 91, no. 4 (March 2005): 1291–1317.
Horn, Barbara Lee. The Age of Hair: Evolution and Impact of Broadway’s First Rock
Musical. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Hornblow, Arthur. A History of the Theatre in America, volume I. Philadelphia: JB
Lipincott and Company, 1919. http://www.theatrehistory.com/american/
hornblow01.html (accessed March 10, 2016).
Horton, Gerd. Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda During
World War II. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
2002.
Jackson, Kenneth T. “Bowery.” In The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by
Kenneth T. Jackson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995,
pp. 131–2.
Jasen, David A. Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song.
New York and London: Routledge, 2003.
Jasen, David A. and Gene Jones. Spreadin’ Rhythm Around: Black Popular
Songwriters, 1880–1930. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Johnson, Helen Armstead. “Shuffle Along: Keynote of the Harlem Renaissance.”
In The Theater of Black Americans: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by
Errol Hill. New York: Applause Theatre, 1987.
Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan. New York: Da Capo Press, 1991.
Johnson, Reed. “Brazil Goes Broadway Yet Keeps Its Own Beat,” Los Angeles Times,
July 31, 2005.
Jones, Chris. “ ‘Kinky Boots’ at Bank of America Theatre,” Chicagotribune.com,
October 17, 2012. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-kinky-
boots-review-chicago-column.html (accessed March 10, 2016).

265
Bibliography

Jones, Chris. “These ‘Boots’ Are Made for Reworkin’,” Chicagotribune.com,

November 1, 2012. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ott-
1102-jones-loop-20121101-story.html (accessed March 10, 2016).
Jones, Douglas A., Jr. “Slavery, Performance, and the Design of African American
Theatre.” In The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre, edited by
Harvey Young. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 15–33.
Jones, John Bush. Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American
Musical Theatre. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2003.
Kantrowitz, Nathan. “Population.” In The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited
by Kenneth T. Jackson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995,
pp. 920–3.
Kennedy, John A. “The Concert Saloons: Report of the Superintendent of Police.”
The New York Times, January 5, 1862, p. 5.
Kennedy, Shawn G. “Disney and Developer are Chosen to Build 42nd Street Hotel
Complex.” The New York Times, May 12, 1995, p. B2.
Kenrick, John. Musical Theatre: A History. New York: Continuum International, 2008.
King, Bobbi. “A Legend in His Own Lifetime: Conversation with Eubie Blake.” The
Black Perspective in Music 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1973), pp. 151–6.
Kirle, Bruce. “Reconciliation, Resolution, and the Political Role of Oklahoma! in
American Consciousness.” Theatre Journal 55, no. 2 (2003), 251–74.
Kirle, Bruce. Unfinished Show Business: Broadway Musicals As Works-In-Progress.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
Kissel, Howard. David Merrick: The Abominable Showman. New York and London:
Applause, 1993.
Klein, Alvin. “State Is a Testing Ground for Broadway.” The New York Times, April
19, 1992, sec. N.Y. / Region. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/19/nyregion/
state-is-a-testing-ground-for-broadway.html (accessed March 10, 2016).
Klein, Milton M., ed. The Empire State: A History of New York. Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 2001.
Knapp, Raymond. The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity.
Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Knapp, Raymond. The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity.
Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Koegel, John. Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City, 1840–1940.
Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009.
Koppes, Clayton R., and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics,
Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. London: Tauris Parke,
2000.
Krasner, David. A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and
Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927. New York: Palgrave
MacMillan, 2002.
Krasner, Orly Leah. “Birth Pangs, Growing Pains and Sibling Rivalry: Musical
Theatre in New York, 1900–1920.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Musical,
edited by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird. Second edition. Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 54–71.
Laird, Paul R. Wicked: A Musical Biography. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

266
 Bibliography

LeMoyne, James. “New York City Reports ’83 Tourism Windfall.” The New York
Times, January 9, 1984, p. D11.
Leonard, W. T. Broadway Bound: A Guide to Shows that Died Aborning. Metuchen,
NJ : Scarecrow Press, 1983.
Leve, James. American Musical Theater. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Leve, James, and Donelle Ruwe, eds. Childhood and the Child in Musical Theatre.
New York: Ashgate, forthcoming.
Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in
America. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Lewis, Robert M. From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in
America, 1830–1910. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2003.
Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Lovensheimer, Jim. South Pacific: Paradise Rewritten. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2010.
Lovensheimer, Jim. “Texts and Authors.” In The Oxford Handbook of the American
Musical, edited by Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris, and Stacy Wolf. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 20–31.
Lundskaer-Nielsen, Miranda. “The Prince-Sondheim Legacy.” In The Oxford
Handbook of Sondheim Studies, edited by Robert Gordon. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014.
Lyman, Rick. “Under-18 Crowd Doubles, Broadway Study Finds,” New York Times,
March 3, 1998, P.E7. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/03/theater/under-18-
crowd-doubles-broadway-study-finds.html
Magee, Jeffrey. Irving Berlin’s American Musical Theater. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Marchand, Roland. “Visions of Classlessness.” In Major Problems in American
History Since 1945, edited by Robert Griffith and Paula Baker. Third edition.
Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2007, pp. 97–109.
Marcosson, Isaac F. and Daniel Frohman. Charles Frohman: Manager and Man.
New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1916.
Marks, Peter. “Laughing Away the Tears and Fears.” New York Times, October 28,
2001, p. AR 5.
Mast, Gerald. Can’t Help Singin’: The American Musical on Stage and Screen.
New York: Overlook Press, 1987.
Mates, Julian. America’s Musical Stage: Two Hundred Years of Musical Theatre.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985.
Mates, Julian. The American Musical Stage Before 1800. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1962.
mcclung, bruce. Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musical. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007.
McHugh, Dominic. Loverly: The Life and Times of My Fair Lady. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
McKinley, Jesse. “Sales Plummet As Broadway Posts Losses.” The New York Times,
September 19, 2001, p. E1.

267
Bibliography

McNamara, Brooks. The New York Concert Saloon: The Devil’s Own Nights.
New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Miller, D.A. Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1998.
Miller, Tom. “The Lost 1882 Casino Theatre—39th Street and Broadway.” Daytonian
in Manhattan: The Stories Behind the Buildings, Statues and Other Points of
Interest that Make Manhattan Fascinating, June 2013. http://daytoninmanhattan.
blogspot.com/2013/06/the-lost-1882-casino-theatre-39th.html (accessed June 8,
2015).
Most, Andrea. Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2004.
Ndounou, Monica White. “Early Black Americans on Broadway.” In The Cambridge
Companion to African American Theatre, edited by Harvey Young. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp 59–84.
Newman, Andrew Adam. “It’s Broadway Gone Viral, With a Musical Meted Out via
Twitter.” The New York Times, August 17, 2009, p. B4. http://www.nytimes.
com/2009/08/17/technology/internet/ 17normal.html
Oja, Carol. “West Side Story and The Music Man: Whiteness, Immigration, and Race in
the US During the Late 1950s.” Studies in Musical Theatre 3, no. 1 (2009), 13–30.
Oja, Carol. Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Papatola, Dominic P. “Children Will Listen: Juniorized: Sondheim Provided the
Impetus for Smaller-Scale Versions of Shows.” The Sondheim Review 12, no. 2
(Winter 2005), 13–14.
Paulson, Michael. “Broadway Sets Sales and Attendance Records With Tourist
Boom.” The New York Times, May 26, 2015. http://www.nytimes.
com/2015/05/27/theater/broadway-sets-sales-and-attendance-records-with-
tourist-boom.html (accessed June 30, 2016).
Pellegrini, Nancy. “In China, a Taste of Broadway’s ‘Fame’.” Christian Science
Monitor, December 19, 2008. http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/
Music/2008/1219/p13s04-almp.html
Perlov, Barbara. Why We Tell the Story: A Report on The Shubert Foundation/MTI
Broadway Junior Program in the New York City Public Schools. November
2009.
Prece, Paul and William A. Everett. “The Megamusical: The Creation,
Internationalisation and Impact of a Genre.” In The Cambridge Companion to
the Musical, edited by William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird. Second edition.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 250–69.
Preston, Katherine K. “American Musical Theatre Before the Twentieth Century.”
In The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, edited by William A. Everett and
Paul R. Laird. Second edition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2008, pp. 3–28.
“Pursuit of Merriment: It Will Be Attended with Difficulty at the Casino.” The New
York Times, September 22, 1896.
Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

268
 Bibliography

Rapkin, Mickey. Theater Geek: The Real Life Drama of a Summer at Stagedoor Manor,
the Famous Performing Arts Camp (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).
Rich, Frank. Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980–1993.
New York: Random House, 1998.
Richards, David. “Beauty and the Beast: Disney Does Broadway, Dancing Spoons
and All.” The New York Times, April 19, 1994, p. C15.
Riis, Thomas L. Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890–1915.
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
Riis, Thomas L. II. Frank Loesser. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Riis, Thomas L. and Ann Sears, “The Successors of Rodgers and Hammerstein from
the 1940s to the 1960s.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, edited by
William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird. Second edition. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 164–89.
Robertson, Campbell. “Ballyhoo of Broadway Shuffles Off to China.” The New York
Times, March 14, 2007, p. E1.
Rodger, Gillian. Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the
Nineteenth Century. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois
Press, 2010.
Rodosthenous, George, ed.The Disney Musical: Stage, Screen, and Beyond. London:
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017.
Rosenberg, Bernard and Ernest Harburg. The Broadway Musical: Collaboration in
Commerce and Art. New York: New York University Press, 1993.
Rothstein, Mervyn. “Equity Reverses ‘Saigon’ Vote and Welcomes English Star.” The
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/17/theater/equity-reverses-
saigon-vote-and-welcomes-english-star.html (accessed June 20, 2016).
Rubin, Joan Shelley. The Making of Middlebrow Culture. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1992.
Sampson, Henry T. Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows.
Second edition. Lanham, MD and Plymouth, UK : Scarecrow Press, 2014.
Savran, David. Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle
Class. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
Schiff, David. “Oklahoma! and the Nazi Threat.” In Crosscurrents: American and
European Music in Interaction, 1900–2000, edited by Felix Meyer, Carol J. Oja,
Wolfgang Rathert, and Anne Shreffler. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014,
pp. 275–83.
Schumach, Murray. “Shuberts Seek to Widen Theater Chain.” The New York Times,
August 27, 1975, p. 32.
Sears, Ann. “The Coming of the Musical Play: Rodgers and Hammerstein.” In The
Cambridge Companion to the Musical, edited by William A. Everett and Paul R.
Laird. Second edition. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008, pp. 147–89.
Shafer, Yvonne. “Black Actors in the Nineteenth Century American Theatre.” College
Language Association Journal XX (March 1977): 387–400.
Shandell, Jonathan. “The Negro Little Theatre Movement.” In The Cambridge
Companion to African American Theatre, edited by Harvey Young. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 103–17.

