RANDOLPH COLLEGE FOR THE PERFORMING

ARTS

MUSICAL THEATRE HISTORY LECTURE

MTH.101

WINTER 2019
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE.................................................................................................................................. v
AN INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 1
WHAT IS BROADWAY? ................................................................................................................. 1
FLOP OR NOT?................................................................................................................................ 1
THE AWARDS.................................................................................................................................. 3
TERMS AND DEFINITIONS ................................................................................................... 5
MUSICAL FORMS ........................................................................................................................... 5
TERMS .............................................................................................................................................. 6
VOCAL AND CHARACTER TYPES.............................................................................................. 7
BEFORE BROADWAY ............................................................................................................. 9
MINSTREL SHOWS ........................................................................................................................ 9
BURLESQUE .................................................................................................................................. 11
VAUDEVILLE ................................................................................................................................ 14
OPERETTA..................................................................................................................................... 15
REVUE ............................................................................................................................................ 16
TIN PAN ALLEY ............................................................................................................................ 17
EARLY MUSICALS................................................................................................................. 21
IRVING BERLIN .................................................................................................................... 22
COLE PORTER ....................................................................................................................... 24
ETHEL MERMAN ....................................................................................................................................25
RODGERS & HART ................................................................................................................ 29
JEROME KERN ...................................................................................................................... 31
SHOW BOAT .................................................................................................................................. 33
GEORGE GERSHWIN ............................................................................................................ 36
RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN ............................................................................................. 38
OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II.......................................................................................................... 38
RICHARD RODGERS ................................................................................................................... 39
RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN .................................................................................................... 39
AGNES DE MILLE ................................................................................................................. 43
FRANK LOESSER .................................................................................................................. 45
LEONARD BERNSTEIN ........................................................................................................ 48
JEROME ROBBINS ................................................................................................................ 50
FORM & STRUCTURE .......................................................................................................... 52

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 MUSICAL ELEMENTS ................................................................................................................. 53
LYRICS AND LITERARY CONVENTIONS ............................................................................... 54
KANDER & EBB ..................................................................................................................... 56
MARVIN HAMLISCH ............................................................................................................ 59
STEPHEN SONDHEIM .......................................................................................................... 61
SIR ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER ........................................................................................... 70
STEPHEN SCHWARTZ.......................................................................................................... 74
WORKS CITED ....................................................................................................................... 78

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 PREFACE

The following is designed to be an overview of the lives and careers of influential 20th
Century musical theatre writers or writing teams, the shows that demonstrate an innovative
impact on the development of the form or exemplify the works of the period, and other important
collaborators and contributors (i.e. directors, choreographers, producers, and performers). This
historical information should be a starting point for consideration of how these writers and shows
relate to musical theatre today.

The purpose of this course is not to memorize dates, but to develop a sense of each
writer's body of work. Content will focus on their works for the stage, but includes some
information about important works in other media (film, television, etc.). Note the artistic
collaborations, role models and teachers, and people and events that shaped their lives and
careers.

As you study each writer, consider:

• What makes a writer unique? How is their writing and style similar to or different from
other writers?
• What trends are evident in the works of each writer? Do they tend towards specific
subject matter? Do they frequently use common musical elements?
• How does each writer's work develop and evolve throughout their career?
• What did each writer contribute to the evolution of form?
• How do the works and careers of writers relate to other writers?

The following brief consideration of the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein that follows can
serve as an example of the critical thinking encouraged in this course.

Oklahoma! is recognized as a turning point in the development of musical theatre form.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1943 production was the first to integrate all musical comedy
elements—score, book, and dance—to serve the story. Beyond the integration of songs and
book, in Oklahoma!, dance explored characters’ emotions and psychology. The “Dream Ballet”,

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choreographed by Agnes de Mille, revealed Laurey’s hopes and fears, and the desires of the
leading characters through dance. However, you can trace the steps to this work in their shows
with previous collaborators. In 1927's Show Boat, Hammerstein, writing both book and lyrics,
began to place songs at the emotional climax of scenes, allowing for seamless transition from
heightened emotion to musical expression. This is in stark contrast to other musicals of the
period, where the main purpose of the libretto was to get from one hit song to the next, with set-
ups rarely concerned with character or plot. Though Rodgers' work with lyricist Lorenz Hart
never achieved true integration of book and score, their penultimate collaboration, Pal Joey, used
songs presented in a performative setting to reflect the characters. Their 1936 musical On Your
Toes included a possible antecedent to Oklahoma's “Dream Ballet”, with “Slaughter on Tenth
Avenue”, a dance sequence integral to the action of the musical. Pal Joey additional included a
ballet at the end of Act 1, “Joey Looks to the Future”. In Oklahoma!, their first collaboration,
elements that had been previously explored in both writers' musicals were now used solely to
serve story.
Hammerstein's librettos offer several examples of “opposite” love songs, duets where
characters are unwilling or unable to express their amorous feelings. Rather than romantic leads
who confess their love for each other in their first onstage meeting, Hammerstein's love duets
often have characters teasing or testing their counterparts. In Oklahoma!, Laurey and Curly taunt
each other with the fact that “People Will Say We're in Love”, listing behaviors that may draw
the attention of the community. Laurey warns: “don't throw bouquets at me, don't please my
folks too much”, and in return Curly opines that Laurey should not “sigh and gaze at me, don't
laugh at my jokes too much”. In reality, each is hoping that the other will do the very things they
advise against. In the Carousel's extended “Bench Scene”, Julie Jordan describes to Billy
Bigelow how she imagines she would behave “If I Loved You”. However, in the preceding
scene, Julie's best friend Carrie Pipperidge has chastised Julie for her distant and distracted
behavior, using the same lyrics, melodic material, and underscoring Julie employs in the verse
for “If I Loved You”. Both music and lyrics serve to reveal that Julie is, in fact, in love, but
hiding behind pretense with the use of the word “if”. The template for both songs can be traced
back to Show Boat, where the romantic leads playfully mask and tentatively express their
feelings for each other. In Magnolia and Gaylord's first meeting, Magnolia confesses her desire
to be an actress, and quickly catches herself becoming too familiar with a stranger. Gaylord

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suggests she imagine that while they have just met, that they have fallen in love at first sight. He
implores her to “make believe that I love you”, and after Magnolia's reprise of the refrain,
together they sing: “for to tell the truth, I do.”
The pairing of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and their complementary sensibilities, led to
the maturation of their work. Drawing on their independent writing histories, together they
achieved a level of artistic excellence that outshone their previous shows, and set the standard for
the musicals from the early 1940's through mid-1960's.

As you study the historical information to follow, tease out the details that will allow you
to participate fully in classroom discussion that critically examines the writer's contributions to
the development of the musical theatre form.

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 MUSICAL THEATRE HISTORY
AN INTRODUCTION

Musical theatre is approximately 100 years old. Drawing on the elements of previous
entertainment forms, its development began in the United States in the early 1900s, and musicals
in the form recognized today have only been developing since the late 1920s. The evolution of
the musical has been fluid, and “eras” and trends in musical theatre can be marked by shows that
represent a major innovation in the form. Composers, writers, directors and producers have
influenced each other in a number of ways, and there have been steps forward and backward in
the major developments throughout the years.

WHAT IS BROADWAY?
Specifically, Broadway is a street in New York City that runs the length of Manhattan.
The theatre district recognized as “Broadway” currently runs approximately seven or eight
blocks North and South, and two blocks East and West of Broadway Avenue.
Broadway theatres are not specifically on Broadway Avenue, but are designated based on
the size of the house (the number of seats): a professional New York theatre with more than 500
seats is a Broadway theatre. “There are 39 theatres1 that the Broadway community generally
knows to be the Broadway theatres. These are the theatres that the American Theater Wing and
the Broadway League have deemed eligible for the Tony Awards” (Pincus-Roth). Off-Broadway
theatres are located throughout Manhattan, and have 100-499 seats. New York theatres with 99
seats or less are considered Off-Off-Broadway.

FLOP OR NOT?
Determining whether a show is a hit or a flop depends on point of view. Commercially, a
show is a success when it recoups its initial investment. “A show can run for years and still not
recoup its investment. Likewise, a small show can have a limited run and pay back all of its
investors. It all depends on the show’s weekly “nut”, meaning how much money is needed for
advertising, actor salaries, theater rent, ushers, backstage crew, etc.…” (Rudetsky, 8-9). The
musical Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, cost over $75 million to produce, more than double any

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This number can change, based on the construction and renovation of theatres. There are
currently 41 theatres listed as Broadway theatres.
other production in Broadway history. “At the show’s current earning level Spider-Man would
have to run more than seven years to recoup what investors have poured in” (Flynn and Healy).
With weekly operating costs around $1 million, this required playing to capacity audiences,
paying full price for tickets. Instead, after three years on Broadway, Spider-Man: Turn Off the
Dark closed January 4th, 2014 at a loss of up to $60 million.
Other shows are considered a success based on artistic achievement and public
popularity. Winning awards and receiving good reviews from the critics recognize some shows
as a success. However, some shows are critical favourites, but public failures: “Passion won the
Tony Award for Best Musical but ran for less than [a] year, whereas Jekyll and Hyde got
skewered by the critics but stayed on Broadway for almost five years!” (Rudetsky, 9).
Some popular musicals are celebrated for long, record-breaking runs on Broadway. As of
November 4th, 2018, the shows with the longest runs on Broadway are as follows (Playbill Staff):
1. The Phantom of the Opera*
2. Chicago (Revival)*
3. The Lion King*
4. Cats
5. Les Miserables
6. Wicked*
7. A Chorus Line
8. Oh! Calcutta! (Revival)
9. Mamma Mia!
10. Beauty and the Beast
*still running on Broadway

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 THE AWARDS

There are a number of annual awards that recognize artistic achievement in the theatre.
Generally, the “major” awards are focused on productions based in New York, though many
cities and organizations celebrate the theatrical work in other cities and regions.
The Tony Award recognizes achievement in Broadway performances. The American
Theatre Wing and the League of American Theatres and Producers award the Antoinette Perry
Award for Excellence in Theatre (aka the “Tony”) to performers, directors, choreographers,
writers, and productions. The award is named for Antoinette Perry, the co-founder of the
American Theatre Wing.

TONY AWARD WINNERS 2000-2018

Year Best Musical Best Original Score Best Book Best Revival
2018 The Band’s Visit The Band’s Visit The Band’s Visit Once On This Island
2017 Dear Evan Hansen Dear Evan Hansen Dear Evan Hansen Hello, Dolly!
2016 Hamilton Hamilton Hamilton The Color Purple
2015 Fun Home Fun Home Fun Home The King & I
2014 A Gentleman’s Guide to The Bridges of Madison A Gentleman’s Guide to Love Hedwig and the
Love & Murder County & Murder Angry Inch
2013 Kinky Boots Kinky Boots Matilda, The Musical Pippin
2012 Once Newsies Once Porgy and Bess
2011 The Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon Anything Goes
2010 Memphis Memphis Memphis La Cage aux Folles
2009 Billy Elliot the Musical Next to Normal Billy Elliot the Musical Hair
2008 In the Heights In the Heights Passing Strange South Pacific
2007 Spring Awakening Spring Awakening Spring Awakening Company
2006 Jersey Boys The Drowsy Chaperone The Drowsy Chaperone The Pajama Game
th
2005 Monty Python’s Spamalot The Light in the Piazza The 25 Annual Putnam La Cage aux Folles
County Spelling Bee
2004 Avenue Q Avenue Q Avenue Q Assassins
2003 Hairspray Hairspray Hairspray Nine
2002 Thoroughly Modern Millie Urinetown Urinetown Into the Woods
2001 The Producers The Producers The Producers 42nd Street
2000 Contact Aida James Joyce’s The Dead Kiss Me, Kate

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 The Pulitzer Prize (for Drama) is awarded annually for a distinguished play by an
American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life. Since the
award’s inception in 1917, nine musicals have won the Pulitzer: Of Thee I Sing, South Pacific,
Fiorello!, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Chorus Line, Sunday in the Park
with George, Rent, Next to Normal and Hamilton.

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 TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Musical Comedy is the generic term referring to various forms of musical entertainment, now
more commonly referred to simply as a “musical”. More formally designated as “American
Musical Theatre”.

MUSICAL FORMS

Book Musical: a musical in which the songs and dances are fully integrated into a “well-made
story”.

Revival: a revival is a new production of a musical that has previously been presented on
Broadway. Sometimes these are productions that are faithful to the original material, but with the
advantage of current technology. Other times, there is an aspect of “re-imagining” the
production, with a vastly different directorial or design vision from the original (i.e. the recent
Broadway revivals of Sweeney Todd and Company, both directed by John Doyle, which featured
relatively small casts doubling as musicians).
Sometimes a revival will also “revise” or update the work, editing the book or musical
selections of the show. Revisions tend to occur in older works (with permission of the estate),
which do not cater to the contemporary musical theatre tastes, or when the creators are still alive
to contribute to editing from lessons learned from initial productions, or to include material
written for alternate versions (i.e. film adaptations) created after original Broadway productions.

Revue: a musical in which the music, dance and sketches are not linked by a single plotline. A
popular form in the early part of the Twentieth Century, they were also called Follies, Vanities,
Scandals, etc., depending on the producer and/or theatre.
Contemporary revues may have basic characters and a rudimentary narrative, but the
songs are generally the focus of the show, featuring the work of a specific composer (i.e. Side by
Side by Sondheim, Putting It Together, Sondheim on Sondheim, Stephen Sondheim; And The
World Goes ‘Round, Kander and Ebb).

Song Cycle: a group of songs to be performed as a single work, usually unified through theme,
narrative or a persona/character common to the songs. The unity of the cycle is often underlined
by recurring musical themes (i.e. Elegies, William Finn; Myths and Hymns, Adam Guettel;
Songs for a New World, Jason Robert Brown).

Jukebox Musical: a musical that uses previously recorded music from one artist, composer or
time period as its score, with a plot constructed around the musical selections (i.e. Mamma Mia,
Jersey Boys, Rock of Ages, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, etc.). Some jukebox musicals create
entirely original stories (i.e. Mamma Mia), others focus on the life and career of the performer or
writer whose works are make up the score (i.e. Beautiful).

