Lady In The Dark Biography Of A Musical

When Lady in the Dark opened on January 23, 1941, its many firsts immediately distinguished it as a new and unusual work. The curious directive to playwright Moss Hart to complete a play about psychoanalysis came from his own Freudian psychiatrist. For the first time since his brother George's death, Ira Gershwin returned to writing lyrics for the theater. And for émigré composer Kurt Weill, it was a crack at an opulent first-class production. Together Hart, Gershwin, and Weill (with a little help from the psychiatrist) produced one of the most innovative works in Broadway history. With a company of 101 and an astronomical budget, Lady in the Dark launched the career of a young nightclub performer named Danny Kaye and starred Gertrude Lawrence in the greatest triumph of her career. With standees at many performances, Lady in the Dark helped establish the practice of advance ticket sales on the Great White Way, while Paramount Pictures' bid for the film rights broke all records. New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson hailed the production as "splendid," anointed Kurt Weill 'the best writer of theatre music in the country,' and worshiped Gertrude Lawrence as "a goddess." Though Lady in the Dark was a smash-hit, it has never enjoyed a Broadway revival, and a certain mystique has grown up around its legendary original production. In this ground-breaking biography, bruce mcclung pieces together the musical's life story from sketches and drafts, production scripts, correspondence, photographs, costume and set designs, and thousands of clippings from the star's personal scrapbooks. He has interviewed eleven members of the original company to provide a one-of-a-kind glimpse into the backstage story. The result is a virtual ticket to opening night, the saga of how this musical play came to be, and the string of events that saved the experimental show at every turn. Although America was turned upside down by Pearl Harbor after the production was on the boards, Lady in the Dark played an important role for the war effort and rang up 777 performances in 12 cities. In what may be the most illuminating study of a single Broadway musical, this biography brings Lady in the Dark back to the spotlight and puts readers in the front row.

“This book, the first scholarly consideration of Weill’s complete output of stage works, is without doubt the most important critical study of the composer’s oeuvre to date in any language. Hinton’s scholarship is superior and his insights original and illuminating. The product of several decades of engagement with Weill’s works, their sources and reception, as well as the secondary literature, the book is a stunning achievement. Brilliantly conceived and executed, it will take its place as one of the cornerstones of Weill studies.”—Kim H. Kowalke, University of Rochester and President, Kurt Weill Foundation for Music “In Weill’s Musical Theater: Stages of Reform, Stephen Hinton reminds us that Kurt Weill was always a revolutionary. The composer’s insistent dedication to a provocative, constantly evolving lyric theater that spoke directly to audiences meant that Weill remained as controversial as he was popular. The celebrity that endeared him to Broadway made him anathema in Berlin. Some sixty years after Weill’s death, Hinton is finally able to demonstrate the consistent brilliance, theatrical power, and coherence of a composer who revolutionized every genre he touched (or used) and whose collaborators read as a who’s who of twentieth-century theater.” —David Savran, author of Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle Class "Stephen Hinton presents us with an image of Weill that is at once monumental yet still alive. A truly Protean figure, Weill is not an easy man to grasp in his totality; Brecht once wrote that a man thrown into water will have to develop webbed feet, and as a refugee from Nazi Germany, Weill had to become a cultural amphibian. But in Weill's Musical Theater we see the composer from every angle: through the gaze of countless critics and reviewers, through Weill's own eyes, and finally through the filter of Hinton's judicious, focused prose. This account will stand."—Daniel Albright, author of Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts

An expanded and updated edition of this acclaimed, wide-ranging survey of musical theatre in New York, London, and elsewhere.

Explores the history of American musical theater's engagement with notions of madness, from Man of La Mancha to A Strange Loop

The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their works to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Eugene O'Neill: The Iceman Cometh (1946), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947), Long Day's Journey Into Night (written 1941, produced 1956), and A Touch of the Poet (written 1942, produced 1958); * Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948); * Arthur Miller: All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), and The Crucible (1953); * Thornton Wilder: Our Town (1938), The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and The Alcestiad (written 1940s).