269
Bibliography

“Shuffle Along Premiere: Negro Production Opens at Sixty-Third Street Music Hall.”
The New York Times, May 23, 1921, p. 20.
Smith, Eric Ledell. Bert Williams: A Biography of the Pioneer Black Comedian.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1992.
Snyder, Robert W. “Concert Saloons” and “Vaudeville.” In The Encyclopedia of New
York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1995, pp. 271–2 and 1226.
Snyder, Robert W. The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York.
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Sotiropoulos, Karen. Staging Race: Black Peformers in Turn of the Century America.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Stempel, Larry. Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theatre. New York:
WW Norton, 2010.
Sternfeld, Jessica. The Megamusical. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 2006.
Sternfeld, Jessica and Elizabeth L. Wollman, “After the ‘Golden Age’.” In The Oxford
Handbook of the American Musical, edited by Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris,
and Stacy Wolf. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Sterritt, D. “ ‘Company’: Amusing, Inventive, Hummable.” Boston After Dark, April 1,
1970, 4.
Symonds, Dominic. We’ll Have Manhattan: The Early Work of Rodgers and Hart.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
“The Great Fire—Details of the Disaster.” The New York Times, May 23, 1866, p. 8.
“The Week at the Theatres.” The New York Times, May 14, 1893, p. 13.
Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Toll, Robert. On with the Show! The First Century of Show Business in America.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
“Tony Pastor and His Sixty Years on the Stage.” The New York Times, August 16,
1908, p. SM 3.
“ ‘Tony’ Pastor Dead in His 77th Year: Famous Theatrical Man Expires After a
Long Illness at His Elmhurst, L.I. Home.” The New York Times, August 27,
1908, p. 7.
Traub, James. The Devil’s Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times
Square. New York: Random House, 2005.
Trav, S.D. No Applause—Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.
New York: Faber and Faber, 2005.
Travis, Steve. “The Rise and Fall of the Theatrical Syndicate.” Educational Theatre
Journal 10, no. 1 (March 1958), 35–40.
Turan, Kenneth and Joseph Papp. Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest
Theater Story Ever Told. New York: Anchor Books, 2010.
Vacha, J.E. “The Case of the Runaway Opera: The Federal Theatre and Marc Blitzstein’s
‘The Cradle Will Rock.’” New York History 62, no. 2 (April 1981), 133–52.
Wall, Carey. “There’s No Business Like Show Business: A Speculative Reading of the
Broadway Musical.” In Approaches to the American Musical, edited by Robert
Lawson-Peebles. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996, pp 24–43.

270
 Bibliography

Walsh, Michael. “Andrew Lloyd Webber: Now, but Forever? Measuring the Impact,
Other Than Commercial, of a Broadway Giant.” The New York Times, April 9,
2000, p. AR 1.
Weinstein, Deena. Rock’n America: A Social and Cultural History. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2015.
White, Timothy R. Blue Collar Broadway: The Craft and Industry of American
Theater. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
Wilsch Case, Claudia. “Inventing the Heartland: The Theatre Guild, Oklahoma! and
World War II.” Theatre Symposium: A Journal of the Southeastern Theatre
Conference 14 (2006), 35–47.
Wilmeth, Don B. The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre. Cambdrige:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Wolf, Stacy. A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musial.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Wolf, Stacy. Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Wolfe, Jonathan. “Broadway Stumbles in Brazil,” The New York Times, October 17, 2015.
Woll, Allen. Black Musical Theatre from Coontown to Dreamgirls. New York:
Da Capo, 1989.
Wollman, Elizabeth L. Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Wollman, Elizabeth L. The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, From
Hair to Hedwig. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Zeigler, Joseph Wesley. Regional Theatre: The Revolutionary Stage. New York:
Da Capo Press, 1977.
Zellers, Parker R. “The Cradle of Variety : The Concert Saloon.” Education Theatre
Journal 20, no. 4 (December 1968): 578–85.

271
272
INDEX

ABBA. See Andersson, Benny; Chess; American Musical and the Formation of
Mamma Mia!; Ulvaeus, Bjorn National Identity, The (Knapp), xiii
Abbott, George, 103, 105, 219, see also Funny American Musical and the Performance of
Thing Happened on the Way to the Personal Identity, The (Knapp), xiii
Forum, A; On Your Toes; Pal Joey American Musical Theater (Leve), xiii
Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), 62–3, 97, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle
117, 171–2, 195–6 (Bordman), xiii
Adams, Lee, 143 American Negro Theater, 117
Bye Bye Birdie (with Strouse), 143–4, American Psycho (Sheik), 222
207 American Repertory Theater (ART), 221–2,
Addams Family, The (Lippa), 188, 223 see also Brustein, Robert; Finding
Adler, Stella, 94 Neverland; Natasha, Pierre & the
Ahrens, Lynn, 194, see also Flaherty, Stephen; Great Comet of 1812; Paulus, Diane;
Ragtime; Rocky: Das Musical Pippin; Parks, Suzan-Lori; Porgy
Once on This Island (with Flaherty), 194 and Bess; 7 Doigts de la Main, Les;
Aida (John, Rice), 228 Waitress
Aiken, George L., 6, 17, 20, see also Stowe, Americana (revue), 85–6
Harriet Beecher “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 6, 17, 20 (Gorney, Harburg), 85–6
Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Waller), 158 Anderson, Maxwell, 64
Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (Van Andersson, Benny, 171, see also Mamma
Peebles), 158–9 Mia!
“Put a Curse on You,” 158 Chess (with Ulvaeus, Rice), 171
Aladdin (Menken, Ashman, Rice, Beguelin), Anelli, Melissa, 199, see also BroadwayCon;
184, 207, 210, 222 Dornhelm, Stephanie; Mischief
Albee, Edward Franklin (E.F.), II, 28–31, 81, Management
see also Keith, Benjamin Franklin Anna and the King of Siam (Langdon), 126,
(B.F.); Mikado, The; United Booking see also King and I, The
Agency (UBO); Vaudeville Managers Annie (Strouse, Charnin), 206, 216
Association (VMA) Annie Get Your Gun (Berlin), 113
Aleichem, Sholem, 146, see also Fiddler on Anything Goes (Porter), 98, 99–101
the Roof Arbus, Diane, 123
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (film), 152 Arlen, Harold, 85, 117, 118, see also Wizard of
All in the Family, 152 Oz, The (film)
Allegro (Rodgers, Hammerstein II), 125–6, Bloomer Girl (with Harburg), 118–19
188 St. Louis Woman (with Mercer), 117
Allen, Woody, 123 As Thousands Cheer (Berlin, Hart), 86–7
Allott, Nick, 231, see also Mackintosh, “Supper Time” (Berlin), 87
Cameron ASCAP (American Society of Composers,
American Federation of Labor, 62 Authors and Publishers), 57–8, 70,
American in Paris, An (G. Gershwin, I. 141
Gershwin, Lucas), 222, 225 strike (1940-41), 141

273
Index

Aspects of Love (Lloyd Webber), 171 Berkeley, Busby, 83, 182

Astaire, Adele, 89 Berlin Stories, The (Isherwood), 147
Astaire, Fred, 89, 98, 99, 103 Berlin, Irving, 27, 53, 57, 59, 84, 86–7,
Astor Place riots (1849), 8–9 113
Astor, Henry, 7 Annie Get Your Gun, 113
Atkinson, Brooks, 86, 106 As Thousands Cheer (with Hart),
Avenue Q (Lopez, Marx), 188 86–7
This Is the Army, 119–20
Babes in Arms (Rodgers, Hart), 102, 104 Yip Yip Yaphank, 119
Bailey, Pearl, 117, 157, see also Hello, Dolly!; Bernstein, Leonard, 133–4
St. Louis Woman Fancy Free (with Robbins), 120
Baker, Joséphine, 53, 68 On the Town (with Comden, Green),
Balanchine, George, 88, 103–4, see also 120–1, 245
Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 West Side Story (with Sondheim,
“Princess Zenobia” (ballet from On Your Laurents, Robbins), 132–5, 136, 147,
Toes), 104 193, 217, 241
“Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” (ballet from “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” (Pal
On Your Toes), 104 Joey), 105, 106
Baline, Izzy. See Berlin, Irving Big River (Miller), 215, 223
Ballroom (Goldenburg, M. Bergman, A. “Bill” (Show Boat), 72
Bergman), 196 Billy Elliot (John, Hall), 193
Bandanna Land (Cook, Shipp, Rogers), 48 Bishop, Andrew, 194, see also Falsettos;
Barnes, Clive, 149 Light in the Piazza, The; Lincoln
Barras, Charles M., 18 Center Theatre; Once on This Island
Black Crook, The, 17, 18–21, 20, 23, 24, (Flaherty, Ahrens); Playwrights
36, 88 Horizons; Sunday in the Park with
Bartholomae, Philip, 61, see also Bolton, Guy; George; Weitzman, Ira
Kern, Jerome; Princess musicals; Black Crook, The (Barras), 17, 18–21, 20, 23,
Wodehouse, P.G. 24, 36, 88
Batten, Keith, 228, see also Aida critical reception, 19–20
Beautiful (King), 181, 222 New York Times review, 19
Beauty and the Beast (Disney animated film), synopsis, 19
174 Black, Don, 180
Beauty and the Beast (Menken, Ashman, Bombay Dreams (with Black), 180
Rice), 175, 177, 204, 228, 236 Black Lives Matter, 179
Disney animated film version, 174 Black Manhattan (Johnson), 49
Bechdel, Alison, 184 Black Patti’s Troubadours (Isham touring
Fun Home (graphic novel), 184, see also company), 43
Fun Home (Tesori, Kron) black performers, 42–50, 53, 63, 65–70, 72–4,
Beck, Martin, 30, see also Orpheum Circuit; 84–7, 91–4, 117–21, 157–9, 164–5,
Walter, Gustav 243–4, 247, 250
Beggar’s Opera, The (Gay), 3 Blackberries of 1932 (Heywood, Peluso,
Belasco, David, 35, 54 etc.), 85
Bell, Hunter, 182, 216 blackface minstrelsy, xii, 9–15, 23, 24, 26, 28,
[title of show] (with Bowen), 182, 215–16 39, 42, 44, 45, 48, 70, 92, 119–20, 247,
Bells Are Ringing (Styne, Comden, Green), see also minstrelsy
190 Blake, James Hubert “Eubie,” 66, 67, 68
Bennett, Michael, 145, 152, 153, 156, 164, 196, Shuffle Along (with Sissle, Miller, Lyles),
see also Ballroom; Chorus Line, A; 65–70, 84, 85, 247
Company; Dreamgirls Blinn, Holbrook, 60