Operetta: the literal definition is “little opera”. A light theatrical piece in simple and popular
style containing vocal and instrumental music, spoken dialogue and dance music. The form
flourished in Europe and America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Rock Opera: stage productions that are sung-through, with rock-based scores are sometimes
colloquially referred to as a “rock opera” (i.e. Jesus Christ Superstar). In the record industry, the
term refers to rock albums with a narrative, telling a story through its songs. Such albums have
been adapted as musicals, staging the material from the recording (i.e. The Who’s Tommy,
American Idiot).

Concept Musical: a musical in which “all elements of the musical, thematic and presentational,
are integrated to suggest a central theatrical image or idea”(Gordon). The metaphor or statement
is more important than the narrative/plot (i.e. Company), and often a stylized element is
employed (i.e. the Kit Kat Club in Cabaret).

Through-composed: a musical with little or no speaking; all dialogue is on pitch or

underscored. Also, often referred to as “sung-through” or “through-sung” (i.e. Sweeney Todd,
Evita, Dreamgirls, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent).

Pastiche: a musical that combines a variety of unrelated musical elements. An imitation of

existing styles of song, used within a musical not specifically of that style (i.e. Joseph and the
Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat).

TERMS

Score: the music and songs of a musical, including the music, lyrics and instrumental/orchestral
parts. In written or printed form:
1. Full Score contains all vocal and instrumental parts on separate staves,
2. Piano/Vocal Score (also Conductor’s Score) is simply the vocal line(s) and piano
accompaniment (with some orchestral cues noted in piano line),
3. Vocal Selections contains the most popular songs from the score, arranged for
voice and piano.

Libretto: the complete text of a musical, including all dialogue and song lyrics (and stage
directions). The libretto is often referred to as “the book” of a musical.

Orchestrations: the musical arrangements for the various instruments and voices in the show,
created from the musical information provided by the composer. Depending on the size of the
orchestra and the instruments available, orchestrations create colour and variety in the musical
material, and reflect the mood and message of the story.

Composer: writer of music (the score of a musical).

Lyricist: writer of lyrics, especially for musical theatre and popular songs.

Librettist: writer of scenes and dialogue; also referred to as the “book writer”. Sometimes also
writes lyrics.

Underscoring: music under dialogue.

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Ballad: a song with a slow to moderate tempo, often with lyrics that are romantic, sentimental or
yearning in nature.

Up-tempo: a song with a fast, or lively tempo, often with charming, fun or funny lyrics.

Duet: a song sung by two characters.

Reprise: repetition of an earlier song or musical theme. These can be sung by a different
character, or with revised lyrics, and are generally employed to reflect development in the story,
or emphasize narrative elements.

Patter Song: often a comic showpiece, a patter song is a fast, wordy song, generally featuring
tongue twisting rhymes, and a simple musical accompaniment intended to feature the text
(i.e. “I am the very model of a modern Major-General”, The Pirates of Penzance; “Getting
Married Today”, Company; “The Worst Pies In London”, Sweeney Todd).

Recitative “Speaking on pitch.” Generally used in opera or operetta, recitative is often

characterized by speech-like rhythms, fast-paced patter and usually conveys plot and action.
Often the opening verse of a musical theatre song will have the quality of a recitative, providing
a “set-up” to the material that follows.

VOCAL AND CHARACTER TYPES

Soprano: higher female voice, usually lighter and brighter than a mezzo-belter. Generally the
ingénue or romantic lead (i.e. Laurey in Oklahoma!).

Mezzo (Soprano): medium female voice, employing a mix voice or belt voice, usually darker
and richer than a soprano. Often a romantic lead (i.e. Polly in Crazy for You).

Belt Voice: an extension of the speaking voice. (i.e. Annie in Annie Get Your Gun). Today
musical theatre mezzos and many sopranos are often expected to belt.

Tenor: higher male voice, usually a light and bright timbre (i.e. Tony in West Side Story).

Baritone: medium male voice with a warm timbre, often the romantic lead (i.e. Curly in
Oklahoma!).

Bass: lowest male voice with a dark, rich timbre (i.e. Joe in Showboat).

Ingénue: young female role who is in her teens or early twenties, and is naïve and unworldly
(i.e. Johanna in Sweeney Todd).

Romantic Lead: male or female, usually twenties through forties. The story is centered on this
character’s experience, and usually follows their love story (i.e. Sarah Brown and Sky Masterson
in Guys and Dolls).

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Character Part: male or female secondary role that usually provides comic relief. Often their
love story contrasts the primary couple (i.e. Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide in Guys and
Dolls).

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 BEFORE BROADWAY

Several forms of early American entertainment had direct influences on the development
of the musical theatre. The best or most popular aspects of these forms became part of the
blueprint of the American musical.

MINSTREL SHOWS
Minstrel shows were popular from the mid-1840s to the mid-1880s, and persisted into the
early 20th Century. “These were variety shows, made of songs, dances, and jokes united by
subject matter—black life and love in the southland—and performed not only by whites but (till
the 1870s) by men only” (Mordden, Anything Goes, 10). Inspired by the informal entertainments
that were staged by black slaves poking fun at the strutting mannerisms of their white masters,
white men performed in blackface, and presented an exaggerated impersonation of African
American life and habits. Minstrelsy was a popular entertainment that featured sketches, songs,
and dances that idealized plantation life, presenting a sentimental depiction that never truly
existed. Comedy was an essential component of the Minstrel show; the impersonations were
often blended with improvised comedy on humorous subjects. Later, as African American
performers began appearing in Minstrel shows, they too adopted the burnt cork makeup, and
exaggerated characterizations.
From a single act, the minstrel show grew to three. The First Part, as it was called,
remained the key event: a semi-circle of men backing up, at center stage, the
Interlocutor and, at the sides, the two end-men. These were Mr. Bones (playing two
semi-attached bone-like substances producing a castanet crackle) and Mr. Tambo (on
the tambourine). “Gentlemen,” cried the Interlocutor at the start, “be seated!” He then
announced the number and worked the jokes with the endmen, all in stage-southern
dialect, repeating the set-up lines so the public wouldn’t miss the punchline. The jokes
were traditional, often virtually pointless.
The second part, known as the “olio”, was a variety show made of anything from
song and dance spots to crazy novelty acts… One thing the public could count on was
the “stump speech”, modeled on the politician’s pompous rhetoric but filled with
double-talk, allusions to everything from the Bible to the latest scandal, and aimless

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 fill-in phrases… which merrily led from one topic to another without a blip of
continuity.
The Third Part brought forth a playlet supporting more songs spots, reserved in
particular for the Old Favorites… Sometimes the Third Part offered a spoof of some
literary or dramatic work (Mordden, Anything Goes, 10-11).

“Minstrelsy was the first form of American stage entertainment to commission popular
music specifically for the stage” (Kislan, 19). The songs in Minstrel shows sought to capture the
spirit of Southern life, and featured simple lyrics, melodies and harmonies. Northern-born
composers like Dan Emmett, Stephen Foster and James Bland created original popular songs for
Minstrel shows, and many have become recognized as American folk songs.

Thomas D. (“Daddy”) Rice (1808-1860)

Rice became one of the most popular minstrel performers with the creation of his character Jim
Crow. The character was supposedly inspired in 1828, when Rice spotted an old black man
crippled with rheumatism, dancing and singing. Rice adapted his dance and added new verses to
his song (which was in fact an old Irish folk song). From this single song-and-dance act, he
developed full-length entertainments, and although best known as a solo entertainer, he also
appeared in plays, including the lead role in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The Virginia Minstrels

In 1843, Frank Brower (“Bones”), Dan Emmett, Frank Pelham, and Billy (“Banjo”) Whitlock
combined forces and founded The Virginia Minstrels (playfully named after a group of Swiss
performers who called themselves the “Tyrolese Minstrel Family” and who had toured the States
to much acclaim). The unprecedented success of their black-faced show in turn spawned
numerous imitators. What is perhaps most important about the Virginia Minstrels is that the
structure they adopted for their ‘minstrel show’ (a the three-act format) became the standard
structure for all subsequent minstrel troupes.

The Christy Minstrels

Christy’s Minstrels (or The Christy Minstrels), led by Edwin P. Christy, was undoubtedly the
most acclaimed and popular of all minstrel troupes in the mid-nineteenth century. The troupe is
credited with inventing and/or popularizing "the line", the structured grouping that constituted
the first act of the standardized 3-act minstrel show, with “Mr. Interlocutor” in the middle and
"Mr. Tambo" and "Mr. Bones" on the ends. It continued to fill houses in Manhattan for an
unprecedented uninterrupted 10 years.

Stephen Foster (1826-1864)

Known as “The Father of American Music”, Foster left a reputation as one of America's most
popular composers, with songs including: “My Old Kentucky Home”, “Jeanie With the Light
Brown Hair”,” Old Folks at Home”, “Camptown Races”, and “Oh! Susanna”. Foster became
famous by way of the Minstrel Show circuit. Born on the 4th of July, 1826 – the 50th anniversary
of the Declaration of Independence – he was the tenth of eleven children. Differing from his
siblings, Foster's interest in music was disdained as something 'a man should not spend too much
time at'. While employed by an older brother as an accountant, he befriended Minstrel Show
performers, hoping to get them to perform his songs.

BURLESQUE
The origin of the English term “burlesque” is contentious. Most historians cite the French
“burlesque”, which was, in turn, borrowed from the Italian “burlesco”, derived from the Spanish
“burla” ('joke') or the Latin “burra” as its root. Its literal meaning is to “send up”. Beginning in
the early 18th Century, Burlesque referred to theatrical presentations that parodied or spoofed the
high-brow themes of classical theatre, with scripts in rhyming couplets, often played by all-
female troupes (often in male garb) employing risqué double-entendres. These shows depended
on the charms of the female performers, and “the display of female limb in a fleshly manner,
usually clothed in tights” (Hurwitz, 34).

Lydia Thompson (1838–1908)

Born Eliza Hodges Thompson, ‘Lydia’ Thompson was an English dancer, actress, and theatrical
producer. As a teenager, she danced in Britain and throughout Europe. She soon became a lead
dancer and actress in Burlesques on the London stage. A strict taskmistress to her underlings and
a shrewd businesswoman, she was described as “small, brisk, and clever.” In 1868, she
introduced Burlesque to America (to great acclaim and much notoriety) in a production entitled
Ixion or The Man At the Wheel. The show debuted at Wood’s Museum, but was such a success
that it was moved to Niblo’s Gardens as a follow-up to The Black Crook. Lydia and her
‘Imported British Blondes’ performed in a number of undistinguished yet highly popular English
imports (e.g. The Forty Thieves, Bluebeard, Sinbad, Robinson Crusoe), often referred to as ‘leg-
shows’ or ‘blonde burlesques.’ The girls were invariably dressed in tights or in male attire (these
roles were known as 'travesties’ or ‘trouser roles’ or ‘pant parts') in order to show off their
shapely figures.

It was not until the advent of the motion picture industry that Burlesque degenerated. As
comics and stars moved on to more lucrative contracts on Broadway and in motion pictures, and
legitimate theatre began to feature the female form, burlesque theatres fell into disrepair, the
audience declined, and the genre slowly faded out. Forced to compete with this new popular
form of entertainment, Burlesque producers dropped the scripted story lines and peppered their
shows with bawdy comedy, shimmy-shakers, and eventually strippers. Striptease quickly became
the dominant ingredient of Burlesque by the 1930s. Burlesque acts were cheaper than
Vaudeville, and their ‘circuits’ (called "wheels") supplied a new show every week, complete
with cast, costumes, and scenery. There was the Columbia Wheel, the American Wheel, and the
Mutual Wheel – all relatively clean. (A fourth wheel, the Independent, actually went bankrupt in
1916 after refusing to clean up its act.) Although declared obscene and often outlawed,
Burlesque was rather tame by modern standards.

The Minksy Brothers

Perhaps the most notable exponents of this form of entertainment were the four Minsky brothers:
Abe Minsky (1878-1960); Billy Minsky (1887-1932); Herbert Minsky (1892-?); and Morton
Minsky (1902-1987) – who started their particular brand of burlesque in New York City in 1912,
and whose dominance in the field lasted until 1937. The eldest Minsky brother, Abe, launched a
business in 1908 with a Lower East Side nickelodeon showing racy films. His own father shut
him down but then bought the National Winter Garden on Houston Street (which had a theater
inconveniently located on the sixth floor), transferring ownership to Abe and his younger
brothers Billy and Herbert. At first the brothers tried showing respectable films but soon
discovered that they could not compete with the large theater chains. The Minsky brothers then
tried to bolster their shows by bringing in vaudeville performers, but soon discovered they could
not afford the really good acts. As a result, they considered Burlesque. Their clientele was the
poor immigrant class who had not been taught to appreciate clean burlesque. Abe, who had been
to Paris and had seen the Folies Bergère and the Moulin Rouge, suggested importing one of their
trademarks: a runway to bring the girls out into the audience. The theater was reconfigured, and
the Minskys were the first to feature a runway in the United States. Billy had the sign out front
changed to "Burlesque As You Like It – Not a Family Show," and the Minskys were on their
way.
The Minskys were raided for the first time in 1917 when dancer Mae Dix absent-
mindedly began removing her costume before she reached the wings. When the crowd cheered,
Dix returned to the stage and continued to remove her clothing to wild applause. Billy ordered
the "accident" repeated every night. This began an endless cycle: to keep their license, the
Minskys had to keep their shows clean, but to keep drawing customers they had to be risqué.
Whenever they went too far, they were raided. In 1931 Billy proposed bringing the Minsky
brand to Broadway, amid the respectable shows. The brothers leased the Republic Theater on
42nd Street and staged their first show on February 12th. The Republic became Minsky's
flagship theater and the capital of burlesque in the United States. The Great Depression ushered
in the greatest era for burlesque, and Minsky burlesque in particular. Few could afford to attend
expensive Broadway shows, yet people craved entertainment. Furthermore, there now seemed to
be an unlimited supply of unemployed pretty girls who considered the steady work offered by
burlesque. By the time they finished expanding, the various Minskys controlled over a dozen
theaters – six in New York and others in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Albany, and Pittsburgh. They
even formed their own "wheel."
In 1935, irate citizens' groups began calling for action against burlesque. Mayor Fiorello
H. LaGuardia, had deemed them a "corrupting moral influence". The city's license
commissioner, Paul Moss, tried to revoke Minsky's license but the State Court of Appeals ruled
that he did not have grounds without a criminal conviction. Finally, in April 1937, a stripper at
Abe Minsky's New Gotham Theater in Harlem was spotted working without a G-string. The
conviction allowed Moss to revoke Abe's license and to refuse any renewal of other burlesque
licenses in New York. It was not long before Burlesque ceased to exist in NYC.
Some of the artists who perfected their craft in Burlesque included: comedians Abbott
and Costello, Milton Berle, Joe E. Brown, Red Buttons, Jackie Gleason, Bert Lahr, Ed Wynn,
Pinky Lee, Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Red Skelton, Danny Thomas, Bobby Clark, Mae West,
singers Sophie Tucker, and strippers Gyspy Rose Lee, Rose La Rose, Lilly St. Cyr, Tempest
Storm, and Sally Rand.

