Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940s
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AlbakiReads Editorial How the 1940s reshaped the Broadway musical
How the 1940s reshaped the Broadway musical
Ethan Mordden surveys a decade in which Broadway musicals moved beyond familiar collections of comic turns, love songs, and spectacle toward shows organized around character, social setting, and dramatic stakes. The book places landmark titles including Oklahoma!, Carousel, Pal Joey, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me, Kate, and South Pacific alongside lesser-known productions and early concept musicals such as Allegro and Love Life. Its account connects the era’s theatrical shifts to questions of class, gender, politics, democracy, and changing ideas about what a musical could contain. Production lore and unusual Broadway episodes broaden the portrait of a form in transition.
Good fit for readers who enjoy
- Broadway and musical-theater history enthusiasts
- Readers interested in Rodgers and Hammerstein and their contemporaries
- Theater scholars exploring the development of the integrated or concept musical
Themes
Broadway in the 1940sEvolution of musical theaterCharacter and dramatic integrationClass, gender, and politics onstageTheater history and production lore
Based on publisher information and book metadata.
Book Overview "Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy," one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody...
"Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy," one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody and kickline form its musical shows. The form had been running on empty for too long, as a formula for the assembly of spare parts--star comics, generic love songs, rumba dancers, Ethel Merman. If Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn't existed, Broadway would have had to invent them; and Oklahoma! and Carousel came along just in time to announce the New Formula for Writing Musicals: Don't have a formula.
Instead, start with strong characters and atmosphere: Oklahoma!'s murderous romantic triangle set against a frontier society that has to learn what democracy is in order to deserve it; or Carousel's dysfunctional family seen in the context of class and gender war.
With the vitality and occasionally outrageous humor that Ethan Mordden's readers take for granted, the author ranges through the decade's classics--Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Phinian's Rainbow, Brigadoon, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific. He also covers illuminating trivia--the spy thriller The Lady Comes Across, whose star got so into her role that she suffered paranoid hallucinations and had to be hospitalized; the smutty Follow the Girls, damned as "burlesque with a playbill" yet closing as the longest-run musical in Broadway history; Lute Song, in which Mary Martin and Nancy Reagan were Chinese; and the first "concept" musicals, Allegro and Love Life. Amid the fun, something revolutionary occurs. The 1920s created the musical and the 1930s gave it politics. In the 1940s, it found its soul.
Instead, start with strong characters and atmosphere: Oklahoma!'s murderous romantic triangle set against a frontier society that has to learn what democracy is in order to deserve it; or Carousel's dysfunctional family seen in the context of class and gender war.
With the vitality and occasionally outrageous humor that Ethan Mordden's readers take for granted, the author ranges through the decade's classics--Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Phinian's Rainbow, Brigadoon, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific. He also covers illuminating trivia--the spy thriller The Lady Comes Across, whose star got so into her role that she suffered paranoid hallucinations and had to be hospitalized; the smutty Follow the Girls, damned as "burlesque with a playbill" yet closing as the longest-run musical in Broadway history; Lute Song, in which Mary Martin and Nancy Reagan were Chinese; and the first "concept" musicals, Allegro and Love Life. Amid the fun, something revolutionary occurs. The 1920s created the musical and the 1930s gave it politics. In the 1940s, it found its soul.
Book Details Format: Hardcover | Pages: 278 | Language: English | Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PR | ISBN: 0195128516
FormatHardcover
Pages278
LanguageEnglish
ISBN0195128516
EAN9780195128512
PublisherOXFORD UNIV PR
Publication Date1999-10-07
EditionNew Edition
AccessoriesNo Accessory
ConditionNew
Product TypeHARD COVER BOOKS
Weight1.24 Pounds
Length9.58 Inches
Width6.45 Inches
Height1.05 Inches
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