274
 Index

Blitzstein, Marc, 94, see also Federal Theatre Brecht, Bertolt, 94

Project (FTP); Flanagan Hallie; Brice, Fanny, 53, see also Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr.
Houseman, John; Welles, Orson Bright Star (Martin, Brickell), 222
Cradle Will Rock, The, 94–8 Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk
Block, Stephanie, 195, see also Wicked (Gaines,Wolfe), 183
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Friedman), Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), 141
184 Broadway Asia Company, 227–9
Bloomer Girl (Arlen, Harburg), 118–19 Broadway.com, 249
Blue Monday (G. Gershwin, DeSylva), 91–2, BroadwayCon, 199–200
see also George White’s Scandals of Broadway JR., 206–8, see also Disney
1922 Musicals in Schools (DMIS);
Bock, Jerry, 146 Gershon, Freddie; Getting to Know
Fiddler on the Roof (with Harnick), 145, Collections; McDonald, Tim; Music
146–7, 199, 200, 206, 241 Theatre International; musicals in
Bohème, La (Puccini), 178, 242, see also Rent schools; Ripley, Cindy
Bolger, Ray, 53, 103, 104, see also On Your Broadway League, 179, 204, 245
Toes; Wizard of Oz, The BroadwayLeague.com, 249
Bolton, Guy, 60, 100 National High School Musical Theatre
Leave It to Jane (with Kern), 61 Awards, The, 204
Nobody Home (with Kern), 60 Broadway Syndicate, 54–6
Oh, Boy! (with Kern), 61 Broderick, Helen, 86
Oh, Lady! Lady!! (with Kern), 61, 72 Brooks, Mel, 182
Very Good Eddie (with Kern), 61 Producers, The, 179, 181, 182, 217–18
Bombay Dreams (Rahman, Black), 180 “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (Gorney,
Bonnie & Clyde (Wildhorn, Black), 223, 229 Harburg), 85–6
Booth, John Wilkes, 10 Brower, Frank, 11, see also Virginia
Booth, Junius Brutus, 10 Minstrels
Bordman, Gerald, xiii Brown, John Mason, 88
American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, Brown, William F., 158, see also Wiz, The
xiii Bruce, Lenny, 123
Boublil, Alain, 170, 171, 226 Brustein, Robert, 221–2, see also American
Misérables, Les (with Schönberg), 169, Repertory Theater (ART); Paulus,
170, 201, 203, 222, 226–7, 228, 230, Diane
236 Bubbling Brown Sugar (Mitchell, LeNoire),
Miss Saigon (with Schönberg), 170, 158
171–2, 241 Burke, Billie, 80
Boucicault, Dion, 6 burlesque, 16, 21, 23–5, 28, 30–1, 35, 81–2
Octoroon, The, 6 female bodies and, 23–5
Boulanger, Nadia, 94 Butler, Michael, 150, see also Hair
Bowen, Jeff, 182, 215, 216 Bye Bye Birdie (Strouse, Adams), 143–4, 207
[title of show] (with Bell), 182, 215–16
Bowery, 7–8, 9, 16, 26, 144 Cabaret (Kander, Ebb), 145, 147–8, 224, 248
Bowery Theatre, 5, 7–9, 10, 16 film version, 248
Boys from Syracuse, The (Rodgers, Hart), Cabin in the Sky (Duke, Latouche), 117
102, 104 Caffe Cino, 144
Braham, David, 38, see also Harrigan and Cage aux Folles, La (Herman, Fierstein),
Hart 165–7, 224
branding of Broadway, xii, 1–2, 123–5, Cage aux Folles, La (Poiret play), 166
159–64, 172–5 Cahn, Sammy, 190
Bread and Puppet Theater, 144 High Button Shoes (with Styne), 190

275
Index

Caird, John, 226, see also Les Mis School Civil Rights Movement, 110, 118, 120, 126,
(Japan); Mackintosh, Cameron; 139, 148, 151, 157, 179
Nunn, Trevor Civil War, 10, 12, 13–15
Calloway, Cab, 157 Clinton, Bill, 172
Calvinists, Dutch, 3 Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cake Walk
“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” (Show Boat), 73 (Cook, Dunbar), 43–4
Can’t Help Singin’: The American Musical on Clum, John, 167
Stage and Screen (Mast), xiii Clurman, Harold, 94, see also Group Theatre;
Cannon, Anthony. See Hart, Tony Theatre Guild
Cantor, Eddie, 53, 155, see also Ziegfeld, Cohan, George M., 36, 38, 40–2, 63, 186
Florenz, Jr. Governor’s Son, The, 41
Capeman, The (Simon, Walcott), 180 Little Johnny Jones, 41
Carlson, Marvin, 201 Running for Office, 41
Carol, Vinnette, 158, see also Don’t Bother Me, Cold War, 122–3, 172, 178
I Can’t Cope Cole, Jack, 219, see also Funny Thing
Caroline, or Change (Tesori, Kushner), 180 Happened on the Way to the Forum, A
Carousel (Rodgers, Hammerstein II), 115–17, Cole, Robert, 43, 48, 49
126, 202, 224 Red Moon, The (with J.W. Johnson, J.R.
Carter, Jimmy, 163 Johnson), 48
cast recordings, Original Broadway Shoo Fly Regiment, The (with J.W.
(OBCRs), 130 Johnson, J.R. Johnson), 48
Catch Me If You Can (Shaiman, Wittman), Trip to Coontown, A (with B. Johnson),
223 43
Cats (Lloyd Webber), 168–70, 227, 234, 241 Collins, Phil, 233
Central Academy of Drama (CAD), Beijing, Tarzan (with Hwang), 233
230–1 Colonial era, 2–5
Cerveris, Michael, 200 itinerant theatrical companies, 3–4
Champion, Gower, 145, 157, see also Hello, New York, first theater and production,
Dolly! (Herman) 4–5
“Change It, Don’t Change It” ([title of show]), theater and staged entertainments, 3
215 Color Purple, The (Bray, Willis, Russell,
Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Norman), 222, 224
Broadway Musical (Wolf), xiii “Colored Woman” (Memphis), 243
Channing, Carol, 157 Comden, Betty, 120, 190
Chaplin (Curtis), 223 Bells Are Ringing (with Styne, Green), 190
Charleston (dance), 70 On the Town (with Bernstein, Green),
Charnin, Martin, 206 120–1, 245
Annie (with Strouse), 206, 216 “Comedy Tonight” (Funny Thing Happened
Chenoweth, Kristin, 195 on the Way to the Forum, A), 219
Chicago (Kander, Ebb), 154–5, 179, 222, 244 Comic-Con International, 199
Chicago (Watkins play), 155 Company (Sondheim, Furth), 152–4, 217
Chicago Tribune, 218 “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” 153
Chorus Line, A (Hamlisch, Kleban), xii, Comstock, Ray, 60
155–7, 194, 196, 220, see also Bennett, Connecticut Yankee, A (Rodgers, Hart), 102,
Michael; Public Theater 106
Christian Science Monitor, The, 230, 249 Contradictions (Prince autobiography), 193
Christiansen, Richard, 218 Cook, Will Marion, 43, 44, 47, 49, see also
Christmas Story, A (Pasek, Paul), 223 Walker, George; Williams, Bert
Christy, Edwin Pearce, 11 Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cake Walk
Christy’s Minstrels, 11–12 (with Dunbar), 43–4

276
 Index

In Dahomey (with Dunbar, Shipp), 46–7 Aladdin; Beauty and the Beast; Lion
Southerners, The, 48 King, The; Disney Musicals in Schools
coon songs, 42–3, 45, 72, 73, 119, see also (DMIS); Little Mermaid, The; Mary
“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” (Show Poppins; Tarzan
Boat); “Ol’ Man River” (Show Boat) Disneyland Paris, 174
Cort, John, 66–7, 68, 69 Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope (Grant), 158
Cotton Club, 86 Dornhelm, Stephanie, 199, see also Anelli,
Coward, Noël, 87 Melissa; BroadwayCon; Mischief
Cowsills, 150, see also Hair Management
Cradle Will Rock, The (Blitzstein), 94–8 Douglass, David, 4–5
Crawford, Cheryl, 94, see also Group Theatre; Dramatists Play Service, 202
Theatre Guild Dreamgirls (Krieger, Eyen), 164–5
cross-dressing, 12, 119, 165–7, 218–19, see Drunkard, The (Smith), 6
also Cage aux Folles, La; Kinky Boots Du Bois, W.E.B., 117, 118
Crouch, Stanley, 165 Dude (MacDermot, Ragni), 151
Crouse, Russel, 100 Duke, Vernon, 117
Cry-Baby (Javerbaum, Schlesinger), 223 Cabin in the Sky (with Latouche), 117
Cullen, Countee, 117, see also St. Louis Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 43, 47, see also
Woman Walker, George; Williams, Bert
Curtains (Kander, Ebb), 214, 216 Clorindy, or the Origin of the Cake Walk
(with Cook), 43–4
Damn Yankees (Adler, Ross), 147 In Dahomey (with Cook, Shipp), 46–7
Dance a Little Closer (Strouse, Lerner), 166 Duncan, Ina, 68
“Why Can’t the World Go and Leave Us Dunham, Katherine, 118
Alone?,” 166 Dust Bowl, 77, 85, 87
Darion, Joe, 219
Man of La Mancha (with Leigh), 215, Earl Carroll’s Vanities (revue), 53, 84
219–20, 229 Ebb, Fred, 147, 190
Darkydom (revue), 66 Cabaret (with Kander), 145, 147–8, 224,
Daughters of Bilitis, 152 248
Davis, Clifton, 157 Chicago (with Kander), 154–5, 179, 222,
Davis, Ossie, 158, see also Purlie 244
Purlie Victorious, 158 Curtains (with Kander), 214, 216
de Beauvoir, Simone, 152 Eisner, Michael, 174, see also Disney
Second Sex, The, 152 Theatrical Group (DTG)
De Koven, Reginald, 29 Eliot, T.S., 169, see also Cats; Lloyd Webber,
de Mille, Agnes, 88, 114, 115, 119, 126, see Andrew; Mackintosh, Cameron
also Allegro; Bloomer Girl; Carousel; Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, 169
Oklahoma! Emmett, Dan, 11, see also Virginia Minstrels
Dearest Enemy (Rodgers, Hart), 102 Erlanger, Abraham L., 31, 34–5, 46, 47, 52,
Depression. See Great Depression 53, 55, 56, see also Frohman, Charles;
Der Freischütz (Weber). See Black Crook, The; Hayman, Al; Klaw, Marc; Nixon,
Freischütz, Der Samuel F.; Theatrical Syndicate;
DeSylva, Buddy, 84, 91 Zimmerman, John Frederick
Blue Monday (with G. Gershwin), 91–2 Errol, Leon, 53, see also Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr.
Diller, Phyllis, 157 Ethiopian delineators. See blackface
Dillingham, Charles, 79–80 minstrelsy; minstrelsy
Disney Musicals in Schools (DMIS), 208–10 Evita (Lloyd Webber, Rice), 168
Disney Theatrical Group (DTG), 172, 173–7, Eyen, Tom, 164
183, 186, 207, 208–10, see also Aida; Dreamgirls (with Krieger), 164–5