VAUDEVILLE
The origin of the term “vaudeville” is debatable. Some historians argue that it is a
corruption of the French ‘les chansons du Vau de Vire’ or 'vaux-de-vire' (a term coined by
Olivier Basselin when he was describing the popular satirical songs sung in the 15th Century in
Valley of Vire in Normandy). Others argue that it comes from the French ‘voix de ville’ a term
commonly used to describe the street songs of Paris. Regardless, ‘Vaudeville’ was the term
coined by Benjamin Keith to describe the kind of show he and partner Edward Albee first
presented in Boston in 1885.
Vaudeville was essentially “a show form of unrelated acts following each other in
succession” (Kislan, 41), and variety acts included: singers, dancers, actors, comics, magicians,
monkeys, dogs, and circus acts. Performers had no more than 10 minutes for their acts – which
meant that they had to establish themselves without any wasted motion, display their talents with
unvarying skill, and move quickly to the climax of their acts. (That 10-minute structure became
the standard for scenes in musical theatre and television programming.) The vaudeville stage
became a training ground for a wide variety of acts. Performers who got their start in vaudeville
include: Charlie Chaplin, Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, Harry Houdini, Vernon and Irene Castle, Fred
and Adele Astaire and the Marx Brothers.
The vaudeville bills eventually became a well-planned program to ensure audience
satisfaction, and stars demanded the coveted spots just before intermission or just before closing.
A typical nine-act bill-of-fare started with an action-packed “dumb act” such as acrobats or
cyclists that used the full expanse of the stage and that did not have to be heard while people
were coming into the theater. The second spot went to a typical Vaudeville act such as a song-
and-dance or comedy team that could perform in front of a curtain in order to give stage hands a
chance to set up a specialty act, something quite different, which would stress the show’s
diversity. This front-of-the-curtain and behind-the-curtain trade-off (with acts such as a comedy
sketch, a monologist or dramatic reading, a character specialty, a musical act from the legitimate
theatre, etc. – but also included freak shows and oddities) continued until the headliner appeared.
The set concluded with another breath-taking acrobatic act.
Vaudeville thrived until the Depression in late 1920’s and 1930’s; vaudeville’s stars
moved on to Hollywood and audiences flocked to talking pictures.

Tony Pastor (1837-1908)

Tony Pastor is commonly referred to as ‘The Father of Vaudeville.’ Born in Brooklyn, he
began putting neighborhood shows on in his parents' basement at 7 years old. He performed with
the minstrel troupe for B.T. Barnum, and then went on to perform across the country as a
minstrel, circus clown, and eventually a ringmaster.
At 28 years old, Pastor started Tony Pastor's Variety Show. His major innovation was to
make it a family entertainment, increasing the generally all-male audience. To appeal to this
larger crowd, Pastor cleaned up the behavior both on and off stage, including forbidding drinking
and smoking in the performance auditorium (though there was a billiards hall and saloon in the
building for the men). ‘Tony Pastor’s’ (as it came to be known) was the first such place in New
York City where respectable women and children could go to see a relatively cleaned-up version
of Music Hall entertainment or ‘Variety.’ It soon became the most popular theater in New York
City.
Pastor was known to be meticulous about the content and quality of his shows, but a fair
and friendly employer. He would employ singing and dancing ensembles on one year contracts,
while acts were hired for 1-2 weeks; the regularly changing acts kept audiences coming back.
Performers who in Pastor's Variety shows included: Harrigan and Hart, Weber and Fields, The
Four Cohans (including young George M. Cohan), and the Three Keatons.

The development of the modern musical can be traced most directly from the influences
of two popular forms of the early 1900s: operetta and the revue.

OPERETTA
Imported from Europe, operetta employs music, spoken dialogue, light subject matter,
comedic elements and romance. Operetta usually included: exotic and picturesque locations, lush
melodies and scores, and a three to five act structure. European-born composers Victor Herbert,
Sigmund Romberg and Rudolph Friml were the most celebrated composers of early 20th Century
operetta in America, bringing original European-style music to American audiences.
Closely related to operetta is Comic Opera. While French comic opera, opera bouffe, was
introduced to American audiences first, English Comic Opera was a sensation. An English
libretto allowed the audience to clearly understand dialogue, enjoy the jokes, and marvel at
wordplay and clever rhymes. The works of Gilbert & Sullivan are the most popular examples,
and are characterized by political satire and social commentary, and careful crafting of
“completely realized scenes, lyrics and songs that played on the stage as indispensable parts of
an artistic and stylistic whole” (Kislan, 98).

REVUE
Revues were a mixed bill of musical numbers, comedy, sketches and specialty routines,
arranged to create a sense of unity. Unlike vaudeville and minstrel shows, a theme or context
usually unified the evening’s entertainment by loosely linking the acts. Generally assembled by a
producer, these included the: Ziegfeld Follies, George White Scandals, Music Box Revues,
Garrick Gaieties, and the Earl Carrol Vanities. Revues were a training ground for performers,
composers and lyricists; many had their first Broadway opportunities in revues.
“The earliest revues relied on spectacle, beautiful girls, and wonderful stage effects that
attracted an affluent public eager for glamour and excitement” (Kislan, 84). The greatest of the
spectacular revues were the Ziegfeld Follies, produced by one of the greatest showmen of
American Theater: Florenz Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld presented 23 editions of the Follies between 1907
and 1931, all conforming to the same basic formula of glamour (with a focus on the most
beautiful of American girls), pacing built toward the climaxes at the end of each act, decency in
content, grand spectacle, and were assembled by the best writers, composers, designers and
performers money could buy. From composers like Jerome Kern, Victory Herbert and Irving
Berlin, Ziegfeld commissioned over 500 songs, including the Berlin song which became the
Follies theme: “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody”.
The “intimate revue” developed alongside the spectacular, but rejected glamour for
simplicity, wit, satire and sophistication. These shows required clever sketches, lively music and
clever lyrics. Rodgers and Hart wrote their first Broadway score for the 1925 Garrick Gaieties.
TIN PAN ALLEY
In the early 20th Century the music of the theatre was popular music. In the time before
radios and recorded music, homes had a piano in the parlor, and hit songs could be measured by
the sale of sheet music. American popular song was influenced by the melting pot of cultures:
the minor qualities of Eastern European music and the rhythm and syncopation of African music
and jazz. The verse and 32-bar chorus became the standard form for songs in musicals, jazz, and
dance music.
Most major music
publishers were located in one
New York neighborhood, known
as “Tin Pan Alley”. Tin Pan
Alley often refers to a specific
neighborhood in NYC, on West
Twenty-Eighth Street between
Fifth and Sixth Avenue. The
name, Tin Pan Alley, is
attributed to journalist/composer
Monroe Rosenfeld who, in a
1903 newspaper article, likened
the sheer cacophony of all the song-pluggers playing their songs at the same time to “the clatter
and clanging of tin pans”. While the name was originated to describe a neighborhood in which
many music publishers made their headquarters, the title became synonymous with the American
music publishing industry in the first half of the 20th Century. Music publishers in NYC often
moved their offices throughout Manhattan, to follow the uptown migration of the heart of the
theatre district, and many were eventually settled in the West Forties. Other publishers were
headquartered outside of NYC, with offices in Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, and other major
urban centers.
Before the inventions of radio and television, family entertainment often took the form of
an informal gathering around the piano after dinner to sing songs together. Sheet music sold for
an average of 50¢; the average take-home salary for a family of four was $12.75 a week. The
front covers of sheet music were adorned with eye-catching photographs, designs, and
illustrations. Important performing artists would appear on the sheet music covers, and these
performers thereby became identified with performing the song—an incentive for them to retain
the song in their repertoire.
Music publishers employed “song pluggers” to market songs to performers and the
public. Pluggers would visit any venues that presented live music (vaudeville, bars, theatre,
brothels, nickelodeons) promoting new songs. Free “professional copies” of sheet music, printed
on cheap newsprint without a cover picture, were distributed to performers and band leaders to
include in their acts. Enticements for performer could also include free drinks and gifts, and
sometimes money or shares of royalties. The goal was to get leading performers to sing songs
whenever they performed, encouraging audiences to buy sheet music so that they could learn and
perform the songs themselves. During the 1890s publishers spent approximately $1,300.00 to
create a hit song; in the 1950s that figure rose to over $30,000.00. Between 1900 and 1910,
approximately one hundred songs sold over one million copies each, at a time when the
population of the United States was approximately 90 million.
As music publishers flourished in the early 1900s, many moved into larger spaces which
allowed for new methods of song promotion. In 1912, Remick’s new building included a 200-
seat auditorium for demonstration and rehearsal, and had fifteen piano rooms on its second floor.
Performers would listen to new songs, often performed by the composers, and songs they liked
could be immediately taught by an accompanist. Songs could be tailored to the range and style of
individual performers, working out keys and tempos. For star performers, staff composers and
lyricists would create special material for exclusive use.
The twenties saw the most prolific outpouring of songs of all the decades in Tin
Pan Alley’s history. The good times were reflected in the popularity of jazz bands
and in the number of dance bands that were being recorded around the country.
The entertainment industry was going full-blast, with the sale of player pianos and
piano rolls peaking in 1926. Vaudeville attendance was at an all-time high and so
were the number of musical comedy productions on Broadway (the 1927-28
season produced fifty-three musicals, according to Variety). Everything came to a
halt by the end of 1929 when, in Variety’s famous headline, “Wall Street Lays An
Egg.”
By the start of the thirties, radio had become a most important force in the popular
 music industry, reaching vast numbers of people comprising pop music’s
audience, and heralding the age of the disc jockey. Talking pictures created
another outlet for music publishers, as movie musicals were starting to appear in
great numbers. Films became a most important source of income for songwriters
and publishers of Tin Pan Alley, as film producers had to buy songs. Film
companies found it more convenient to purchase already-established publishing
firms with a catalog of favorite songs for their ever-growing roster of films. The
Depression saw the cost of sheet music drop from thirty to twenty-five cents.
Ironically, during the early thirties, dance bands were increasing in size from
twelve to fifteen players and they came to be known as the big bands. Pluggers
went after those performers with radio shows and sought bandleaders with
permanent ballroom jobs (Jasen, 192).

Some historians date the demise of Tin Pan Alley at the start of the Great Depression in
the 1930s, when the phonograph and radio supplanted sheet music as the driving force of
American popular music. Others consider Tin Pan Alley to have continued into the 1950s when
earlier styles of American popular music were upstaged by the rise of rock and roll. “Theatre
composers routinely acknowledged popular idioms—jazz and ragtime, for example—by
appropriating them for theatrical purposes shortly after their emergence. Yet, while there have
been many repeated attempts over the past half-century to unite rock music with musical theater,
their sociological, ideological, and aesthetic divergences have made such unions especially
tricky” (Wollman, 1).
In the 1950s the emergence of rock and roll, the radio deejay, and a focus on recorded
music led to the end of Tin Pan Alley and sheet music publishing. Music publishers continued to
focus their efforts on the young and middle-aged adult audience for sheet music, and failed to
recognize the new musical trends gaining popularity with a new, younger audience. Rock and
roll, drawing on elements from country and western and rhythm and blues, was mistaken as a
fad. In 1954, three songs in the pop charts signaled the beginning of a new era in popular music:
“Sh-Boom” recorded by the Crew Cuts, and Bill Haley and the Comets’ recordings of “Shake
Rattle and Roll” and “Rock Around the Clock”.
The recorded performance of rock and roll became more important than the written
words and music, and sheet music sales quickly became insignificant in the pop music business.
“The difference wasn’t simply two different musical wellsprings. It was also the change from
notes on a page to sounds in a recording studio. In a studio, the new writers did their own
instrumentation. They learned to think in terms of sound – a job that had previously been left to
specialist who could write orchestral scores” (Rimler, 3). Artists were writing and recording their
own songs, with control over their own publishing rights. Tin Pan Alley and the business
practices of the music publishers became obsolete.
 EARLY MUSICALS

Early musical comedies were generally written to feature a star performer, or the music of
a specific composer or team. Plots were constructed to give a sense of character, provide
opportunities for comic scenes, and loosely link songs together. As Ethel Merman described in
her autobiography: “the writers who used to think up the books that were wrapped around
Gershwin or Cole Porter scores, started from scratch, with only their bare cupboards and an
unmanageable sense of humor to guide them. First a producer signed a cast; then he hired writers
to rustle up some material for that cast to use” (Merman).
In Make Believe: The Broadway Musical in the 1920’s, Ethan Mordden illustrates several
song set-ups and scenes from early musicals, using La La Lucille, The Student Prince, The
Stepping Stones and Lady, Be Good! as examples:
“Reminiscing with her father about her show-biz past, a young woman recalls her
greatest triumph, singing “Tee-Oodle-Um-Bum-Bo” in red satin pants. She favors us
with a nostalgic chorus of the song, where upon her father chimes in with the second
chorus. Then the orchestra cranks up the tempo, the two exit, and a line of chorus
girls dances on to pursue the number, all dressed in red satin pants. We have no idea
who these women are, how they all got hold of replicas of the heroine’s old costume,
and why they have suddenly erupted into her apartment.
Or: the curtain rises upon an operetta’s third act to reveal “a room of state at the
Royal Palace” in Karlsberg as “ladies and gentlemen of the court are dancing a
quadrille.” Uniforms and fancy dress emphasize the high tone of the affair, the violins
saw regally away, and a lackey introduces, “The Grand Duchess Anastasia”…
Now for a snippet of humorous dialogue. Star comic applies for a job as a bus boy.
Tavern proprietress has seen him already. “Did I tell you then,” she asks, going into
traditional business of sizing him up, flirting and posing, “that I wanted an older boy?”
Winking at the audience, star comic replies, “Yes, ma’am. That’s why I came back
today.”
Finally, consider the Eleven O’clock Number, the star shot just before the folding up
of the plot and the everybody-onstage-for-the-last-reprise finale. This one has two
stars, dancing siblings who now appear in eccentric costume, she in Alpine togs with
an outlandishly feathered hat. The book writers gamely try (and fail) to rationalize the
 outfit; it’s really there to provision a song called “Swiss Miss”, which will allow the
pair to dilate comically upon the rituals of mountain courtship, then to go into a mock-
Tyrolean dance capped by their trademark “run-around” exit, in which they lope along
in ever-widening circles to the orchestra’s Germanic oompah and the pealing bells till
they disappear from sight and the audience goes crazy” (Make Believe).