Haunting, lyrical, unforgettable, Girl in the Dark is a brave new memoir of a life without light. Anna Lyndsey was young and ambitious and worked hard; she had just bought an apartment; she was falling in love. Then what started as a mild intolerance to certain kinds of artificial light developed into a severe sensitivity to all light. Now, at the worst times, Anna is forced to spend months on end in a blacked-out room, where she loses herself in audiobooks and elaborate word games in an attempt to ward off despair. During periods of relative remission, she can venture out cautiously at dawn and dusk into a world that, from the perspective of her cloistered existence, is filled with remarkable beauty. And through it all there is Pete, her love and her rock, without whom her loneliness seems boundless. One day Anna had an ordinary life, and then the unthinkable happened. But even impossible lives, she learns, endure. Girl in the Dark is a tale of an unimaginable fate that becomes a transcendent love story. It brings us to an extraordinary place from which we emerge to see the light and the world anew.

This second edition offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America's best musicals. Geoffrey Block provides a documentary history of each of the eighteen musicals he discusses. He reveals how the American musical evolved from the 1920s to today, both on stage and on screen, and how librettist, lyricist, composer, and director work together to shape pieces.--[book cover].

Since the release of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! in 2001, the film musical has returned to popularity as one of the most important cinematic genres, a box office hit that appeals to audiences of all ages. Yet the history of the musical on film goes back over seven decades earlier than that, stretching from early examples like The Jazz Singer (1927), the first ever film with synchronized sound, through the Astaire-Rogers musicals of the 1930s, the MGM and Warner Brothers extravaganzas of the 1940s and '50s, and the roadshow era of the 1960s. The genre's renaissance with La La Land (2016) and The Greatest Showman (2017) proves that it remains as appealing as ever, capable of both high critical acclaim and widespread box office success. The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical, curated by editor Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, reflects and expands on current scholarship on the film musical in a handbook that mixes new discoveries through archival research with new perspectives on familiar titles. It addresses issues such as why audiences accept people bursting into song in musicals; how technology affects the way numbers are staged; and how writers have adapted their material to suit certain stars. It also looks at critical issues such as racism and sexism, and assesses the role and nature of the film musical in the twenty-first century. A remarkable survey at the cutting edge of the field, The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical will be a resource for students and scholars alike for years to come.

"Mrs. Oscar Hammerstein, so the story goes, once overheard someone praise "Ol' Man River" as a "great Kern song." "I beg your pardon," she said, "But Jerome Kern did not write 'Ol' Man River.' Mr. Kern wrote dum dum dum da; my husband wrote ol' man river." It's easy to understand her frustration. While the years between World Wars I and II have long been hailed as the "golden age" of American popular song, it is the composers, not the lyricists, who always usually get top billing. "I love a Gershwin tune" too often means just that-the tune-even though George Gershwin wrote many unlovable tunes before he began working with his brother Ira in 1924. Few people realize that their favorite "Arlen" songs each had a different lyricist-Ted Koehler for "Stormy Weather," Yip Harburg for "Over the Rainbow," Johnny Mercer for "That Old Black Magic." Only Broadway or Hollywood buffs know which "Kern" songs get their wry touch from Dorothy Fields, who would flippantly rhyme "fellow" with "Jello," and which of Kern's sonorous melodies got even lusher from Otto Harbach, who preferred solemn rhymes like "truth" and "forsooth." Jazz critics sometimes pride themselves on ignoring the lyrics to Waller and Ellington "instrumentals," blithely consigning Andy Razaf or Don George to oblivion"--

The Broadway musical has greatly influenced both American and world culture. Shows such as Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun are as American as apple pie, while the long runs of imports such as Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Les Misérables have broken records. Shows filled with rock and pop music such as Mamma Mia! and Wicked enthrall audiences, and revivals of beloved shows play an important role in contemporary Broadway culture. Actors Ethel Merman, Yul Brynner, Julie Andrews, Bernadette Peters, and Audra McDonald; composers and lyricists Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Jeanine Tesori; and directors and choreographers George Abbott, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Tommy Tune, and Susan Stroman—to name only a few—have gained national and international recognition by way of the Broadway musical stage. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Broadway Musical contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on Broadway shows, composers, playwrights, directors, producers, designers, actors, and theatres. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Broadway musicals.