277
Index

Falsettos (Finn), 180, 194 Ford Center for the Performing Arts, 197
Fame (Margoshes, Levy), 231 Forrest, Edwin, 9
film version, 231 42nd Street (Dubin, Warren), 216, 250
Fancy Free (Bernstein, Robbins), 120 Fosse, Bob, 145, 152, 154–5, 164, 222, see also
Fast and Furious (Revel, Gordon, etc.), 85 Chicago; Pippin
Father Knows Best, 136 Foster, Sutton, 216
Federal era theater, 5–7 Four Cohans, 40–1, see also Cohan,
Federal Theatre Project (FTP), 94, 96, 97, George M.; Jerry and Nellie
98, see also WPA (Works Progress Frank Music Corporation, 202
Administration) Freedley, Vinton, 100
Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 152 Freeman, Morgan, 157
Ferber, Edna, 70, see also Show Boat Freischütz, Der (Weber), 18, see also Black
Fiddler on the Roof (Bock, Harnick), 145, Crook, The
146–7, 199, 200, 206, 241 French, Samuel. See Samuel French, Inc.
Fields, Lew, 27, 28, see also Weber and Fields French, T. Henry, 33
Fields, W.C., 53, see also Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr. Friedan, Betty, 152
Fierstein, Harvey, 165, 181, 218 Feminine Mystique, The, 152
Cage aux Folles, La (with Herman), Friml, Rudolf, 57
165–7, 224 Frohman, Charles, 31, 33, 56, see also
Kinky Boots (with Lauper), 181, 186, 218, Erlanger, Abraham L.; Harris,
222 William; Hayman, Al; Klaw, Marc;
Torch Song Trilogy, 165 Nixon, Samuel F.; Theatrical
5th Dimension, 150, see also Hair Syndicate; Zimmerman, John
Fifty Million Frenchmen (Porter), 99 Frederick
film. See movies Full Monty, The (Yazbek, McNally), 181,
Finding Neverland (Barlow, Kennedy), 222 236
Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954– Fun Home (Tesori, Kron), 184–85, 199, 200,
1981) with Attendant Comments, 220, 222
Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines Funny Girl (Styne, Merrill), 190
and Anecdotes (Sondheim), 191 Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Finn, William, 180, 194, see also Little Miss Forum, A (Sondheim, Shevelove,
Sunshine Gelbart), 219
Falsettos, 180, 194 “Comedy Tonight” 219
First Wives Club (B. Holland, E. Holland, Furth, George, 153, 154, 190
Dozier), 223 Company (with Sondheim), 152–4, 217
First World War, 49, 51, 56–7
fiscal crisis, New York City, 159–61 Garrick Gaieties, The (Rodgers, Hart), 102
Fiske, Harrison Grey, 35 Gatlin, Larry, 189
Flaherty, Stephen, 194, see also Ahrens, Lynn; Gaxton, William, 100
Ragtime; Rocky: Das Musical Gay Divorce (Porter), 99
Once on This Island (with Ahrens), 194 Gay, John, 3
Flanagan, Hallie, 94, 96, see also Cradle Will Beggar’s Opera, The, 3
Rock, The; Federal Theatre Project gay rights movement, 123, 151–2, 153–4,
(FTP) 165–7
Flora, or, Hob in the Well (ballad opera), 3 Gee, Lottie, 68
Flower Drum Sung (Rodgers, Hammerstein Gelbart, Larry, 191, see also Funny Thing
II), 128 Happened on the Way to the
Follies (Sondheim, Goldman), 152 Forum, A; Sondheim, Stephen
Folies Bergère, 52 Geld, Gary, 158
Footloose (Loggins, Bobbie, etc.), 181 Purlie (with Udell), 158

278
 Index

Genatt, Simone, 227, see also Broadway Asia Girl Crazy (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin), 100
Company; Routh, Marc Girl Friend, The (Rodgers, Hart), 102
George White’s Scandals (revue), 53, 70, 84, Girls Against the Boys, The (Hague, Horwitt),
92, see also Blue Monday 142
Gershon, Freddie, 202–3, 206, 207 Giuliani, Rudy, 174
Gershwin, George, 59, 84, 88–94, 99, 100, globalization. See musicals, globalization
101, 222, 242–3, see also American in God Sends Sunday (Arna Bontemps), 117, see
Paris, An also St. Louis Woman
Blue Monday (with DeSylva), 91–2 Gold Bug, The (Herbert), 45, see also Walker,
Concert in F, 91 George; Williams, Bert
Cuban Overture, 91 Goldman, James, 191
Girl Crazy (with I. Gershwin), 100 Follies (with Sondheim), 152
Lady, Be Good (with I. Gershwin), 89 Good Times, 152
Let ’Em Eat Cake (with I. Gershwin), 91 Goodspeed Opera House, 215, 219–20
Of Thee I Sing (with I. Gershwin), 89–91 Gorney, Jay, 85–6
Pardon My English (with I. Gershwin), “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (with
100 Harburg), 85–86
Porgy and Bess (with I. Gershwin, Governor’s Son, The (Cohan), 41
DuBose Heyward, Dorothy Grable, Betty, 157
Heyward), 92–4, 100, 118, 222 Grant, Micki, 158
Rhapsody in Blue, 91 Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope, 158
Strike Up the Band (with I. Gershwin), Grease (Farrar, Jacobs, Casey), 204, 229
89, 91 Great Depression, 51, 63–4, 77–87, 87, 91, 93,
Three Preludes, 91 94–9, 102, 107, 110, 111, 125, 186
Gershwin, Ira, 59, 84, 89–91, 100, 101, 222, Green, Adolph, 120, 190
see also American in Paris, An; Nice Bells Are Ringing (with Styne, Comden),
Work If You Can Get It 190
Girl Crazy (with G. Gershwin), 100 On the Town (with Bernstein, Comden),
Lady, Be Good (with G. Gershwin), 89 120–1, 245
Let ’Em Eat Cake (with G. Gershwin), 91 Green Grow the Lilacs (Riggs), 106–7, see also
Of Thee I Sing (with G. Gershwin), Oklahoma!
89–91 Greenwich Village Follies, The (revue), 53
Pardon My English (with G. Gershwin), Group Theatre, 94
100 Guettel, Adam, 189–90, 194
Porgy and Bess (with G. Gershwin, Light in the Piazza, The, 194, 223
DuBose Heyward, Dorothy Guevara, Che, 168
Heyward), 92–4, 100, 118, 222 Guillaume, Robert, 158
Strike Up the Band (with G. Gershwin), Guys and Dolls (Loesser), 130–1, 136, 157–8,
89, 91 205, 229
Getting to Know Collections, 207, see also “Marry the Man Today,” 131
Broadway JR.; Disney Musicals in Gypsy (Styne, Sondheim), 190
Schools (DMIS); Music Theatre
International; musicals in schools; H.M.S. Pinafore (Gilbert, Sullivan),
Rodgers and Hammerstein 28–29
Organization; Young Performers’ Hair (Rado, Ragni, MacDermot), 145,
Editions 149–51, 185, 194, 220
Ghost the Musical (Stewart, Ballard), 229 Hairspray (Shaiman, Wittman), 181, 188,
Gilbert, W.S., 89, see also H.M.S. Pinafore; 222, 223
Mikado, The; Sullivan, Arthur Hall, Adelaide, 68
Gilded Age, 30–1, 34, 51 Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! (Jolson film), 102

279
Index

Hamilton (Miranda), xii, 184–6, 193, 199, Harris, William, 33, see also Frohman,
200, 213, 220, 222, 225 Charles; Times Square
Hamlisch, Marvin, 156 Hart, Lorenz, 84, 101–6, 190
Chorus Line, A (with Kleban), xii, 155–7, Babes in Arms (with Rodgers), 102, 104
194, 196, 220 Boys from Syracuse, The (with Rodgers),
Hammerstein, Arthur, 82 102, 104
Hammerstein, Oscar, 33, 35, 45, 54, 82, see Connecticut Yankee, A (with Rodgers),
also Times Square 102, 106
Hammerstein, Oscar, II, 87, 92, 102, 107, 109, Dearest Enemy (with Rodgers), 102
112–17, 125–8, 133, 147, 190, see also Garrick Gaieties, The (with Rodgers), 102
Annie Get Your Gun Girl Friend, The (with Rodgers), 102
Allegro (with Rodgers), 125–6, 188 I Married an Angel (with Rodgers), 104
Carousel (with Rodgers), 115–17, 126, Lonely Romeo, A (with Rodgers), 102
180, 202, 224 On Your Toes (with Rodgers), 102–4
Flower Drum Song (with Rodgers), 128 Pal Joey (with Rodgers), 102, 104–7
King and I, The (with Rodgers), 126–8, Peggy Ann (with Rodgers), 102
199, 202, 207 Hart, Moss, 86
Me and Juliet (with Rodgers), 128 As Thousands Cheer (with Berlin), 86–7
Oklahoma! (with Rodgers), xii, 109, Hart, Tony. See Harrigan and Hart
112–15, 119, 126, 129, 131, 156, 193, Hayman, Al, 31, see also Erlanger, Abraham
207, 216, 245 L.; Frohman, Charles; Klaw, Marc;
Pipe Dream (with Rodgers), 128 Nixon, Samuel F.; Theatrical
Show Boat (with Kern), xii, 36, 70–5, 246 Syndicate; Zimmerman, John
Sound of Music, The (with Rodgers), 128, Frederick
201, 202, 207, 228, 238 Hayman, Charles, 56
South Pacific (with Rodgers), 126–8, Healy, Patrick, 229, 234
202 Hearst, William Randolph, 70
Sunny (with Kern), 72 Hecht, Jessica, 200
Hands on a Hardbody (Green, Anastasio), Held, Anna, 52, see also Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr.
223 Hello, Dolly! (Herman), 157, 165, 188
Hansberry, Lorraine, 158, see also Nemiroff, Herbert, Victor, 29, 45, 57
Robert; Raisin; Raisin in the Sun, A Gold Bug, The, 45
Harbach, Otto, 72 Herman, Jerry, 157, 165
Harburg, E.Y. “Yip,” 85–6, 87, 118, see also Cage aux Folles, La (with Fierstein),
Wizard of Oz, The (film) 165–7, 224
Bloomer Girl (with Arlen), 118–19 Hello, Dolly!, 157, 165, 188
“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (with Mame, 165
Gorney), 85–6 Heyward, Dorothy, 92–3
Harlem Experimental Theater, 117 Porgy (with Heyward), 92, 94
Harlem Players, 117 Porgy and Bess (with G. Gershwin, I.
Harms, T.B., 16 Gershwin, Heyward), 92–4, 100, 118,
Harnick, Sheldon, 146 222
Fiddler on the Roof (with Bock), 145, Heyward, DuBose, 92–3
146–7, 199, 200, 206, 241 Porgy (with Heyward), 92, 94
Harrigan and Hart, 38–9 Porgy and Bess (with G. Gershwin, I.
Harrigan, Edward “Ned,” 38, 40, see also Gershwin, Heyward), 92–4, 100, 118,
Harrigan and Hart 222
Harris, Charles K., 72 High Button Shoes (Styne, Cahn), 190
“After the Ball,” 72 hip-hop, xii, 134, 184, 225, see also Hamilton
Harris, Sam, 87 (Miranda)