IRVING BERLIN (1888-1989)

“Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is

American music.” – Jerome Kern

Born Israel Baline in Russia, Irving Berlin’s

family immigrated to the United States when he was two,
and he grew up in poverty in New York City. When he
was eight his father died of tuberculosis, and at 14 he left
home to lessen the financial burden on his family.
Berlin had no musical training, could not read
music and only played piano in one key. He wrote at a
special piano with a lever to transpose, and hired musical
assistants to notate what he’d written. Despite these
limitations Berlin had a great ability with language and rhythm, and an ear for melody and
harmony. While seemingly simple, Berlin’s music and lyrics are rarely simplistic and have a
charming colloquial sensibility.
Berlin's early Tin Pan Alley successes were comedy numbers, often written in dialects.
By 1911 he was a publishing partner (with Ted Snyder) and composer of over fifty songs. That
same year “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, though not authentic ragtime, was a hit and became the
soundtrack for the ragtime ballroom dancing dance craze, and earned Berlin $50,000 in royalties.
The popularity of the song also helped establish the 32-bar form as the standard for popular
music.
Berlin celebrated patriotism, and when drafted in World War I he was commissioned to
write a show, Yip, Yip, Yaphank, which displayed the experiences and emotions of the soldier in
songs like “Oh, I Hate to Get Up in the Morning”. During World War II he revived the old army
show and retitled it This Is the Army, and it toured with an all-soldier cast, featuring the Berlin
song “God Bless America”.
He wrote for several editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, and all four annual editions of the
Music Box Revues, which specifically featured Berlin’s music. As tastes and style changed in the
1930’s, so did the tone of Berlin’s shows. 1932’s Face the Music dealt with the Depression, and
police and political corruption. In 1933 As Thousands Cheer was a musical revue inspired by the
headlines and sections of the daily newspaper, “with individual scenes depicting news events, the
funnies, the lonely-hearts column, the society page and other features” (Green, 76-77). Songs
from the show include “Heat Wave” (from the article “Heat Wave Hits New York”) and “Supper
Time”, sung by a widow of a black man lynched by a mob.
In the late 1930’s he wrote for Hollywood, including the films Holiday Inn, Easter
Parade and White Christmas. When he returned to Broadway in the 1940’s, styles had changed
again and composers had to be concerned with the integration of songs and libretto. Berlin began
writing book musicals, including: Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Miss Liberty (1949) and Call Me
Madam (1950).
 COLE PORTER (1891-1964)
Cole Porter is known for his sophisticated
lyrics, clever rhymes and complex structures.
Double entendres abound in Porter lyrics, and
many songs were risqué. He was the master of the
list song, which often featured pop-culture
references. “Porter’s lists at their best not only are
notably brilliant in their neatness and invention
(“Let’s Do It”), but the tunes which support them
are memorable, “You’re the Top” being the
supreme example” (Sondheim, 212). Though
Porter was neither born nor raised in New York
City, his songs were the essence of New York
society and sophistication.
Porter was born in Indiana, and his maternal grandfather was a wealthy lumber magnate
who intended to leave him a considerable inheritance, on the condition he became a lawyer. At
his mother’s insistence he studied piano and violin in his youth. He attended Yale University,
and studied law for one year at Harvard, before transferring to music at the suggestion of the
dean (and with his grandfather’s reluctant approval).
In 1916 Porter’s first show, See America First, was produced on Broadway. It was poorly
received, and in 1917 he left New York for France. Though he continued to write and play piano
at parties, Porter much preferred living and traveling in Europe to a professional career as a
songwriter. Many encouraged him to write for the stage, but besides contributions to a few
revues, Porter remained content writing for the amusement of friends.
Upon his return to the United States, his first hit show was 1928’s Paris, which featured
the song “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)”. The parenthetical “Let’s Fall in Love” was added to
appease censors, and the song garnered Porter a reputation as a clever and sophisticated lyricist
(see the lyrics that follow). “During the Thirties, when other composers were writing social
satires and experimenting with new and different forms, Porter was creating songs that did what
they could do to perpetuate all that was glamorous in the Twenties” (Green, 143) including the
musicals Gay Divorce (1932) and Anything Goes (1934), one of Porter’s biggest hits.
 Between December 1939 and January 1944 Porter wrote five box office smashes in a
row: Dubarry Was a Lady, Panama Hattie, Let’s Face It!, Something for the Boys, and Mexican
Hayride. By the mid-1940’s, however, he seemed to be unable to create the outstanding scores
of his early shows. Little was expected of his musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming
of the Shrew, but Kiss Me, Kate proved a great success, won the first Tony Award for Best
Musical, and is one of Porter’s most enduring musicals today.
In 1937, his legs were crushed in a horseback riding accident. He refused amputation,
underwent 31 operations over the next 20 years to try to correct the damage, and spent the rest of
his life in pain. In 1958, his leg was ultimately amputated, and Porter withdrew and stopped
writing. He passed away in 1964 after surgery for a kidney stone.

ETHEL MERMAN (1908-1984) was a celebrated star of early

musical theatre. A serio-comic heroine, “Merman was too big not
to carry a show, therefore had to become a romantic lead (and
bring new information to romance)” (Mordden, Broadway Babies,
114). She made her Broadway debut in Gershwin’s Girl Crazy in
1930, where she debuted the song “I Got Rhythm” and wowed the
audiences with her stamina and power, holding a single note
through the chorus while the band played on (in an era before any
vocal amplification). By 1940 her name alone appeared above the
title. The force of her belt, her clarity of diction, personal vocal
style (including a frequent little “dip” into pitches), and knowing
sensibility became her trademarks, and marked most of her roles.
She appeared in over a dozen musicals, frequently in shows by
both Berlin and Porter. She created roles in Berlin’s Annie Get
Your Gun and Call Me Madam and a number of Porter shows,
including Anything Goes, Red, Hot and Blue, and Panama Hattie.
Later in her career Merman created the role of Mama Rose in Gypsy, surprising both audiences
and critics with her dramatic abilities.
26
27
LET’S DO IT (Let’s Fall in Love) The nightingales, in the dark, do it,
Words and Music by Cole Porter Larks, k-razy for a lark, do it,
from the musical Paris Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
Canaries, caged in the house, do it,
When the little Bluebird, When they’re out of season, grouse do it,
Who has never said a word, Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
Starts to sing: “Spring, spring;” The most sedate barnyard fowls do it,
When the little Bluebell, When a chantacleer cries.
In the bottom of the dell, High-browed old owls do it,
Starts to ring: “Ding, ding.” They’re supposed to be wise.
When the little blue clerk, Penguins in flocks, on the rocks, do it,
In the middle of his work, Even little cuckoos in their clocks, do it,
Starts a tune to the moon above. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
It is nature, that’s all,
Simply telling us to fall in love. The dragonflies, in the reeds, do it,
Sentimental centipedes do it,
And that’s why Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
Birds do it, bees do it, Mosquitoes, heaven forbid, do it,
Even educated fleas do it, So does ev’ry katydid, do it,
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
In Spain, the best upper sets do, The most refined lady-bugs do it,
Lithuanians and Letts do it, When a gentleman calls,
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love. Moths in your rugs, do it,
The Dutch in old Amsterdam do it, What’s the use of mothballs?
Not to mention the Finns Locusts in tree do it, bees do it,
Folks in Siam do it, Even highly educated fleas do it,
Think of Siamese twins. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
Some Argentines, without means, do it,
People say, in Boston, even beans do it, The chimpanzees in the zoos do it,
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love. Some courageous kangaroos do it,
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
Romantic Sponges, the say, do it, I’m sure giraffes, on the sly, do it,
Oysters, down in Oyster Bay, do it. Heavy hippopotami do it,
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
Cold Cape Cod clams, ‘gainst their wish, do Old sloths who hang down from twigs do it,
it, Though the effort is great,
Even lazy Jellyfish do it, Sweet guinea-pigs do it,
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love. Buy a couple and wait.
Electric eels, I might add, do it, The world admits bears in pits do it,
Though it shocks ‘em I know. Even Pekineses in the Ritz, do it,
Why ask if shad do it, Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
Waiter, bring me shad-roe.
In shallow shoals, English soles do it, Copyright © 1928 by Harms, Inc.
Goldfish, in the privacy of bowls, do it,
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.
 RODGERS & HART

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were the first

songwriting team for which the lyricist was equally
credited with the composer. Their songs are frequently
characterized by biting sarcasm and cynical lyrics, offset
by lilting, romantic melodies, and are noted for the
marriage of words and music, which sounded like one
person, rather than a team wrote it. This is especially
remarkable since they rarely wrote together. Often
Rodgers had completed the music before Hart began
lyrics due to their very different temperaments and
approaches to their work: Rodgers was a disciplined
family man who liked to work regular hours, while Hart was an alcoholic with erratic work
habits.
Hart is often credited with advancing the art of lyric writing for Broadway, going beyond
simple words and simple rhymes to utilize interior rhymes (rhyming within a line), polysyllabic
rhymes (more than one syllable rhymes) and feminine rhymes (last stressed vowel rhymes, not
last syllable: i.e. handing/standing). However, his work is sometimes also criticized as sloppy or
lazy, due to frequent examples of “mis-stressed syllables, convoluted syntax and the sacrifice of
meaning for rhyme” (Sondheim, 153).
Introduced by a mutual friend, Rodgers and Hart began writing together almost
immediately, and in 1919 one of their first songs, “Any Old Place With You” was interpolated
into a Broadway show; Rodgers was 17 and Hart was 25 years old. In 1920, they wrote 15 songs
for the musical Poor Little Ritz Girl, but eight were dropped before the show reached Broadway.
Their work for the Garrick Gaieties in 1925 and 1926 was well received by audiences and
critics, and brought them popular success.
The late 1920’s and early 30’s saw a number of Rodgers and Hart shows (including three
Broadway shows in 1928 alone), but with few exceptions the shows were less successful and
enduring than their standout songs of the period, including: “My Heart Stood Still” (from A

29
Connecticut Yankee, 1927), “With a Song in My Heart” (from Spring Is Here, 1929),“Ten Cents
a Dance” and “Dancing on the Ceiling” (from Simple Simon, 1930). They had greater successes
with On Your Toes (1936) and Babes in Arms (1937), which produced a number of hits: “My
Funny Valentine”, “Johnny One Note”, “Where or When”, “I Wish I Were in Love Again” and
“The Lady Is a Tramp”.
1940’s Pal Joey was atypical of the time and lacked redeeming characters, prompting
critic Brooks Atkinson said of the show: “though it is expertly done, can you draw sweet water
from a foul well?” The show was purposely unsentimental, the main character, Joey, was a two-
timing schemer who dreamed of owning a nightclub. Not all songs advanced the action, as some
were performed in the nightclub. While not all songs in the show were integrated with the plot,
most did reflect something about the character singing, or the character being sung about.
Rodgers and Hart’s final original musical was 1942’s By Jupiter, a box office success
starring Ray Bolger. In 1943, they presented a revival of A Connecticut Yankee, but after the
final curtain, and for two days following, Hart was nowhere to be found. Discovered
unconscious in a hotel room, suffering from acute pneumonia, Hart was rushed to hospital.
Rodgers and his wife were almost always by his side for the next three days, but he never
regained consciousness, and died at 48 years old.
 JEROME KERN
(1885-1945)

Kern was determined to rid the stage of patchwork

scores and artificial extravagance. “Kern said, ‘it is my
opinion that the musical numbers should carry the
action of the play and should be representative of the
personalities of the characters who sing them. Songs
must be suited to the action and mood of the play’.
That was expressed in 1917” (Green, 58).
Kern started piano lessons with his mother at 5 years
old. He later studied music at the New York College
of Music, and in Germany and London. In London, he
was hired to write music to be played before the show,
while the fashionably late theatergoers were being
seated. In New York, he worked as a song plugger on Tin Pan Alley, as a rehearsal pianist, and
was hired to interpolate songs into operettas, helping to tailor them to American tastes. His first
complete score was The Red Petticoat in 1912, a western musical about a lady barber.
From 1915-1918 Kern composed the scores for musicals for the Princess Theatre. With
299 seats, limited budget and box office potential, many elements that were popular in operetta
were abandoned for financial considerations. There were only 2 sets, a chorus of 8-12, only 11
musicians in the orchestra, and lesser-known writers were hired to create the shows. In this
environment, Kern, Guy Bolton (book) and P. G. Wodehouse (lyrics) had the opportunity to
write without the distraction of sets, costumes and splendor; songs and comedy has to carry the
action forward in order to sustain interest and integration of the elements was the goal. “The
Princess Theatre shows aimed for humor that flowed directly from believably funny characters
put into a logical succession of laughable situations” (Kislan, 119). Kern’s first Princess musical
was Nobody Home (1915), and hits included Very Good, Eddie (1915), Oh, Boy! (1917), and Oh,
Lady! Lady! (1918).
Throughout the 1920's, Kern had limited opportunity to explore his goals for musical
theatre. Though esteemed as a composer, he had to deliver on a producer's demands for hit songs
in Broadway scores. In the early 1920's, Kern's hit shows included Sally (1920) and Sunny
(1925), two conventional musicals featuring star turns for Marilyn Miller. Finally, 1927's Show
Boat allowed Kern, with librettist Oscar Hammerstein, to create a “serious” musical.
“While the end of the 1920’s represented a turning point for the American musical theater
with Show Boat as the crucial pivot between the past and future, Jerome Kern did not move
forward… As he stepped forward into the first rank of American theater composers, the shows
didn’t follow” (Kislan, 126). In the 1930’s, Kern did not follow the trends of escapist or satirical
shows that were popular during the Depression. Instead he tried to maintain a timeless quality,
and theatricality in Cat and the Fiddle and Music in the Air.
From 1934, he lived and worked in Hollywood, and completed only two musical projects.
In 1945, he was back in New York working on a musical based on the life of Annie Oakley, and
died of a heart attack in the street (the project was completed by Irving Berlin: Annie Get Your
Gun).
 SHOW BOAT
Music by: Jerome Kern
Book and Lyrics by: Oscar Hammerstein II
Based on the novel Show Boat, by Edna Ferber
Opened: December 27, 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre

CHARACTERS
Magnolia: introduced at 18 years old, and longing to be an
actress
Gaylord Ravenal: a charming river gambler
Kim: Magnolia and Gaylord’s daughter, later a performer
Steve Baker & Julie Dozier: the showboat’s married
leading actor and actress
Captain Andy Hawks & Parthy Ann: the leader of the
performing troop and his wife; Magnolia’s parents
Frank & Ellie Chipley: the comic actors and dancers
Queenie: the ship’s cook, and Joe’s wife
Joe: a stevedore who works on the Cotton Blossom

SYNOPSIS
“Spanning the years from 1880 to 1927, the lyrical masterpiece concerns the lives, loves and
heartbreaks of three generations of show folk on the Mississippi, in Chicago, and on Broadway
(and their life-long friends). The primary plot follows Magnolia, the naïve daughter of the show
boat captain, as she marries a gambler and moves with him to Chicago. His gambling continues
as his debts compound, and soon he deserts here and their young daughter. A subplot concerns
the potential arrest of Magnolia’s selfless best friend on charges of miscegenation when it’s
discovered that she is mulatto, and her subsequent downward spiral into despair. The passing of
time reunites Magnolia and her now-grown daughter with her family on the show boat as well as
her husband, who eventually returns offering a hopeful second chance at familial fulfillment.”
(“Show Boat”)

In the opening scene, set in 1887, the Cotton Blossom, Captain Andy Hawks’ show boat,
is anchored on the Mississippi River. The audience is introduced to “five main characters, three
conflicts, two social norms, and a love story which is already developed in the music. All this is
unified by a frame defined by music” (Swain 22). A disgruntled employee threatens revenge on
Steve, claiming he knows a secret about his wife, Julie; Magnolia and Ravenal meet and “Make
Believe” that they are actors playing a love scene; and when Magnolia asks Joe for his
impression, he suggests that ole man river “knows all ‘bout dem boys…. He knows all ‘bout
ev’er’thin’” (Hammerstein 18).
In the dramatic centerpiece of the act, which is not set to music and has no musical
numbers, the rehearsing actors are interrupted by the return of Pete with a Sheriff, to arrest the
mixed-race couple. Steve and Julie agree to leave the Cotton Blossom. A replacement pair of
actors is swift to appear: Magnolia and a traveler from town introduced by Frank, who seems to
have all the qualifications for a leading man – the very personable Ravenal. Ultimately, Ravenal
proposes to Magnolia, and despite Parthy’s objections (and last minute attempt to prevent the
marriage), the wedding takes place on the levee.

Act Two
In act two, Frank and Ellie discover Magnolia and her baby daughter who are being put
out of their rooming house. Ravenal sends a note with money and the explanation he cannot
burden her any longer. Distraught, Magnolia cannot bear to go back the show boat to face her
mother, so Frank and Ellie suggest that she should try for a job at the club where they are to
work. After rehearsing her number (“Bill”), the resident singer, an aged and alcoholic Julie, hears
the little girl she loved pour out her heart (“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”) and resigns her place,
instructing the club owner to hire Magnolia in her place. On her New Year’s Eve debut,
Magnolia begins nervously (“After the Ball”). Captain Andy calls out to her in encouragement
from the audience and, seeing her father, she gains confidence and warms the audience. By the
end of the song, the audience is singing along and, triumphant, Magnolia has begun a new career.
The action of the play moves forward to 1927. Magnolia’s career has taken her through
fame on the musical stage to retirement. Her daughter, Kim, has moved up to take her place as
the musical comedy star of the day. Frank and Ellie have gone to Hollywood where their adopted
son has become the latest child star of the silver screen. However, on the river, Joe still totes his
bales and not too much changes. As patrons gather for the show boat performance, Ravenal and
Magnolia come face to face, and just as it was all those years ago, it is Magnolia who speaks
first, leading Ravenal back to the deck where they sing “You Are Love”. Magnolia kisses him as
‘Ol’ Man River’ just keeps on rolling along.
 ABOUT THE SHOW
Show Boat is “the summit of Jerome Kern’s career as a stage composer, and the first
critical success of the young lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II” (Swain 17), and is acclaimed for the
integration of book, music and lyrics, with. Though the show dealt with groundbreaking material
and mature themes (including alcoholism, gambling, single parenthood, and miscegenation), the
elements of the musical all became means of expression to serve the story: “the songs, the
generous amount of instrumental music, the dancing, the crowd scenes, all arise from the events
in a rather serious plot. Nothing is extraneous” (Swain 17-18). Dance numbers were authentic to
style and period, and necessitated by the plot, and Kern employed underscoring to draw the show
together, using themes from the score to underscore emotion or for foreshadowing.
In addition to its critical reception, and profound impact on the musical form, Show Boat
was also a commercial success. Produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Show Boat had the highest
advance tickets sales at the time. Following the Broadway production there was a seven-month
tour, and a revival within three years.
It is a challenge to identify a “definitive” version of Show Boat. There have been seven
New York productions, four in London and three movies; each has edited and revised the story,
songs and song placement for its adaptation. The most successful revival was the celebrated
1994 production by Harold Prince. Prince executed “a fresh, creative reworking of the libretto,
the evulsions of all encumbering stereotypes and a rethinking of the placement and interpretation
of songs” (Kislan 125). The production was also impressive in its size, with a cast of 71, an
orchestra of 31 and 500 costumes, and cinematic techniques applied to the staging and
choreography to move the production along.
“Based on its success artistically and commercially, Show Boat should have set the next
trend for the musical theatre, establishing a model that other musical theatre artist would eagerly
copy” (Hurwitz 113). However, it is argued that the Great Depression reduced audiences’
interests in a “serious” musical, and financial considerations limited producers’ interest in
innovation and the ability to mount musicals of Show Boat’s size. However, the musical
“revealed what the Broadway stage could create if given the right materials and appropriate
vision. It established a new set of dramatic ideals, ideals only approximated in the 1930s, but
realized again and again thereafter” (Swain 53).
 GEORGE GERSHWIN
(September 26 1898 – July 11, 1937)

George Gershwin composed for Broadway, popular music

and classical music. He considered jazz an American Folk
music, and believed it could be the basis for American art
forms; the influence of jazz is evidenced in the rhythms and
colours of many Gershwin compositions.
Gershwin began piano lessons as a child when his older
brother Ira showed no interest in the instrument that had
been meant for him. At 15 he became the youngest piano
pounder on Tin Pan Alley, and earned a salary of $15/week.
At 18 he was working on Broadway as a rehearsal pianist for Miss 1917, a show by Jerome Kern
and Victor Herbert. While his first revue closed out of town, Gershwin’s first full Broadway
score was La La Lucille in 1919. At age 23 Gershwin had the biggest hit in the country with
“Swanee” (with lyrics by Irving Caesar), as performed by Al Jolson. The song made $10,000 in
royalties.
Gershwin gained recognition as a “serious” composer after the 1924 premiere of
“Rhapsody in Blue”. It was written to be included in “An Experiment in Modern Music”, a
recital organized by Paul Whiteman, bandleader of a popular jazz band in the 1920s. The
program was to include jazz songs and arrangements in a more refined musical environment, and
Gershwin agreed to write a “jazz concerto”.
1924 was also the year the Gershwins had their first big hit: Lady Be Good, the first
complete score on which George and Ira collaborated. It was a vehicle for Fred and Adele
Astaire, and a challenging assignment as the popular brother-sister team could not play opposite
each other romantically.
The Gershwin’s 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing was the first musical to be awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was a satirical book musical about fictional John P. Wintergreen’s
run for President, on a platform of “love”. He proposes to Mary Turner (a woman who makes
fantastic corn muffins) in each state, and is almost impeached for “breach of promise” when he
fails to marry Diana Devereux, the winner of a beauty pageant to select the President’s wife. As
the Pulitzer was considered a literary award, it initially recognized the book writers and lyricist;
it was awarded to George Gershwin posthumously.
Often recognized as the first American opera, Porgy and Bess (1935) was also
Gershwin’s final work for the Broadway stage. The musical is adapted from the book Porgy by
DuBose Heyward, who also wrote the libretto and co-wrote lyrics with Ira Gershwin. The show
features an all-Black cast, and centers on Porgy, a crippled beggar in a South Carolina tenement,
and his relationship with Bess, who he tries to save from an abusive relationship. In addition to
writing the music, Gershwin also did all the orchestrations for the show.
In 1937 Gershwin died of a brain tumor. At the time he was in Hollywood, where he was
writing for films.
 RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN

OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II
(July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960)

Oscar Hammerstein II was born into a theatrical

family: his grandfather produced opera and operetta,
and his father was the manager of a vaudeville house.
His parents hoped he’d become a lawyer, as it would be
easier than a life in the theatre. After a brief time
studying law at Columbia University, he left to pursue a
career in the professional theatre. His uncle, a producer,
gave him his first jobs as a stage manager.
Hammerstein’s early work for the musical stage was
centered on operetta, and he “gained valuable experience with some of the luminaries of the
1920s Broadway theater: Vincent Youmans (Wildflower of 1923), Rudolf Friml (Rose Marie of
1924), Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song of 1926), and with Kern himself (Sunny of 1925)”
(Swain 18). At this stage, he fit lyrics to the music, as “it was easier to write a lyric to fit a
composer’s melody rather than force some Middle European or Viennese composer to
understand the subtle complexities of the English language. Besides the influence of ragtime and
jazz made it profitable to allow the composer maximum freedom from the possible limitations of
strict and rigid meters” (Kislan 130-131).
1927’s Show Boat demonstrated Hammerstein’s ability to deliver a composer with both
book and lyrics, and his potential for greatness. The musical reflected Hammerstein’s ability to
go beyond conventional formula to create a musical form that presented believable plots,
characters, and situation. In the years that immediately followed Show Boat, Hammerstein’s
works failed to match its success. Hammerstein collaborated with Kern on the shows Music in
the Air and Very Warm for May, and returned largely to operetta, and also wrote several
“forgotten” musical comedies in the 1930’s that had brief or limited runs.
RICHARD RODGERS
(June 28, 1902 – December 30, 1979)

Richard Rodgers was born

into a family that appreciated music
and theatre, and he was encouraged to
pursue music. His mother could play
piano, and his father was a doctor
with a strong baritone voice. They would host family concerts, and buy the vocal score for
productions they had seen, and sing through the show as a family. Rodgers could pick out
melodies at the piano at four years old, and was playing with both hands by age six.
Rodgers’ family regularly attended the theatre, and the Princess musicals of Kern-Bolton-
Wodehouse musicals made a lasting impression him. Around age nine Rodgers was creating his
own melodies at the piano, and by fourteen had begun notating his compositions. After writing
the scores for two amateur shows as a teenager, he was encouraged by a friend to seek a lyricist.
Rodgers began writing with Lorenz Hart in 1918, and by 1943 their partnership had produced
twenty-seven stage musicals and eight film scores.

RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN

When Rodgers and Hammerstein began their
collaboration “each was a distinguished veteran of
the musical theater… having created a combined
total of fifty-nine shows between them” (Kislan
129). “Had Rodgers and Hammerstein never
written together, each of them would be
remembered today as one of the great writers of the
musical theatre” (Hurwitz 143). Both agreed that
they were sentimental. Rodgers asked: “what’s
wrong with sweetness and light? It’s been around
quite a while. Even a cliché has a right to be true.” Hammerstein commented: “there’s nothing
wrong with sentiment… The things people are sentimental about are the fundamental things in
life. I don’t deny the ugly and the tragic—but somebody has to keep saying that life’s pretty
wonderful, too. Because it’s true. I guess I just can’t write anything without hope in it.”

The musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein established a new model for the American
musical, which generally dominated the form throughout the Golden Age (1943-1964).

These innovations include:

• The lyrics are written before the music.

• All elements are now integrated and driven by the telling of the story.

• Scene structure – dialog builds into song, and the climax of the song is the climax of the
scene.

• Play structure – the play simultaneously follows a plot and a sub-plot, featuring two
parallel couples, one serious and one comic, both illumination the central issue of the
play. (Hurwitz 144)

Lyrics were written along with the script, and songs placed into the story, rather than the
other way around. Rodgers would write the melody to set Hammerstein’s lyrics. While
Hammerstein would spend a great deal of time and agonize over lyrics, Rodgers could easily and
quickly write music for them. Hammerstein would often make use of dialects, and the specific
speech patterns of the characters in his lyric writing (i.e. the cowboys of Oklahoma! or the King
in The King and I). Generally, Hammerstein’s lyrics seem to reflect the character singing, rather
than drawing attention to the lyric and skill of the lyricist.

After writing with Hart for 25 years, Oklahoma! was the first score Rodgers wrote with a
new collaborator. After this initial success, both pursued separate projects: Rodgers worked on
the revival of A Connecticut Yankee, and Hammerstein Carmen Jones, an updated adaptation
Bizet’s opera Carmen.
Their partnership resumed in 1945 with Carousel, based on the play Liliom. They felt the
tragic play could adapted as a musical if it had a hopeful ending (“You’ll Never Walk Alone”),
and changed the setting from Budapest to New England. The integration of music and text is
evident in the “Bench Scene”, as the characters move from underscored speech to song. Carousel
opened across the street from Oklahoma!, and the two musicals were neighbors on Broadway for
two years.
Allegro (1947) was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first original musical, and a critical and
financial failure. An experimental work that followed the life of a young doctor from birth to age
35, it featured a “chorus” that commented on the action, and probed why dedicated men
sometimes lose their integrity after achieving success. While it was not a successful musical in
its time, it is considered an early example of a concept musical, and has an interesting, if
neglected, score.
South Pacific (1949) was the second musical to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Adapted from Tales of the South Pacific, a collection of short stories by James A. Michener, they
agreed there would be no formal choreography to disrupt the mood of the piece, and each song
was created to fit with situation and character. The music captures character as “the songs of
Emile de Becque [have] a broad and powerful sweep, a romantic fullness… The music of the
songs of Nellie Forbush have a lightness, bounce, and charm” (Kislan 141). The action and
music flowed together so seamlessly that Rodgers was compared to operatic composers.
Their collaboration continued with: The King and I (1951), based on the real adventures
of a Victorian-era Englishwoman who was a tutor and governess to the King of Siam’s royal
children; Me and Juliet (1953), their first original musical since Allegro, the backstage story
inspired by their own stage-struck youths, which did not come together especially well; Pipe
Dream (1955), the shortest run of any Rodgers and Hammerstein show at only 246
performances, the adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday offered little conflict or
excitement; Flower Drum Song (1958), based on the novel of the same name, it explored the
conflict between the generations of Chinese families living in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
The Sound of Music opened on November 16, 1959 with an advance ticket sale of
$3,325,000. The creation of the musical was a challenge: based on the German film The Trapp
Family Singers, it required negotiations with the company that created the original film, locating
Baroness von Trapp (who was in hospital with malaria), and securing approval from the children
to be portrayed on stage. Originally producers wanted to use folk songs and religious songs that
the family had actually sang, but Rodgers insisted that old songs not be mixed with the new, and
production had to be postponed until after Flower Drum Song to deliver the score.

In addition to creating musicals, Rodgers and Hammerstein were also producers,

producing their own works as well as the original production of Annie Get Your Gun, among
others. They founded The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which holds the rights to a
number of musicals and continues to license and publish musicals today. “They became the first
men from the creative side of Broadway to establish a permanent organization to handle the
business side of what they created. In doing so, they built a business empire that earned them the
first great American fortune to be based on creative theatrical talent” (Rodgers & Hammerstein).
Hammerstein’s death to cancer in 1960 ended their successful partnership. Rodgers
continued writing, but waited a year after Hammerstein’s passing to announce any new plans.
After over 40 years in musical theatre with only two writing partners, Rodgers collaborated with
a number of writers, including: Alan Jay Lerner, No Strings (1962); Stephen Sondheim, Do I
Hear a Waltz? (1965); Sheldon Harnick, Rex (1976); and Martin Charnin, I Remember Mama
(1979). Unfortunately, none of these shows matched the success of the Rodgers and
Hammerstein collaborations, and late in his career Rodgers was reported to be sensitive and
concerned that his creative talents were limited. He died in New York at the age of 77, after
battling cancer and suffering a heart attack.
 AGNES DE MILLE
(September 18, 1905—October 7, 1993)

“Trusting in the potential of dance to serve as a

conduit for emotions and ideas, de Mille created
multilayered constructs in the musical theater that were
grounded in time, place, and characters of the libretto… de
Mille caused an ideological shift in the function of dance
on Broadway and opened a portal on a fertile creative
landscape” (Gennaro 51).
Born in New York, “De Mille came from a family
of thinkers and writers” (Acocella). The niece of the great
filmmaker, Cecil B. DeMille, her grandfather, father (also a successful playwright), and uncle
worked in theatre before their move to Hollywood. De Mille had first sought a career as a
dancer, but lacked the technique and body that was required for classical ballet. “Agnes
continued to study and to create projects for herself to perform in, for which she also
choreographed, arranged her own music and designed her own costumes” (Hurwitz 145). De
Mille became good friends with choreographer Martha Graham as they both performed concert
dance in New York in the 1920s.
De Mille choreographed several Broadway musicals in the 1930s (though she was
replaced by a more experienced choreographer during the tryout of 1932’s Flying Colors and
often clashed with directors and producers), and became one of the founding members of the
Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre). In 1942, she was commissioned to choreograph
the “cowboy ballet” Rodeo with music by Aaron Copland for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
The ballet brought her to the attention of Rodgers and Hammerstein, who hired her for their first
musical collaboration.
De Mille had strong convictions about the quality and potential of dance, and is reported
to have frequent clashes with her collaborators. Her demands also impacted the casting of
Broadway dancers, as “up until Oklahoma!, producers, directors, writers, and important backers
were able to fill dancing chorus roles with girls they were, or would like to be, romantically
involved with; the level of skill suffered, but the dances were created accordingly and it was
good enough. De Mille insisted that all of her dancers be thoroughly trained ballet dancers, and
she maintained casting approval for all dancers and replacements – unheard of at the time”
(Hurwitz 145).

Between 1944 and 1964, de Mille choreographed over twenty Broadway musicals. Other
major works include:
• One Touch of Venus (1943)
• Bloomer Girl (1944), which contained the “Civil War Ballet”, using American country
dance.
• Carousel (1945)
• Brigadoon (1947), for which de Mille studies with Scottish dancers in order to capture
the essence of Highland dances. Again, the dances were used to forward the plot, and de
Mille considered it her best work to date. De Mille’s work on Brigadoon tied with
Michael Kidd’s contributions to Finian’s Rainbow for the first Tony Award for
choreography
• Allegro (1947), for which de Mille was hired as Director/Choreographer—a unique title
at the time. Ultimately, she was relieved of her directorial duties, but retained the title in
the credits.
• Paint Your Wagon (1951), which featured what was now her signature style: Americana.
• 110 in the Shade (1963), for which de Mille was criticized for its similarity to her work
on Oklahoma!

Despite many tributes later in life, de Mille always felt she had been overshadowed by other
choreographic legends, including Martha Graham and Jerome Robbins. James Mitchell, a former
dancer of hers claimed “she had limited vocabulary and wasn’t interested, for instance, in jazz.
She didn’t like anything abstract, didn’t know what it was. There was no moving forward into
new areas of dance or exploration of new kinds of movement. She didn’t catch up with what was
happening, and so other choreographers rode over her” (Long 59).
De Mille also wrote extensively, ultimately writing eleven books about dance and theatre. In
May 1975, de Mille suffered a stroke which left her paralyzed on her right side of her body. De
Mille passed in 1993 after a second stroke.
 FRANK LOESSER
(June 29, 1910 – July 28, 1969)
Frank Loesser was “a master of
conversational lyrics, though with a difference:
he tailored his lyrics to the individual characters
at hand... Loesser was able to perform the rare
trick of sounding modestly conversational and
brilliantly dexterous at the same time”
(Sondheim 6).
Loesser grew up in a musical and intellectual family. His father was a piano teacher who
insisted on the classics only, and his brother, Arthur, was a concert pianist, music critic and
teacher. At age six he wrote his first song, “The May Song”, celebrating the children’s games he
saw in Central Park. As his father disapproved of popular music, Loesser taught himself as a
teen.
He attended City College of New York, but was expelled after failing every class but
English and gym, and vandalizing a bronze statue. He worked as a newspaper reporter, wrote
sketches and lyrics for vaudeville, and wrote for radio during the Depression. His earliest job as a
songwriter was as a lyricist on Tin Pan Alley; at the end of a year none of his songs had been
published, and he was dismissed. In 1936, he had a job as a singer and pianist at a New York
club, the Back Drop, where he performed original numbers. Some of these were used in a
Broadway revue, The Illustrators Show, which did not do well with critics.
In 1936, he signed a Hollywood contract and spent eleven years writing in Hollywood.
As a lyricist, he wrote with composers Burton Lane, Hoagy Carmichael, Jule Styne and others,
and wrote the lyrics to many popular songs including: “Heart and Soul” and “On a Slow Boat to
China”. Loesser’s collaborators encouraged him to pursue writing his own music, as his lyrics
alone had a strong rhythmic sense and musicality.
The first song to which Loesser wrote both the music and lyrics was “Praise the Lord and
Pass the Ammunition”, in 1943. Written while he was in the army during World War II, it was a
response to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Loesser donated his royalties from the song to the
Navy Relief Society. The success of the song gave Loesser the confidence to write his own
melodies from then on. After the war he returned to Hollywood, and won the Academy Award
for Best Song for “Baby It’s Cold Outside” from the film Neptune’s Daughter.
Loesser’s first Broadway show was Where’s Charley (1948), an adaptation of the farcical
play Charley’s Aunt as a vehicle for Ray Bolger. The show was simple but direct, and exhibited
hints of his impressive musical talents. A New York Times article described Loesser as “the
greatest undiscovered composer in America”.
Guys and Dolls opened to great success in 1950, and was Loesser’s biggest hit. Loesser
drew inspiration from those he had observed while working at the Back Drop while writing for
the uncultured gangsters.
His next musical was The Most Happy Fella in 1956. Loesser wrote music, lyrics and the
libretto, and took four years to complete. Adapted from Sidney Howard’s They Knew What They
Wanted, it is frequently described as an “operatic” musical, with 30 separate musical numbers
including recitative, arias, duets, trios and choral passages, but all within a commercial theatre
framework. Loesser said of the show: “I may have given the impression this show has operatic
tendencies. If people feel that way—fine. Actually all it has is a great frequency of songs. It’s a
musical with music” (qtd in Green 267).
Greenwillow (1960), a pastoral, folksy musical, was an interesting work, but poorly
received. The score managed a rich variety, and captured familiar musical styles while
maintaining its individualism.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961) was based on an actual non-
fiction book by the same name, written by advertising executive Shepherd Mead. The satirical
musical followed J. Pierpont Finch as he climbed the corporate ladder, from window-washer to
vice-president, and was extremely well received. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama,
and won seven Tonys, including Best Musical.
In addition to his writing efforts, Loesser was president of Frank Music Company and
published the works of many promising composers, as well as his own work. Loesser was a great
supporter of emerging talent, recommending Adler and Ross for The Pajama Game after he
declined the project, and encouraging Meredith Willson to turn his childhood experiences in to
the musical The Music Man. At age, composer/lyricist Jerry Herman’s mother arranged a
meeting with Loesser, and Herman says “that wonderful man is responsible for my life in the
theater. I met him at that crucial point in your life when you don’t know where you’re going but
you have secret hopes about where it’s going to be” (Riedel). After years of chain-smoking,
Loesser died of lung cancer in New York at 59 years old.
 LEONARD BERNSTEIN
(August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990)
Leonard Bernstein spent his career
torn between the dualities of composing and
conducting, and art music and popular music.
Born in Boston to Jewish immigrants,
Bernstein received a piano as a gift from an
aunt when he was ten. By 15 years old he was
playing concertos, and in college was playing with the Massachusetts State Symphony. As a
teen, he also worked with an amateur theatre group, staging simplified versions of Carmen, The
Mikado, and The HMS Pinafore. A fan of Gershwin and a lover of jazz, he frequently and
enthusiastically played at parties. Bernstein had a variety of renowned teachers in piano,
composing and theory, and conducting. He studied music at Harvard, and in addition to his
academic pursuits, staged shows and played piano accompaniment for silent films.
He was hired by Serge Koussevitzky as Assistant Conductor at the Tanglewood Music
Festival, and Koussevitzky became a teacher and mentor to Bernstein. After Bernstein’s early
efforts in musical theatre (in the mid-1940’s), Koussevitzky forbade him to write popular music:
“You must choose. You cannot have everything. All that musical talent, all that excitement, all
that brain going to waste” (qtd. In Garebian 28). After this admonition, Bernstein did not
seriously pursue commercial projects until after Koussevitzky’s death in 1951.
In 1943, he was hired as Assistant Conductor for the New York Philharmonic. On
November 14th, 1943, when guest conductor Bruno Walter fell ill, Bernstein stepped in to
conduct, and received critical acclaim. He was suddenly in demand as a guest conductor, and
accepted many invitations.
Bernstein’s first theatrical score was 1943’s Fancy Free, a 20-minute ballet
choreographed by Jerome Robbins that featured contemporary dance and a jazz-infused score.
Both Robbins and Bernstein were celebrated for creating “the finest American ballet”. In 1944, it
was expanded into a full length-musical On the Town, with lyrics and book by Adolph Green and
Betty Comden.
Bernstein composed for a number of projects in the 1950s: the score and libretto to
Trouble in Tahiti (1952), a jazzy one act opera about an unhappy suburban couple; Wonderful
Town (1953) was written in five weeks with Comden and Green, with Robbins staging dances,
and the numbers reflecting the pace and spirit of New York in the 1930s; the film score for On
the Waterfront (1955); a sophisticated operatic parody adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide (1956),
which was not well received in its original production; and the landmark West Side Story in
1957.
His later career focused on classical music and conducting engagements, and kept
Bernstein from composing many new Broadway works. Additional compositions included:
Mass, a “Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers” with rock influences, which was
commissioned by Jackie Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Centre; 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave (1976), a flop of only seven performances which explored 100 years in the White House;
and A Quiet Place (1984), a companion to and continuation of Trouble in Tahiti which originally
received a negative response, but has found success when the two one-acts are paired.
At 75 years old, five days after officially retiring, Bernstein died of pneumonia.
 JEROME ROBBINS
(October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998)
In the work of director/choreographer
Jerome Robbins “dance was synonymous with
emotion and thought, and so the amplification of
dance by the integration of song, speech, and
pantomime became an amplification of drama”
(Garebian 16).
Jerome Robbins grew up in New Jersey and
always had an interest in theatre. After studying
Chemistry at New York University for a year (and withdrawing due to lack of funds), he became
seriously interested in dance. His sister, a dance teacher, introduced him to a number of teachers,
and he studied New Dance, Oriental, Modern Interpretive, as well as piano, violin and acting. He
began professional work choreographing for small shows and revues, and dancing in the chorus
of Broadway shows in the late 1930s.
In 1940, he joined the Ballet Theatre, which was formed to present all forms of ballet and
engaged many of the great ballet choreographers and starts. He quickly gained recognition, and
in 1949 joined the New York City Ballet, devising several ballets and dancing the title role in
George Balanchine’s The Prodigal Son.
Fancy Free (1953) made a move towards Broadway style in the contemporary score, and
its story of three sailors on leave, and their resulting fights and flirtations. Expanded into On the
Town, Robbins was praised by critic Edwin Denby for his exceptional gifts as a director, who
also stated that Robbins’ dances that had “clarity of impulse” and “variety of pacing” (qtd. in
Garebian 21). His work on Broadway continued, choreographing Billion Dollar Baby (1945);
High Button Shoes (1947), for which he won a Tony Award for choreography; The King and I
(1951); Two’s Company (1952); and beginning to direct and choreograph with Peter Pan (1954),
which also garnered Robbins and Emmy Award for its television version; and Bells Are Ringing
(1956).
After West Side Story, Robbins’ success continued, directing and choreographing Gypsy
(1959) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). He was also in demand as a “show doctor”, helping to fix
ailing shows like: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1960) and Funny Girl
(1964).
Robbins had a reputation as a perfectionist and tyrant, and was feared by many. He
required deep psychological investigation of the text, and well-drawn character histories, and
practiced “the Method”. In rehearsals for West Side Story, he posted newspaper articles about
interracial street fights, forced the separation and estrangement of the groups of actors playing
the Jets and the Sharks, and encouraged the actress playing Anybodys to be ignored by her cast
members. Larry Kert said: “Jerry Robbins is an incredible man and I’d work for him in a minute,
but he is a painful man – a perfectionist who sees himself in every role, and if you come onstage
and don’t give him exactly what he’s pictured the night before, his tolerance level is too low, so
in his own kind of way, he destroys.”
 FORM & STRUCTURE

The INTRODUCTION provides the musical information to “set-up” the song, and
includes only accompaniment, no vocal line. In some musical theatre songs, the introduction is
simply a “bell tone”: a single note that establishes the first pitch of the singer.