280
 Index

Hirson, Roger O., 154, see also Fosse, Bob; Izdebski, Marilyn, 205, 210, see also musicals
Pippin in schools, middle schools
Hitler, Adolf, 87, 91
Hoffman, Warren, 116, 250 Jane Eyre (Paul Gordon, John Caird), 223
Hogan, Ernest, 44, 49, see also Clorindy, or the Jarrett, Henry, 18–19, see also Black Crook, The
Origin of the Cake Walk jazz, xii, 57, 63, 68, 72, 88, 89, 91, 93, 95, 103,
Holder, Geoffrey, 158, see also Wiz, The 104, 120, 239
Holm, Celeste, 119 Jazz Singer, The (film), 78–9
Holzman, Winnie, 183, see also Wicked Jekyll & Hyde (Wildhorn, Bricusse), 223
Hoover, Herbert, 77, 86 Jerry and Nellie, 40, see also Cohan, George
Hope, Bob, 53 M.; Four Cohans
Houseman, John, 96–8, see also Blitzstein, Jersey Boys (Gaudio, Crewe, Brickman, Elice),
Marc; Cradle Will Rock, The; Federal 181, 188, 194, 222, 223
Theatre Project (FTP); Welles, Jesus Christ Superstar (Lloyd Webber, Rice),
Orson 150, 167, 168, 188
Hoyt, Charles Joel, Billy, 181–2
Trip to Chinatown, A, 37, 43, 72 Movin’ Out (with Tharp), 181–2
Hughes, Langston, 118 John, Elton, 228, see also Billy Elliott
Street Scene (with Weill), 118 Aida (with Rice), 228
Humphry, Doris, 85 Lion King, The (with Rice), 177, 179, 184,
Hupfield, Herman, 85 207, 208, 222, 229, 232, 234, 242
Hurtig, Benjamin, 46, 47 Johnson, Billy, 43
Hurtig, Jules, 46, 47 Trip to Coontown, A (with Cole), 43
Hwang, David Henry, 233 Johnson, James Weldon, 48–49, 50
Tarzan (with Collins), 233 Black Manhattan, 49
Hytner, Nicholas, 180, see also Carousel Red Moon, The (with J.R. Johnson, Cole),
48
I Am a Camera (Van Druten), 147, see also Shoo Fly Regiment, The (with J.R.
Cabaret; Isherwood, Christopher Johnson, Cole), 48
“I Could Write a Book” (Pal Joey), 105 Johnson, J. Rosamond, 48, 49
“I Love New York” campaign, 161, 163 Mr. Lode of Koal (with Shipp, etc.), 48, 49
I Married an Angel (Rodgers, Hart), 104 Red Moon, The (with Weldon, Cole), 48
Idle, Eric, 182 Shoo Fly Regiment, The (with Weldon,
Monty Python’s Spamalot, 182, 204 Cole), 48
In Dahomey (Cook, Dunbar, Shipp), 46–7 Jolson, Al, 38, 89, 92, 102
In the Heights (Miranda), 185, 188, 201, Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! (film), 102
241–2 Jones, Chris, 218
“Pacienca y Fe,” 241 Jones, John Bush, xiii, 167
Internet, xi, 1, 134, 175, 186, 224, 250 Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History
Into the Woods (Sondheim, Lapine), 188, 190, of the American Musical Theatre, xiii
204, 206 Judson Poets’ Theater, 144
Irish immigration, 39, 41–2, 58 Jujamcyn Organization, 160, 179
Irwin, May, 38 jukebox musicals, 181–2, 215
Isham, John W., 43–4, see also Black Patti’s “Jump Jim Crow” (Rice), 10
Troubadours; Octoroons; Oriental Junior Theatre Festival, 198–99
America
Isherwood, Christopher, 147, see also Kander, John, 147, 190
Cabaret; I Am a Camera Cabaret (with Ebb), 145, 147–8, 224, 248
Berlin Stories, The, 147 Chicago (with Ebb), 154–55, 179, 222, 244
iTheatrics, 201, 206, 207, 213 Curtains (with Ebb), 214, 216

281
Index

Kaufman, George S., 64, 89–91, see also Kurz, Friedrich, 234
Gershwin, George; Gershwin, Ira; Let Kushner, Tony, 180
’Em Eat Cake; Of Thee I Sing; Strike Caroline, or Change (with Tesori), 180
Up the Band
Kaye, Judy, 180 La Cage aux Folles (Herman, Fierstein). See
Kazan, Elia, 94 Cage aux Folles, La
Keenan-Bolger, Celia, 199 La Jolla Playhouse, 194, 215, see also Jersey
Keith, Benjamin Franklin (B.F.), 28–31, Boys
40, 45, 81, see also Albee, Edward La MaMa, 144, 165
Franklin (E.F.); Mikado, The; United Lady, Be Good (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin), 89
Booking Agency (UBO); Vaudeville Lahr, Burt, 142, see also Girls Against the
Managers Association (VMA) Boys, The
Kelly, Gene, 106 Landon, Margaret, 126
Kern, Jerome, 59–61, 84, 92, 98, 100, 113 Anna and the King of Siam, 126
Leave It to Jane (with Bolton), 61 Lane, Nathan, 186, 240
Nobody Home (with Bolton), 60 Lapine, James, 190
Oh, Boy! (with Bolton), 61 Into the Woods (with Sondheim), 188,
Oh, Lady! Lady!! (with Bolton), 61, 72 190, 204, 206
Show Boat (with Hammerstein II), xii, 36, Passion (with Sondheim), 190
70–5, 246 Sunday in the Park with George (with
Sunny (with Hammerstein II), 72 Sondheim), 190, 194, 224
Very Good Eddie (with Bolton), 61 Larson, Jonathan, 177–8, 242
Kerouac, Jack, 124 Rent, 177–8, 179, 180, 183, 199, 204, 242
King and I, The (Rodgers, Hammerstein II), Last Ship, The (Sting), 223
126–8, 199, 202, 207 Latouche, John, 117
Kinky Boots (Lauper, Fierstein), 181, 186, Cabin in the Sky (with Duke), 117
218, 222 Lauper, Cyndi, 181
Kirle, Bruce, 116, 146, 156 Kinky Boots (with Fierstein), 181, 186,
Klaw, Marc, 31, 34, 46, 47, 52, 53, 55, 56, see 218, 222
also Erlanger, Abraham L.; Frohman, Laurents, Arthur, 133, 190, 206
Charles; Hayman, Al; Nixon, Samuel West Side Story (with Bernstein,
F.; Theatrical Syndicate; Zimmerman, Sondheim, Robbins), 132–5, 136, 147,
John Frederick 193, 217, 241
Kleban, Edward, 156 League of American Theaters and Producers.
Chorus Line, A (with Hamlisch), xii, See Broadway League
155–7, 194, 196, 220 Leave It to Beaver, 136
Knapp, Raymond, xiii, 116 Leave It to Jane (Kern, Bolton), 61
American Musical and the Formation of Leavitt, Michael B., 24–5, see also burlesque;
National Identity, The, xiii Rentz-Santley Novelty and Burlesque
American Musical and the Performance of Company
Personal Identity, The, xiii Legally Blonde (O’Keefe, Benjamin), 233, 235
Korbich, Eddie, 116 Lehman Engel BMI Musical Theatre
Korea Times, 228 Workshop, 195
Korean War, 122 Leiber, Jerry, 181
Krieger, Henry, 164 Smokey Joe’s Cafe (with Stoller), 181
Dreamgirls (with Eyen), 164–5 Leigh, Mitch, 219
Kron, Lisa, 184 Man of La Mancha (with Darion), 215,
Fun Home (with Tesori), 184–5, 199, 200, 219–20, 229
220, 222 Lerner, Alan Jay, 131, 190, see also Dance a
Kubrick, Stanley, 123 Little Closer

282
 Index

My Fair Lady (with Loewe), 131–2, 136, Lopez, Robert, 195, see also Avenue Q
188 Los Angeles Times, 235
Les Mis School (Japan), 226–7 Luigs, Jim, 206, see also Annie
Les Misérables. See Misérables, Les LuPone, Patti, 168
(Schönberg, Boublil) Lyles, Aubrey, 66, 67, 68, 69–70
Leslie, Lew, 53, 69, 85, 86 Runnin’ Wild (with Miller), 69–70
Let ’Em Eat Cake (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin), Shuffle Along (with Blake, Sissle, Miller),
91 65–70, 84, 85, 247
Leve, James, xiii
American Musical Theater, xiii MacDermot, Galt, 149, 220, see also Dude;
Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds (Blake, Razaf, Miller), Via Galactica
53, 69, 85, 86 Hair (with Rado, Ragni), 145, 149–51,
Light in the Piazza, The (Guettel), 194, 223 185, 220
Liliom (Molnar), 115, see also Carousel Two Gentlemen of Verona (with Guare),
Limón, José, 88 220
Lincoln Center Theater, 194, 223 MacDonald, Tim, 200–1
Lindsay, Howard, 100 Mackintosh, Cameron, 169–72, 176, 203, 226,
Lion King, The (John, Rice), 177, 179, 184, 227, 231–2, see also Lloyd Webber,
207, 208, 222, 229, 232, 234, 242 Andrew; megamusicals; Misérables,
Disney animated film version, Les; Miss Saigon
177, 242 Macready, William, 9
Little Johnny Jones (Cohan), 41 Madama Butterfly (Puccini), 171, see also
Little Mermaid, The (Menken, Ashman, Miss Saigon
Slater), 175, 207 Maguire, Gregory, 188, see also Wicked
Little Miss Sunshine (Finn), 223 Mame (Herman), 165
Little Night Music, A (Sondheim, Wheeler), Mamma Mia! (Andersson, Ulvaeus), 180,
152, 224 181, 229, 232
Little Women (Howland, Dickstein), 197 Mamoulian, Rouben, 92, 117, see also Porgy
Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 150, 167–71, 181, and Bess; St. Louis Woman
203, 232 Man of La Mancha (Darion, Leigh), 215,
Aspects of Love, 171 219–20, 229
Cats, 168–70, 227, 234, 241 Marbury, Elisabeth, 60
Evita (with Rice), 168 “Marry the Man Today” (Guys and Dolls),
Jesus Christ Superstar (with Rice), 150, 131
167, 168, 188 Marshall, George, 119
Phantom of the Opera, The, 170, 175, Martin, Mary, 186
179, 184, 222–3, 227, 228, 232, 234, Mary Poppins (Richard B. Sherman, Robert
236, 241 B. Sherman, Stiles, Drewe), 176
School of Rock (with Slater), 181 Mast, Gerald, xiii
Starlight Express, 170 Can’t Help Singin’: The American Musical
Sunset Boulevard, 169, 170 on Stage and Screen, xiii
Loesser, Frank, 130 Martin and Selig’s Mastodon Minstrels, 44
Guys and Dolls, 130–1, 136, 157–8, 202, Matchmaker, The (Wilder), 157, 188, see also
229 Hello, Dolly!
Loewe, Frederick, 131, 190 Matilda (Minchin), 222
My Fair Lady (with Lerner), 131–2, 136, Mattachine Society, 152
188 Maxwell, George, 57
Lonely Romeo, A (Rodgers, Hart), 102 McArdle, Andrea, 216
Longacre Square, 32–3, 34, see also Times McCarthyism, 122
Square McCracken, Joan, 119

283
Index

McDonald, Audra, 116, 186, 240 Miss Saigon (Schönberg, Boublil), 170, 171–2,
McDonald, Tim, 207 241
McKaye, Percy, 144 Mitchell, Brian Stokes, 197
McNally, Terrence, 190 Mitchell, Jerry, 218, 235, see also Legally
Me and Juliet (Rodgers, Hammerstein II), 128 Blonde; Kinky Boots
Meehan, Thomas, 206, see also Annie Mme. Rentz’s Female Minstrels, 25, see
megamusical, 145, 167–72, 175, 215, 223, also burlesque; Leavitt, Michael B.;
226, 227, 234, 235, 236, see also Rentz-Santley Novelty and Burlesque
Lloyd Webber, Andrew; Mackintosh, Company
Cameron; Misérables, Les; Miss Molnár, Ferenc, 115
Saigon Liliom, 115, see also Carousel
Meisner, Sanford, 94 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (film), 182
melodrama, 6, 8, 14, 17, 18, 19, 37, 79 Monty Python’s Spamalot (Idle), 182, 204
Memphis (Bryan, DiPietro), 243–4 “Song That Goes Like This, The,” 182
“Colored Woman,” 243 Moore, Victor, 100
Menken, Alan, 195, see also Beauty and the Morgan, Harry, 94
Beast; Little Mermaid, The Morris, Lawrence, 96
Menzel, Idina, 195, see also Wicked Moses, Gilbert, 158, see also Ain’t Supposed to
Mercer, Johnny, 117 Die a Natural Death (Van Peebles)
St. Louis Woman (with Arlen), 117 Most, Andrea, 116
Merman, Ethel, 100, 157, 186, 240 motion pictures. See movies
Merrick, David, 157, 188, see also Hello, Motown: The Musical (Gordy, etc.), 182
Dolly! movies, xi, xii, 1, 38, 59, 74, 78–9, 81, 82–3,
Merrill, Bob, 190 85, 93, 99, 102, 110, 112, 117, 124, 128,
Funny Girl (with Styne), 190 134, 139, 163, 167, 168, 174, 175, 177,
Metropolitan Opera, 86, 92, 120 181, 182, 186, 208, 215, 222, 231, 232,
Michele, Lea, 210 238, 240, 244, 248
Michener, James, 126 Movin’ Out (Joel, Tharp), 181–2
Tales of the South Pacific, 126, see also Mr. Lode of Koal (Shipp, Johnson, etc.), 48, 49
South Pacific Mr. Popple of Ippleton (Ruben), see also
Mikado, The (Gilbert, Sullivan), 28, 29 Nobody Home
Miller, Flournoy, 66, 67, 68, 69–70 “Mulligan Guard” routines, 38–9
Runnin’ Wild (with Lyles), 69–70 Muppets, the, 188
Shuffle Along (with Blake, Sissle, Lyles), Music Man, The (Willson), 132, 135–6, 207
65–70, 84, 85, 247 Music Theatre International (MTI), 202–3
Miller, Marilyn, 53, 86 Broadway JR., 206–8
Mills, Florence, 68 musicals in schools, 203–10, see also
Minsky brothers (Abe, Billy, Herbert, Broadway JR.; Disney Musicals in
Morton), 81–2, see also burlesque; Schools (DMIS); Gershon, Freddie;
striptease Getting to Know Collections;
minstrelsy, xii, 9–15, 23, 24, 35, 36, 42, 70, see McDonald, Tim; Music Theatre
also blackface minstrelsy International; Ripley, Cindy
Miranda, Lin-Manuel, 184, 186, 188, 193, high schools, 203–4
195, 200 middle schools, 204–5
Hamilton, xii, 184–6, 193, 195, 199, 200, summer camps, 210–11
213, 220, 222, 225 musicals, amateur, 198–213
In the Heights, 185, 188, 201, 241–2 community theatres, 211–13
Mischief Management, 199 musicals, analysis and study, 237–50
Misérables, Les (Schönberg, Boublil), 169, 170, musicals, creation, 187–98
201, 203, 222, 226–8, 228, 230, 236 contracts, 195–7

284
 Index

out-of-town tryouts, 214–25 Hayman, Al; Klaw, Marc; Theatrical

producers, role of, 192–5 Syndicate; Zimmerman, John
readings, 191–2 Frederick
musicals, globalization, 1–2, 225–37 Nobody Home (Kern, Bolton), 60
Asia, 227–32 Norton, Elliot, 218, 219
Brazil, 235–7 Nunn, Trevor, 169, 226, see also Cats;
Europe, 232–5 Misérables, Les; Sunset Boulevard
musicals, licensing, 202–3 NYMF. See New York Musical Festival
My Fair Lady (Lerner, Loewe), 131–2, 136, 188
O’Hara, John, 104, see also Pal Joey
NAMT. See National Alliance for Musical O’Horgan, Tom, 150, 220, see also Hair; Jesus
Theatre Christ Superstar
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 O’Neal, Frederick, 117
(Malloy), 222 O’Neill, Eugene, 64
National Alliance for Musical Theatre Obama, Barack, 185
(NAMT), 195 Ochs, Adolph S., 33–34, see also New York
National Association for the Advancement of Times; Times Square
Colored People (NAACP), 49 Octoroon, The (Boucicault), 6
National High School Musical Theatre Octoroons (Isham touring company),
Awards, 204, see also Broadway 43, 44
League; Schubert Organization Odets, Clifford, 94
National Public Radio, 204 Of Thee I Sing (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin),
Nederlander Organization, 160, 179, 229, 89–91
230, 231 Off Broadway, 144, 161, 165, 177–8, 180, 182,
Nederlander New Century (Nederlander 183, 184, 191, 215, 219–21, 220–1, 225
Worldwide Entertainment), 229–32, Off Off Broadway, 144, 146, 149–50, 155,
see also musicals, globalization 161, 220
Negro Little Theatre Movement, 117 Oh, Boy! (Kern, Bolton), 61
Nemiroff, Robert, 158, see also Hansberry, Oh, Lady! Lady!! (Kern, Bolton), 61, 72
Lorraine Oja, Carol, 133
Raisin (with Woldin, Brittan), 158 Oklahoma! (Rodgers, Hammerstein II), xii,
New Amsterdam Theater, 53, 174, see also 109, 112–15, 119, 126, 129, 131, 156,
Disney Theatrical Group (DTG); 193, 207, 216, 245
Ziegfeld Follies “Ol’ Man River” (Show Boat), 73–4
New York Herald, 33 Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (Eliot),
New York Musical Festival (NYMF), 182, 169, see also Cats; Lloyd Webber,
195, 215 Andrew; Mackintosh, Cameron
New York Shakespeare Festival, 220, see also Oliver (pop singer), 150, see also Hair
Public Theater; Two Gentlemen of Oliver, Ryan Scott, 189
Verona On the Town (Bernstein, Comden, Green),
New York Times, 19, 33–4, 47, 49, 67, 86, 106, 120–1, 245
149, 157, 164, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236, On Your Toes (Rodgers, Hart), 102–4
244, 249 “Princess Zenobia” (Balanchine ballet),
New Yorker, 104 104
New Yorkers, The (Porter), 99 “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” (Balanchine
Next to Normal (Kitt, Yorkey), 244 ballet), 104
Nice Work If You Can Get It (G. Gershwin, I. Once on This Island (Flaherty, Ahrens), 194
Gershwin, DiPietro), 236 Once Upon a Mattress (M. Rodgers, Barer),
Nixon, Samuel F., 31, 55, 56, see also Erlanger, 207
Abraham L.; Frohman, Charles; One Day at a Time, 152

285
Index

Open Theater, 144, 220 Pins and Needles (Rome), 98

operetta, 25, 28–9, 35, 36, 37, 38, 45, 57, 68, Pipe Dream (Rodgers, Hammerstein II), 128
71, 72, 101, 103, 113, 169, 202 Pippin (Schwartz), 154, 222
Oriental America (Isham touring company), Playbill, 213, 249, 250
43 Play-House of the Ridiculous, 144
original Broadway cast recordings (OBCRs), Playwrights Horizons, 194
129 PMA (Producing Managers’ Association), 62
Orpheum Circuit, 30, see also Beck, Martin; Poiret, Jean, 166, see also Cage aux Folles, La
Walter, Gustav Policy Players, The (Shipp), 46
Osato, Sono, 121, see also On the Town Poor Little Ritz Girl (Romberg), 102
Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of Porgy (DuBose Heyward, Dorothy Heyward),
the American Musical Theatre (Jones), 92, 94
xiii Porgy and Bess (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin,
DuBose Heyward, Dorothy
“Pacienca y Fe” (In the Heights), 241 Heyward), 92–4, 100, 118, 222
Pacific Overtures (Sondheim, Weidman), 152 Porter, Billy, 219
Pajama Game, The (Adler, Ross), 147 Porter, Cole, 84, 98–101, 190
Pal Joey (Rodgers, Hart), 102, 104–7 Anything Goes, 98, 99–101
“Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” Fifty Million Frenchmen, 99
105, 106 Gay Divorce, 99
“I Could Write a Book,” 105 New Yorkers, The, 99
Palace Theatre, 81, 175 Paris, 99
Palmer, Henry, 18–19, see also Black Crook, See America First, 98
The Portman, Natalie, 210
Papp, Joseph, 149–50, 155–7, 178, 220, see postwar era, 121–5
also Chorus Line, A; Hair; Public Presley, Elvis, 143
Theater Prince, Harold “Hal,” 145, 147–8, 152–4,
Pardon My English (G. Gershwin, I. 164, 193, see also Cabaret; Company;
Gershwin), 100 Follies; Little Night Music, A; Pacific
Paris (Porter), 99 Overtures; Sondheim, Stephen;
Parks, Suzan-Lori, 222, see also Porgy and Bess Sweeney Todd; West Side Story
Passing Show, The, 53, 54, 56 Contradictions (autobiography), 193
Passing Strange (Rodewald, Stew), 184 Princess musicals (Kern, Bolton), 60–1, see
Passion (Sondheim, Lapine), 190 also Leave It to Jane; Oh, Boy!; Oh,
Pastor, Tony, 26–8, 45, see also variety shows; Lady! Lady!!; Nobody Home; Very
vaudeville Good Eddie
Patinkin, Mandy, 168 Princess Theater, 60, 98
Paulus, Diane, 222, see also American “Princess Zenobia” (Balanchine ballet from
Repertory Theater (ART); Brustein, On Your Toes), 104
Robert Producers, The (Brooks), 179, 181, 182,
Peggy Ann (Rodgers, Hart), 102 217–18
Pekin Stock Company, 66 ProQuest Historical Newspapers, 249, 250
Pelham, Richard, 11, see also Virginia Minstrels Pryce, Jonathan, 171–2, see also Miss Saigon
Pellegrini, Nancy, 230–1 Public Theater, 149, 178, 184, 185, 194, 195,
Perón, Eva, 168, see also Evita (Lloyd Webber, 220, 225, see also Bloody Bloody
Rice) Andrew Jackson; Chorus Line, A;
Perón, Juan, 168 Hair; Hamilton; Papp, Joseph; Passing
Phantom of the Opera, The (Lloyd Webber), Strange; Two Gentlemen of Verona
170, 175, 179, 184, 222–23, 227, 228, Puccini, Giacomo, 171, see also Miss Saigon;
232, 234, 236, 241 Rent