The VERSE is often speech-like in rhythm, frequently generates less melodic interest,
and lyrically provides the facts that lead us into what will be revealed or explored in the chorus.
There is no single recommended form or length for the verse; its length is generally determined
by the extent of the idea the composer and lyricist feel they need for proper set-up of the chorus.
Sometimes, an extended verse can confuse the audience as to whether the “main event” of the
song has begun (listen to “Mister Snow” from Carousel for an example of a long, melodic
verse.)

The CHORUS (also called the REFRAIN) is the main section, the bulk of a musical
theatre song. This is the section of the song in which the character generally expresses how they
feel about a person or situation, or reveals something about plot or character.

In the chorus, the AABA form is a frequent structure in musical theatre repertoire. Each
of these letters represents a musical block, generally of the a similar length (the same number of
bars, and frequently including the same number of notes and syllables). Examples include: “I Got
Rhythm”, Crazy for You, and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”, Pal Joey.

Generally, the first A states a musical idea; the second A repeats it (sometimes with a
small variation at the end), often leading toward another key. The B section (also known as the
bridge or release) generally varies musically and lyrically, in contrast to the A sections. Finally,
there is a return to the A section in its original state, towards a clear and satisfying ending. The
final A may be slightly longer, to allow for the completion of the musical statement. This
analysis of form applies ONLY to the chorus.
• The B section can contrast the A sections in some of the following ways:
• The note values may be longer or shorter.
 • The key and harmony of the B section may be different.
• The rhythm may have a different “feel”.

Another common song form in traditional musical theatre is ABAB, where both musical
blocks are given equal significance: “But Not for Me”, Crazy for You.

MUSICAL ELEMENTS

The following is a list of musical terms, and elements to consider when listening to and
analyzing a composition.

Melody is a succession of single pitches, perceived by the listener to create unity (as we hear a
sentence as an entire thought, rather than individual words).

Pitch is the “highness” or “lowness” of a tone, depending on the frequency.

Interval is the distance between two different pitches.

Range is the distance between the highest and lowest notes in a melody. A “narrow” range has
few pitches; a “wide” range covers many pitches.
Shape refers to whether a melody moves upward, downward or remains static.

A phrase is small musical unit within a larger structure or melody. A “musical thought”.

Harmony is pitches sounded together, simultaneously.

A chord is three or more notes sounded together. Chords have meaning in relation to each other,
and imply movement and progression.
Rhythm refers to the stressing of notes, according to musical phrase.

Meter refers to the time signature and the basic, repeated “pulse” of a piece.

Vocal Range is the lowest note to highest note required throughout a song or show, or the lowest
note to highest note a singer can produce “everyday”.
Tessitura is the prevailing range of notes in a piece of music (where the majority of the notes
lie).
Recitative “Speaking on pitch.” Generally used in opera or operetta, recitative is often
characterized by speech-like rhythms, fast-paced patter and usually conveys plot and action.

LYRICS AND LITERARY CONVENTIONS

“True rhyming is a necessity in the theater, as a guide for the ear to know what it has just
heard. Our language is so complex and difficult, and there are so many similar words
and sounds that mean different things, that it’s confusing enough without using near
rhymes that only acquaint the ear with a vowel… [A near rhyme is] not useful to the
primary purpose of a lyric, which is to be heard, and it teaches the ear to not trust or to
disregard a lyric, to not listen, to simply let the music wash over you.” -- Craig Carnelia

“All rhymes, even the farthest afield of the near ones (home/dope), draw attention to the
rhymed word; if you don’t want it to be spotlighted, you’d better not rhyme it. A perfect
rhyme snaps the word, and with it the thought, vigorously into place, rendering it easily
intelligible; a near rhyme blurs it. A word like “together” leads the ear to expect a
rhyme like “weather” or “feather”. When the ear hears “forever”, it has to pause a split
second to bring the words into focus. Like a note that’s a bit off pitch, a false rhyme
doesn’t destroy the meaning, but it weakens it. And identity makes the word clear, but
blunts the line’s snap because the accented sound is not a fresh one. And both identities
and false rhymes are death on wit.” -- Stephen Sondheim, (Finishing the Hat page
xxvi.)

Lyrics in the musical theatre are meant to be heard once, in a live setting, and be
understood. They move the story forward, or reveal something about character or situation. In
the early days of musical theatre, where a singer performed without amplification over an
orchestra, rhyme could help the listener.
Lyrics and diction can illuminate information about character: their level of education, their
emotional state, etc.

Rhyme: words rhyme when their concluding syllables have a similar sound.

• A perfect or true rhyme is one in which the final stressed syllables sound alike except for
the consonants which precede them.
• Plural words do NOT rhyme with singular words (“hat” and “cats” are NOT perfect
rhymes).
 • M does NOT rhyme with N (“claim” and “grain” do NOT rhyme).
• Present and past tense words do NOT rhyme (“called” does NOT rhyme with “fall”).
• An identity matches not only the final syllables, but also the consonants that introduce them,
“motion” and “promotion”.
• Partial rhyme or near rhyme the sounds are similar but not identical:
• Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds but not consonant sounds.
• Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, but not vowels. (Alliteration is the
repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words.)
• End-rhymes are words at the end of successive lines that rhyme with each other.
• Internal rhymes rhyme words within a line.
• A distinction is also made between masculine rhyme, in which the final syllable rhymes
(“loud” and “proud”, “convey” and “dismay”), and feminine rhymes, in which the rhyme
extends over more than one syllable, both stressed and unstressed (“cooking” and “looking”,
“never” and “forever”).
 KANDER & EBB

JOHN KANDER
(March 18, 1927 – )
John Kander grew up in Kansas, Missouri, the son of a poultry farmer. He had a musical
family (though no one pursued it professionally). By age four he learned some basic piano
chords from an aunt, and began lessons at six. He studied at Oberlin College, and completed his
Masters in Music at Columbia University. At university, he was focused on classical
composition, completing several chamber pieces and a one-act opera. A teacher suggested he
pursue musical theatre, and he gladly accepted the advice.
Early theatrical work included two summers as Choral Director of Warwick Musical
Theatre (Rhode Island), and as a pianist on regional productions. Subbing in as pianist on West
Side Story led to Kander being hired to do dance arrangements for Gypsy and Irma la Duce.
As a composer, his Broadway debut was A Family Affair in 1962, which ran for only six
performances. Later, music publisher Tommy Valando introduced Kander to Fred Ebb, believing
they would be well matched.

FRED EBB
(April 8, 1932 – September 11, 2004)
Fred Ebb grew up in New York. He received a Bachelor of Arts from New York
University and a Masters in English Literature from Columbia. He wrote comedy and satirical
numbers for television shows and the nightclub acts of Carol Channing and other personalities.
His early theatrical works included writing lyrics to a number of musical revues, including From
A to Z on Broadway in 1962.
 KANDER & EBB
Upon teaming, Kander and Ebb’s first
popular hit was “My Coloring Book” in 1962,
and in 1963 Barbra Streisand recorded “I Don’t
Care Much” (written as a “dare” at a dinner
party, and later included in Cabaret). Their first
show, Golden Gate, closed during its out-of-
town tryout, and their Broadway debut, Flora
the Red Menace (1965), was a flop despite the
triumphant Broadway debut of Liza Minelli.
However, Flora the Red Menace was produced
by Hal Prince, and based on their work he
signed them to write the score for Cabaret.
Following Cabaret their Broadway musicals
included: The Happy Time (1968), a more
conventional piece set in a French-Canadian
town; Zorba (1968), about a larger-than-life
Greek hero, that was unfavourably compared to Fiddler on the Roof and had a limited run; their
quickest flop, 1971’s 70, Girls, 70 about aging New Yorkers who embark on a life of crime. In
1972, they wrote for Liza With a Z, a made-for-TV concert starring Liza Minelli, and directed
and choreographed by Bob Fosse.
Their second most successful show was Chicago (1975), based on a 1920s play inspired
by real life crimes. Staged as a gaudy vaudeville show, it was a satire of American justice and
celebrity criminals. It featured Gwen Verdon (Bob Fosse’s wife at the time), as Roxie Hart and
Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly.
After Chicago, Kander and Ebb had a series of less successful shows: The Act (1977), a
Las Vegas-style show created to feature Liza Minelli, and the first show to charge $25.00 a
ticket; The Madwoman of Central Park (1979); Woman of the Year (1981), starring Lauren
Bacall; The Rink (1984) starring Chita Rivera and Liza Minelli as mother and daughter;
Diamonds (1984) and Hay Fever (1985).
And The World Goes ‘Round, was a successful Kander and Ebb revue that opened Off-
Broadway in 1991. In 1993, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, directed by Hal Prince, opened to mixed
reviews, but won Tony Awards for its stars Chita Rivera and Brent Carver, as well as Best
Musical, Best Book and Best Score. 1997’s Steel Pier was set at a dance-marathon, and the
music reflected the 1930s setting.
Kander and Ebb were working on new musicals up until Ebb’s death in 2004. The
development of these shows has continued, and in the absence of his collaborator Kander has
taken on writing lyrics in addition to composing music. Thee musicals have opened on
Broadway since Ebb’s death: Curtains (2007), a back-stage murder-mystery; The Scottsboro
Boys (2010), based on the real-life 1930's trials, convictions, and retrials of a group of nine
Southern African American teenagers; and The Visit (2015), based on a 1956 play of the same
name, in which the world’s wealthiest woman returns to her financially devastated hometown
and offers its residents a new start in exchange for the murder of the man who scorned her years
before. It took over 14 years for The Visit to reach Broadway, after an extended development
period, and several regional productions. Kander and Ebb's All of Us, based on Thorton Wilder’s
The Skin of Our Teeth, has had developmental regional productions, but seems unlikely to have a
Broadway production.
John Kander continues to write, having completed several new musicals with playwright
Greg Pierce. The chamber musical The Landing, his first musical with a new collaborator since
Ebb's death, had its premiere at the Vineyard Theatre in November 2013, and the duo have since
written Kid Victory which ran Off-Broadway in 2017. 2018’s The Beast in the Jungle with David
Thompson is “inspired by Henry James’ classic 1903 novella… [it is] the story of John Marcher,
a man haunted by personal demons, whose great yet unfulfilled love affair with an unforgettable
woman spans decades and continents. With a waltz-inspired instrumental score, and dazzling
choreography that traverses the worlds of ballet and contemporary dance, this powerful and
romantic tale of love and loss reunites the remarkable creative team behind the acclaimed The
Scottsboro Boys [including director Susan Stroman]” (Fierberg).
 MARVIN HAMLISCH
(June 2, 1944 – August 6, 2012)

As a teenager, Marvin
Hamlisch planned to write a
number one hit by age 25, win an
Oscar by 30, and a smash
Broadway show by 35 years old:
he achieved all of these goals.
Marvin Hamlisch was
born with perfect pitch, and
began picking songs out from the radio at five years old, and started writing his own songs
almost as soon as he started playing. His parents were supportive of his musical career; his
father had been pursuing a career as a musician in Vienna before immigrating to the United
States in the 1930s.
At six years old Hamlisch was accepted to the Juilliard Preparatory Division, the
youngest student ever accepted. His parents enrolled him in the Children’s Professional School
so he would be able to attend Juilliard in the afternoons. His weeks were spent all day at CPS,
and all evening at Juilliard.
His first hit, Lesley Gore’s recording of “Sunshine Lollipops and Rainbows”, reached
number 4 on the charts in 1965; Hamlisch was 21. After growing weary of the pop music-
publishing world at a very young age, Hamlisch set his sights on composing for Broadway. He
got a job as assistant musical director for a new show starring Barbra Streisand: Funny Girl.
After Funny Girl, he fulfilled an agreement with his father to complete his education, and
attended Queen’s College. At the same time, Buster Davis offered him a job as assistant on the
weekly variety show The Bell Telephone Hour. Hamlisch managed to balance both the job and
school concurrently.
In the early 1970s, a series of coincidences and fortuitous meetings led him into
composing for film. In 1973, at age 29, Hamlisch won three Oscars: Best Original Dramatic
Score The Way We Were, Best Song “The Way We Were”, and Best Adapted Score, The Sting
(for which he adapted the music of Scott Joplin).
 At the peak of his success in Hollywood, he was received a phone call from Michael
Bennett and an invitation to “drop everything and come to New York”. When he arrived in NYC,
Michael played him hours and hours of tapes of conversations he had with a group of Broadway
dancers (including eight who eventually appeared in the original production). The interviews
were casual, conversational, emotional, funny and dramatic. Bennett’s idea was to turn them into
a musical. During rehearsals, Hamlisch was fired for telling Bennett he was wrong about needing
another dance number; he ultimately returned to the project.
After the success of A Chorus Line, Hamlisch wrote the score to They’re Playing Our
Song (1979), a musical inspired by the stories that Hamlisch used to tell Neil Simon about his
relationship with Carole Bayer Sager. The show tells the story of an offbeat composer and the
eccentric lyricist with whom he works and ultimately, despite their differences, they fall in love.
When the musical opened across the street from A Chorus Line, Hamlisch had two shows
playing on Broadway. The show ran for 1,082 performances and was a moderate critical and
commercial success.
Hamlisch returned to work in film, writing for a number of movies, including: Ice Castles
(1978), Ordinary People (1980) and Sophie’s Choice (1982), Three Men and a Baby (1987) and
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003).
His later musical efforts were largely unsuccessful. His effort to musicalize the life of
actress and political activist Jean Seberg was a huge flop in London where it premiered in 1983.
He collaborated with lyricist Howard Ashman (Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid,
Beauty and the Beast) on Smile (1986). Based on a film of the same name about the finalists in
the “Young American Miss” pageant, it ran only 48 performances. The Goodbye Girl (1993)
received tepid reviews and poor audience reaction and played for only 188 performances, despite
stars Bernadette Peters and Martin Short, and book writer Neil Simon. The Sweet Smell of
Success (2002) was another musical based on a film of the same name. It received seven Tony
nominations including Best Musical, but won in only one category: Best Actor for John Lithgow.
The show was not a success and ran for 109 performances.
 STEPHEN SONDHEIM
March 22, 1930 (New York, USA) –