286
 Index

Bohème, La, 178, 242 Village Follies, The; Lew Leslie’s

Madama Butterfly, 171 Blackbirds; Passing Show, The; Pins
Purlie (Geld, Udell), 158 and Needles; Runnin’ Wild; Smokey
Purlie Victorious (Davis), 158, see also Purlie Joe’s Cafe; This Is the Army; Yip Yip
“Put a Curse on You” (Ain’t Supposed to Die a Yaphank; Ziegfeld Follies
Natural Death), 158 Rhapsody in Black (Leslie, etc.), 85, 86
Putnam, Robert, 201 Rice, Elmer, 64
Pygmalion (Shaw), 131, 132, see also My Fair Rice, Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy,” 10–11
Lady “Jump Jim Crow,” 10
Rice, Tim, 150, 228, see also Aladdin; Beauty
radio, 31, 58, 63, 81, 87, 110, 111, 124, 125, and the Beast
139, 141–2, 150, 185 Aida (with John), 228
Rado, James, 149, 220 Evita (with Lloyd Webber), 168
Hair (with Ragni, MacDermot), 145, Jesus Christ Superstar (with Lloyd
149–51, 185, 220 Webber), 150, 167, 168, 188
Ragni, Gerome, 149, 220, see also Dude Lion King, The (with John), 177, 179, 184,
Hair (with Rado, MacDermot), 145, 207, 208, 222, 229, 232, 234, 242
149–51, 185, 220 Rich, Frank, 164–5
Ragtime (Flaherty, Ahrens), 197 Richard III (Shakespeare), 4
Rahman, A.R., 180 Riggs, Lynn, 106
Bombay Dreams (with Black), 180 Green Grow the Lilacs, 106–7, see also
railroad, transcontinental, 13, 14, 31 Oklahoma!
Raisin (Nemiroff, Woldin, Brittan), 158 Ripley, Cindy, 206
Raisin in the Sun, A (Hansberry), 158, see Rivera, Chita, 154, 155
also Raisin Robbins, Jerome, 133, 145, 146, 219, 243, see
Raye, Martha, 157 also Funny Thing Happened on the
Reagan, Ronald, 163 Way to the Forum, A
Really Useful Company/Group, 168, 170, Fancy Free (with Bernstein), 120
see also Lloyd Webber, Andrew; West Side Story (with Bernstein,
megamusicals Sondheim, Laurents), 132–5, 136,
Red Moon, The (Weldon, Johnson, Cole), 48 147, 193, 217, 241
Reddy, Helen, 152 Robertson, Campbell, 230
Reinking, Ann, 154 Robeson, Paul, 68
Rent (Larson), 177–8, 179, 180, 183, 199, Robinson, Jackie, 118
204, 242 rock, xii, 134, 139, 141, 142–4, 149–51, 169,
Rentz-Santley Novelty and Burlesque 173, 178, 181, 182, 215, 226, 239, 242
Company, 25, see also burlesque; Rock of Ages (D’Arienzo), 182
Leavitt, Michael B.; Mme. Rentz’s Rockefeller, John D., 86
Female Minstrels Rocky: Das Musical (Flaherty, Ahrens), 224
revue, 37, 43, 44, 50, 52–4, 56, 59, 64, 66, 69, Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization,
70, 72, 79, 84–7, 98, 102, 103, 119–20, 202–3, 207
142–3, 158, 169, 176, 181, 182, 183, Getting to Know Collections, 207
210, 235, see also Ain’t Misbehavin’; Rodgers, Richard, 84, 101–6, 109, 112–17,
Americana; As Thousands Cheer; 125–8, 147, 190, 243, see also Annie
Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk; Get Your Gun
Bubbling Brown Sugar; Clorindy, Allegro (with Hammerstein II), 125–6,
or the Origin of the Cake Walk; 188
Darkydom; Earl Carroll’s Vanities; Babes in Arms (with Hart), 102, 104
Folies Bergère; Garrick Gaieties, The; Boys from Syracuse, The (with Hart),
Girls Against the Boys, The; Greenwich 102, 104

287
Index

Carousel (with Hammerstein II), 115–17, Salonga, Lea, 171

126, 180, 202, 224 Samuel French, Inc., 16, 202
Connecticut Yankee, A (with Hart), 102, Sandow, Eugene, 52, see also Ziegfeld,
106 Florenz, Jr.
Dearest Enemy (with Hart), 102 Sarony, Napoleon, 16
Flower Drum Song (with Hammerstein Saturday Night Fever (Bee Gees, Knighton),
II), 128 181
Garrick Gaieties, The (with Hart), 102 Saturday Night Live, 25
Girl Friend, The (with Hart), 102 Saunders, Gertrude, 68
I Married an Angel (with Hart), 104 Scandalous (Friedman, Pomeranz), 223
King and I, The (with Hammerstein II), Schoenberg, Arnold, 94
126–8, 199, 202, 207 Schönberg, Claude-Michel, 170, 171, 226
Lonely Romeo, A (with Hart), 102 Misérables, Les (with Boublil), 169, 170,
Me and Juliet (with Hammerstein II), 128 201, 203, 222, 226–7, 228, 230, 236
Oklahoma! (with Hammerstein II), xii, Miss Saigon (with Boublil), 170, 171–2, 241
109, 112–15, 119, 126, 129, 131, 156, School of Rock (Lloyd Webber, Slater), 181
193, 207, 216, 245 Schwartz, Stephen, 154, 183, 188
On Your Toes (with Hart), 102–4 Pippin, 154, 222
Pal Joey (with Hart), 102, 104–7 Wicked, 183–4, 188, 194, 195, 197–8, 213,
Peggy Ann (with Hart), 102 223, 229, 244
Pipe Dream (with Hammerstein II), 128 Scorsese, Martin, 123
Sound of Music, The (with Hammerstein Seamon, Harry, 46, 47
II), 128, 201, 202, 207, 228, 238 Second Sex, The (de Beauvoir), 152
South Pacific (with Hammerstein II), Second World War, 109–112, 113, 173
126–8, 202 See America First (Porter), 98
Rogers, Alex, 48 Segal, Vivienne, 106
Bandanna Land (with Cook, Shipp), 48 Selden, Albert, 219, see also Man of La
Rogers, Ginger, 98, 103, 157 Mancha
Rogers, Will, 53, see also Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr. Select Theaters Corporation, 80
Romberg, Sigmund, 102 Seller, Jeffrey, 194–5, see also Hamilton
Poor Little Ritz Girl, 102 (Miranda)
Rome, Harold, 98 Selwyn, Archibald and Edgar, 80
Pins and Needles, 98 7 Doigts de la Main, Les, 222, see also Pippin
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 133, see also September 11, 2001, 179, 245
West Side Story Sesame Street, 150, 188
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 77, 95, 163 Sextet (Hurwit, Goldsmith), 166
Routh, Marc, 227, see also Broadway Asia Shaiman, Marc, 181, see also Catch Me If
Company; Genatt, Simone You Can
Ruben, Paul, 60 Hairspray (with Wittman), 181, 188, 222,
Mr. Popple of Ippleton, 60, see also Nobody 223
Home Sharpley, Sam, 26, see also Pastor, Tony
Runnin’ Wild (Miller, Lyles), 69–70 Shaw, George Bernard, 131
Running for Office (Cohan), 41 Pygmalion, 131, 132
Runyon, Damon, 130, see also Guys Shaw, Irwin, 94
and Dolls Shevelove, Burt, 191, see also Funny Thing
Russell, Lillian, 27, 38, 62 Happened on the Way to the Forum;
Ryskind, Morrie, 89–91, see also Gershwin, Sondheim, Stephen
George; Gershwin, Ira; Kaufman, Shipp, Jesse, 46, 47
George S.; Let ’Em Eat Cake; Of Thee Bandanna Land (with Cook, Rogers), 48
I Sing; Strike Up the Band In Dahomey (with Cook, Dunbar), 46–7

288
 Index

Mr. Lode of Koal (with Johnson, etc.), Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
48, 49 Forum, A (with Shevelove, Gelbart),
Policy Players, The, 46 219
Sons of Ham, 46 Gypsy (with Styne), 190
Shoo Fly Regiment, The (Weldon, Johnson, Into the Woods (with Lapine), 188, 190,
Cole), 48 204, 206
Show Boat (Kern, Hammerstein II), xii, 36, Little Night Music, A (with Wheeler),
59, 70–5, 246 152, 224
“Bill,” 72 Pacific Overtures (with Weidman), 152
“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” 73 Passion (with Lapine), 190
film versions, 74 Sunday in the Park with George (with
“Ol’ Man River,” 73–4 Lapine), 190, 194, 224
Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Sweeney Todd (with Wheeler), 152, 200,
Theater (Stempel), xiii 204
Shrek (animated film), 244 West Side Story (with Bernstein, Laurents,
Shrek The Musical (Tesori, Lindsay-Abaire), Robbins), 132–5, 136, 147, 193, 217,
181, 213, 233, 244 241
Shubert brothers (Lee, Jacob J., Sam S.), 54–6, “Song That Goes Like This, The” (Monty
60, 61–2, 80, 124–5 Python’s Spamalot), 182
Shubert, Lee, 80, 85, 124 Sons of Ham (Shipp), 46
Shubert Organization, 160, 179, Soon (Kookolis, Fagan), 151
186, 204 Sound of Music, The (Rodgers, Hammerstein
National High School Musical Theatre II), 128, 201, 202, 207, 228, 238
Awards, 204 film version, 128, 238
Shubert, Sam S., 54, 55 Sousa, John Philip, 29
Shuffle Along (Blake, Sissle, Miller, Lyles), South Pacific (Rodgers, Hammerstein II),
65–70, 84, 85, 247 126–8, 202
Simon, Paul, 180 “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” 127
Capeman, The (with Walcott), 180 Southerners, The (Cook, etc.), 48
Sissle, Noble, 66, 67, 68 Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (Bono, The
Shuffle Along (with Blake, Miller, Lyles), Edge, Taymor, Aguirre-Sacasa), 241
65–70, 84, 85, 247 St. Louis Woman (Arlen, Mercer), 117
“Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” (Balanchine Starlight Express (Lloyd Webber), 170
ballet from On Your Toes), 104 Stein, Joseph, 146, see also Fiddler on the
Smalls, Charlie, 158 Roof; Robbins, Jerome
Wiz, The, 158 Stempel, Larry, xiii
Smash, 216 Showtime: A History of the Broadway
Smith, H.B., 29 Musical Theater, xiii
Smith, William H., 6 Stewart, Michael, 143, 157, see also Bye Bye
Drunkard, The, 6 Birdie; Hello, Dolly!
Smokey Joe’s Cafe (Leiber, Stoller), 181 stock companies, 20, 31, 64
social media, 1, 185, 244, 250 Stoller, Mike, 181
Sondheim, Stephen, 133, 154, 190–1, Smokey Joe’s Cafe (with Leiber), 181
194, 206 Stone, David, 194, see also Wicked
Company (with Furth), 152–4, 217 Stone, Ezra, 119–20, see also This Is the Army
Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954– Stonewall Inn, 152
1981) with Attendant Comments, Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 6, 17, 20
Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 6, 17, 20
and Anecdotes, 191 Strasberg, Lee, 94, see also Group Theatre;
Follies (with Goldman), 152 Theatre Guild

289
Index

Street Scene (Weill, Hughes), 118 Shrek The Musical (with Lindsay-Abaire),
Strike Up the Band (G. Gershwin, I. 181, 213, 233, 244
Gershwin), 89, 91 Thoroughly Modern Millie (with Scanlan),
striptease, 24, 82, 154 216, 223
Strouse, Charles, 143, 206, see also Dance a Violet (with Crawley), 194
Little Closer Tharp, Twyla, 181
Annie (with Charnin), 206, 216 Movin’ Out (with Joel), 181–2
Bye Bye Birdie (with Adams), 143–4, 207 Theatre Genesis, 144
Styne, Jule, 190 Theatre Guild, 92, 94, 106, 193, see also Porgy;
Bells Are Ringing (with Comden, Green), Porgy and Bess
190 Theatre in John Street, 5
Funny Girl (with Merrill), 190 Theatrical Syndicate, 31, 34–5, 54–6, 61–2, 72,
Gypsy (with Sondheim), 190 80, 186, see also Erlanger, Abraham L.;
High Button Shoes (with Cahn), 190 Frohman, Charles; Hayman, Al; Klaw,
subway system, New York City, 16, 32–3 Marc; Nixon, Samuel F.; Zimmerman,
Sullivan, Arthur, 89, see also Gilbert, W.S.; John Frederick
H.M.S. Pinafore; Mikado, The This Is the Army (Berlin), 119–20
Sunday in the Park with George (Sondheim, Thompson, Lydia, 23–4
Lapine), 190, 194, 224 Thoroughly Modern Millie (Tesori, Dick
Sunny (Kern, Hammerstein II), 72 Scanlan), 216, 223
Sunset Boulevard (Lloyd Webber), 169, 170 Three Dog Night, 150, see also Hair
“Supper Time” (As Thousands Cheer), 87 Times Square, xii, 1–2, 32–4, 36, 51–2, 57, 64,
Sweeney Todd (Sondheim, Wheeler), 152, 80–2, 111, 123–5, 144, 159–61, 175,
200, 204 183, 225, 236
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, 152, 158, Tin Pan Alley, 16–17, 35–6, 40, 57–60, 73,
see also Van Peebles, Melvin 88, 91, 119, 130, 137, 140–2, 173, 181,
Syndicate. See Theatrical Syndicate 242–3
decline, 140–2
tableaux vivants, 24 [title of show] (Bowen, Bell), 182, 215–16
Tales of the South Pacific (Michener), 126, see “Change It, Don’t Change It,” 215
also South Pacific TKTS (Times Square reduced-price ticket
Tamiris, Helen, 88 booth), 160
Tams-Witmark Music Library, Inc., 202–3, Torch Song Trilogy (Fierstein), 165
207 Town and the City, The (Kerouac), 124
Young Performer’s Editions, 207 transit system, New York City, 16, 32–3
Tanguay, Eva, 53 Trip to Chinatown, A (Hoyt), 37, 43, 72
Tarzan (Collins, Hwang), 233 Trip to Coontown, A (Cook, Johnson), 43
Taymor, Julie, 177, see also Disney Theatrical Truman, Harry S., 118
Group (DTG); Lion King, The; Spider- Tuck Everlasting (Miller, Tysen), 222
Man: Turn Off the Dark Tucker, Sophie, 53, 66, 155
teenage culture. See youth culture Two Gentlemen of Verona (MacDermot,
television, xi, xii, 1, 25, 38, 59, 122, 124, 125, Guare), 220
126, 132, 136, 139, 141, 152, 159, 163, Tyrolese Minstrel Family, 11
168, 185, 186, 188, 201, 215, 219, 229,
231, 233, 234 Udell, Peter, 158
Templeton, Fay, 38 Purlie (with Geld), 158
Tesori, Jeanine, 180, 181, 184, 194 Ulvaeus, Bjorn, 171, see also Mamma Mia!
Caroline, or Change (with Kushner), 180 Chess (with Andersson, Rice), 171
Fun Home (with Kron), 184, 199, 200, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe, adapted Aiken),
220, 222 6, 17, 20

290
 Index

Union Square, 9, 16–17, 23, 27, 30, 33, 34, Walter, Gustav, 30, see also Beck, Martin;
37, 40, see also Pastor, Tony; variety Orpheum Circuit
shows; vaudeville Washington Post, The, 249
United Booking Office (UBO), 30, see also Washington, George, 5
Vaudeville Managers Association Wasserman, Dale, 219
(VMA) Waters, Ethel, 86–7
Unmarried Woman, An (film), 152 “Supper Time” (Berlin), performance
of, 87
Valli, Frankie, 181, see also Jersey Boys Watkins, Maurine Dallas, 155
Van Peebles, Melvin, 158–9 Chicago (play), 155, see also Chicago
Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, (Kander, Ebb)
158–9 Webb, Clifton, 86
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (film), Weber and Fields, 27, 39–40
152, 158 Weber, Carl Maria von, 18
Variety (trade magazine), 37, 244 Weber, Joe, 28, see also Weber and Fields
variety shows, 16, 25–30, 38, 103 Weber, Rex, 86
vaudeville, xii, 21, 23, 25–31, 35–6, 45, 51, Wedding Singer, The (Sklar, Beguelin), 223
70, 72 Weidman, Charles, 85
early history, 25–8 Weidman, John, 191
Vaudeville Managers Association (VMA), 30, Pacific Overtures (with Sondheim), 152
see also United Booking Office (UBO) Weill, Kurt, 118
Vaughn, James, 47, see also In Dahomey Street Scene (with Hughes), 118
Verdon, Gwen, 154, 155 Weitzman, Ira, 194, see also Bishop, Andrew;
Vereen, Ben, 154 Falsettos; Light in the Piazza, The;
Very Good Eddie (Kern, Bolton), 61 Lincoln Center Theatre; Once on this
Via Galactica (MacDermot, Gore), 151 Island; Playwrights Horizons; Sunday
Viet Rock (Terry), 149, 220 in the Park with George
Vietnam War, 139, 142, 149, 150, 151 Welles, Orson, 96–8, see also Blitzstein,
Village People, 152 Marc; Cradle Will Rock, The; Federal
Village Voice, The, 165 Theatre Project (FTP); Houseman,
Violet (Tesori, Brian Crawley), 194 John
Virginia Minstrels, 11, 14 West Side Story (Bernstein, Sondheim,
Laurents, Robbins), 132–5, 136, 147,
Wagner, Robert (New York mayor), 123 193, 217, 241
Waitress (Bareilles), 222 Wheatley, William, 18–20, see also Black
Walcott, Derek, 180 Crook, The
Capeman, The (with Simon), 180 Wheeldon, Christopher, 225, see also
Walker, Don, 202 American in Paris, An
Walker, George, 44–9, 66, 67, see also Wheeler, Hugh, 191
Bandanna Land; Cook, Will Marion; Little Night Music, A (with Sondheim),
Dunbar, Paul Laurence; Gold Bug, 152, 224
The; Hurtig, Benjamin; Hurtig, Sweeney Todd (with Sondheim), 152,
Jules; In Dahomey; Koster and 200, 204
Bials; Seamon, Harry; Shipp, Jesse; White, George, 69–70
Williams, Bert White Rats Actors International
Walker, Jimmy, 85 (vaudevillians’ union), 62
Walker, Nancy, 142, see also Girls Against the Whitlock, Billy, 11, see also Virginia
Boys, The Minstrels
Waller, Fats, 158 Who’s Tommy, The (Pete Townshend, Des
Ain’t Misbehavin’, 158 McAnuff ), 223

291
Index

“Why Can’t the World Go and Leave Us WPA (Works Progress Administration), 94,
Alone?” (Dance a Little Closer), 166 96, 97, 103, 110
Wicked (Maguire novel), 188 Wynn, Ed, 53, see also Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr.
Wicked (Schwartz), 183–4, 188, 194, 195,
197–8, 213, 222, 223, 229, 244 Yeah Man (Wilson, Weinberg, etc.), 85
Wilder, Thornton, 157, 188 Yeston, Maury, 195
Matchmaker, The, 157, 188, see also Hello, Yip Yip Yaphank (Berlin), 119
Dolly! “You Could Drive a Person Crazy”
Williams, Bert, 44–50, 53, 63, 66, 67, 155, (Company), 153
see also Bandanna Land; Cook, Will “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” (South
Marion; Dunbar, Paul Laurence; Gold Pacific), 127
Bug, The; Hurtig, Benjamin; Hurtig, Youmans, Vincent, 84
Jules; In Dahomey; Koster and Bials; Young Performers’ Editions, 207, see also
Mr. Lode of Koal; Seamon, Harry; Broadway JR.; Disney Musicals
Shipp, Jesse; Walker, George; Ziegfeld, in Schools (DMIS); Getting to
Florence, Jr.; Ziegfeld Follies of 1910 Know Collections; Music Theatre
Willson, Meredith, 135 International; musicals in schools
Music Man, The, 132, 135–6, 207 youth culture, 122, 139, 173
Winter Garden Theatre, 54, 136, 169, 193 YouTube, 199, 201, 208, 210
Wiz, The (Smalls), 158
Wizard of Oz, The (film), 85, 103, 158, 183, Zeigler, Joseph, 220–1
207, see also Bolger, Ray; Harburg, Ziegfeld Follies, 50, 52–3, 56, 62, 63, 64, 84, 88,
E.Y. “Yip”; Wicked; Wiz, The 174, 182
Wodehouse, P.G., 61, 72, 100, see also Ziegfeld Follies of 1910, 50
Bartholomae, Philip; Bolton, Guy; Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, 103
Kern, Jerome; Princess musicals Ziegfeld Follies of 1957, 142
“Bill” (Show Boat), 72 Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr., 50, 52–4, 62, 72, 79–80,
Wolf, Stacy, xiii 81
Changed for Good: A Feminist History of Ziegfeld Theater, 70
the Broadway Musical, xiii Zimmerman, John Frederick, 31, 55, 56,
women’s movement, 63–4, 110, 119, 122, 150, see also Erlanger, Abraham L.;
151–2, 183 Frohman, Charles; Hayman, Al; Klaw,
Woodhull, Caleb Smith, 9 Marc; Nixon, Samuel F.; Theatrical
Woods, Albert H., 80 Syndicate

292
293
294
295
296
297
298