“There is something about my shows that makes people a little uncomfortable in

the theatre—which is, incidentally, not my intention. But that’s the way it comes
out, because what’s interesting is to write something you haven’t done before. I
have to go for something I haven’t done before. The result is people don’t know
what to expect from show to show.” –Stephen Sondheim

Sondheim has a greater output than

most of his contemporaries in the commercial
theatre since World War II (including Rodgers
& Hammerstein): 18 stage musicals, several
scores for film, and over 500 songs (most of
which have both music and lyrics by
Sondheim).
Sondheim has received eight Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement
Award in 2007), a record for Broadway composers. The musicals Company (awarded both Best
Original Music and Best Original Lyrics; the prizes have since been combined into a single
award for Best Score), Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Passion
were awarded the Tony for Best Original Score. Additionally, Sondheim has received:
• the Pulitzer Prize for Sunday in the Park with George (1985)
• an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Sooner or Later”, from the movie Dick
Tracy (1990)
• Grammy Awards for several Cast Albums, and Song of the Year for “Send in the
Clowns” (1975).

There have been several revues of Sondheim material: Side By Side By Sondheim (1976),
Marry Me A Little (1980), Putting It Together (1993), and Sondheim on Sondheim (2010).

Sondheim’s parents were successful in the New York fashion world, and he grew up
comfortably. An extremely intelligent child, Sondheim skipped kindergarten and was reading the
New York Times in grade one. He has been a fan of crossword puzzles and word games
throughout his life.
 After his parents’ divorce, Sondheim moved to a Pennsylvania farm with his mother. At the
age of 15 he met Oscar Hammerstein II, a neighbour and father of a friend, who became a
paternal figure, as well as a teacher and critic. Hammerstein began teaching Sondheim the craft
of writing for musical theatre, and gave him four assignments to complete:
1. Write a musical based on a play Sondheim liked (Beggar on Horseback, by George S.
Kaufman and Marc Connelly).
2. Write a musical based on a play Sondheim liked, but that had structural problems (High
Tor, by Maxwell Anderson).
3. Write a musical adaptation of a non-theatrical work (the short stories of Mary Poppins,
this assignment went incomplete)
4. Write an original musical, NOT adapted from any previous work. The result was a
musical called Climb High, in which the main character, an actor, strives for success, but
hurts the people who care for him along the way.

Sondheim studied music at Williams College, and following graduation was awarded the
Hutchinson Prize (a $3,000 award for further study), and studied composition with American
composer Milton Babbitt.
In 1954 Sondheim’s musical Saturday Night was earmarked for production; unfortunately,
the producer died before the show could be mounted. The experience did provide Sondheim
introductions and connections to the theatre world, including Arthur Laurents, who was working
on the libretto for West Side Story at the time. At the age of 27, Sondheim made his Broadway
debut as the lyricist for West Side Story (1957).
In addition to his works for the stage, Sondheim has written a two-volume collection of his
lyrics, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made A Hat, which include essays and insights into his
writing process. A fan of mysteries and puzzles, he has also collaborated on the screenplay of a
movie, The Last of Sheila and, with George Furth, the play Getting Away With Murder.
 THE SHOWS
Saturday Night (1954; unproduced until 1997)
“Brooklyn in the spring of 1929. A group of working-class boys in their late teens and early
twenties, on the advice of their charismatic but misguided leader Gene, a runner on Wall Street,
pools their money in an effort to make a killing in the stock market. After comic and romantic
complications, they fail, having learned that getting rich quick is harder than it seems”
(Sondheim Finishing the Hat 3).

West Side Story (1957)

“Romeo and Juliet transposed to New York City, 1957. The Montagues and Capulets are two
gangs, the Jets (white) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican). The lovers are Tony (Romeo), a former
member of the Jets, and Maria (Juliet), the sister of Bernardo (Paris), leader of the Sharks. Riff
(Mercutio) is the leader of the Jets and Tony’s best friend” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 25).

Gypsy (1959)
“Gypsy Rose Lee was burlesque queen who put the ‘tease’ in striptease. Although the show is
called Gypsy, the central character is her relentlessly driven mother, Rose, who during Gypsy’s
childhood is determined to make Gypsy’s younger sister, June, into a vaudeville star. The
chronicle of Rose, Louise (Gypsy’s real name) and June covers a period of approximately ten
years” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 55).

Gypsy was to be Sondheim’s Broadway debut as a composer and lyricist, but the star of
the show, Ethel Merman, demanded an experienced composer, and wanted Jule Styne to write
the music. Sondheim was reluctant to write only lyrics for the show, but Hammerstein again
encouraged him to take the opportunity to work with and learn from a team of experienced
Broadway professionals.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)

“The time: two hundred years before the Christian era, on a day in spring. The place: A street in
Rome in front of the houses of Lycus, a venal brothel-keeper; Senex, a lecherous patrician; and
Erronius, a befuddled old man. The plot revolves around the efforts of Pseudolus, a conniving
slave, to gain his freedom by solving his young master’s love life, and the complications that
ensue” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 79).

Sondheim’s first Broadway show as composer and lyricist, the farcical show moved at
such a relentless pace, there were no emotional “high-points” at which to insert the songs, in the
tradition of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Instead, the music in the show provides rest: the score
interrupts the action instead of carrying it on, because there are no songs that develop the
characters and the story. They simply pinpoint moments of joy or desire or fear, and they give
the performers a chance to perform.
Anyone Can Whistle (1964)
“A fanciful story about a small economically depressed American town whose venal Mayoress
gets the bright idea of arranging a fake miracle to attract tourists. The tourists arrive, but they
become intermixed with the inmates of the local Cookie Jar, a rest home for non-comformists.
Farcical complications ensue” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 111).

An original show, with a satirical book, it was a flop and ran only nine performances. It
was the Broadway debut for actress, Angela Lansbury, who would work on later Sondheim
shows.

Do I Hear a Waltz? (1964)

“Leona Samish, an attractive, cheerful and repressed American secretary in her early thirties,
goes on vacation to Venice, her first time abroad, falls in love with a married man and returns to
America sadder but wiser” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 141).

Sondheim contributed lyrics to this musical with composer Richard Rodgers. Before
Hammerstein’s death, he requested that Sondheim write with Rodgers if ever invited to, and this
show fulfilled his promise. The production had a moderate run, and mixed reviews.

In the 1970’s Sondheim began collaborating with Hal Prince, a friend since West Side
Story. The six shows they worked on together represent both men at the height of their artistic
achievement. Several of their shows have been concept musicals.

Company (1970)
“A man with no emotional commitments reassesses his life on his thirty-fifth birthday by
reviewing his relationships with his married acquaintances and his girlfriends. That is the entire
plot” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 165).

A concept musical exploring contemporary romantic relationships, as examined through

Bobby’s interactions with his “good and crazy people, my married friends”; it is Sondheim’s
‘breakthrough’ musical. Songs mirrored the characters’ feelings, and provided some insight into
the relationships and viewpoints on love and romance.
 Follies (1971)
“The story takes place in 1971. The Weismann Theater, home to the Weismann Follies since
1918, is about to be torn down. Dimitri Weismann, the impresario who produced the shows, is
giving a party on the stage of the theater and has invited all the living performers, along with
their husbands and wives, to celebrate the nostalgia of the occasion. During the course of the
party we meet them all, but the action chiefly involves two chorus girls from the 1941 Follies,
Sally Durant and Phyllis Rogers, who were best friend then and haven’t seen each other since.
They are escorted by their husbands, Buddy Plummer and Benjamin Stone, who courted them
when there were in the show” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 199).

A Little Night Music (1973)

“The place and time: a town in Sweden at the turn of the twentieth century. Fredrik Egerman, a
prosperous, widowed lawyer in his early forties with a twenty-year-old son, Henrik, has been
married for almost a year to an eighteen-year-old, Anne, whom he has known since she was a
child. Due to her shyness, he has not been able to consummate the marriage. Desiree Armfeldt,
an actress and his ex-lover, arrives in town to appear in a play. When she and Fredrik meet again,
the old flame is rekindled, but she has a married lover, Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, whose wife
Charlotte’s sister once went to school with Anne. Romantic complications ensue during a
weekend party at the country estate of Madame Armfeldt, Desiree’s imperious, wealthy, ex-
courtesan of a mother, involving also Desiree’s teenage daughter, Fredrika, and Petra, the
Egerman’s flirtatious maid, to whom Henrik and Frid, Madame Armfeldt’s butler, are both
attracted” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 251).

All the songs in A Little Night Music are written with a pulse of three, to provide a waltz-
like undercurrent. With the lilting score, the exotic location and the romantic entanglements and
conclusions, the musical follows in the tradition of operetta, but maintains a contemporary
sensibility.

Pacific Overtures (1976)

“A chronicle of Japanese history, beginning with the 1853 incursion of American warships,
under the command of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, into Japanese waters in order to
open up trade with a nation that had been closed to foreigners for centuries. In particular, it
concerns the relationship during the next fifteen years between Kayama, a minor samurai
relegated to order the ships to leave, and Manjiro, a Japanese fisherman recently returned from
the United States” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 303).

Sweeney Todd (1979)

“England in 1949. Sweeney Todd, a barber unjustly convicted and sent to an Australian prison,
escapes and returns to London, determined to avenge himself on Judge Turpin, the man who
convicted him. He allies himself with his former landlady, Nellie Lovett, but his plans to kill the
Judge go awry and in his frustration he sets out to avenge himself on the world” (Sondheim
Finishing the Hat 331).
 Sweeney Todd was the peak of the daring artistic collaboration between Stephen
Sondheim and Hal Prince. “Together with librettist Hugh Wheeler, Sondheim and Prince
approached the work as something of a Grand Guignol2 with a social conscience, a Brechtian,
Dickensian view of class repression and mass revenge” (Green 292). Sondheim became
enthusiastic about the story after seeing a production of Bond’s play in London, and had to
encourage Prince regarding the project’s merits: “Hal is not the fan of melodrama and farce that I
am… I think they are my favorite forms of theatre” (qtd. in Zadan 245).
As he intended it to be almost completely underscored, Sondheim originally set out to
write the libretto. However, he reconsidered when he realized that he needed someone to help
him cut and refine the material to contain its length when musicalized. Musical motives were
employed for each character, and “each of their songs would depend on the previous one, until
the end, when the themes would collide” (Zadan 250). Almost the entire show is underscored to
maintain tension and atmosphere, as it is in horror movies: “the only way to sustain tension was
to use music continually, not to let the heat out, so that even if they’re talking, there’ music going
on in the pit” (Sondheim, qtd. in Zada 247-8). Upon its opening, critics debated whether it was a
musical or opera, and the show has been included in the repertoire of the New York City Opera.
Sweeney Todd won eight of its nine nominated Tony Awards, including Best Musical,
Best Score, Best Book and Best Direction. Though it ran on Broadway for sixteen months, it was
a financial loss, only recouping 59% of its initial investment. The musical has had two Broadway
revivals, including a 2005 production directed by John Doyle in which the actors also played
their own instruments. This scaled-down production received Tony Awards for Best Director and
Best Orchestrations, and recouped in only nineteen weeks.

Merrily We Roll Along (1981)

“Franklin Shepard, a successful songwriter and movie producer in his forties, reviews his life,
both professional and personal, especially his relationships with his best friends, Mary Flynn and
Charley Kringas (his song-writing collaborator), and his two wives, Beth and Gussie. The action
moves backward in time from 1981 to 1957” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 379).

The show moved backwards through time, and was fraught with script and set problems

2
“Grand Guignol: dramatic entertainment featuring the gruesome or horrible. Named for a small
theatre in Paris that specialized in this style of performance.
(nine full sets). The original production featured a young, inexperienced cast, who were largely
not up to the task. Critics and audiences did not respond well to the show, and it lasted only 16
performances. Merrily We Roll Along also marks the end of the Sondheim-Prince collaboration,
until Prince’s involvement on developmental productions of Sondheim’s Road Show: “The
unfortunate side effect was that although Merrily survived, our partnership, echoing Frank and
Charley’s in the piece itself, did not. We reunited twenty years later for Bounce, but the glory
days were over” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 382).

Sunday in the Park with George (1984)

“Act One concerns the French painter Georges Seurat (1859-1891) and the creation of A Sunday
Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which took more than two years to complete. Act
Two deals with the artistic crisis experienced by his great-grandson, an American conceptual
artist in his forties, named George” (Sondheim Look I Made a Hat 3).

This show marks the beginning of collaborations with director and librettist James
Lapine. Based on the painting “An Afternoon at Le Grand Jatte” by Georges Seurat, the first act
takes place in 1884 and the second act in 1984, and explores the creation of art.

Into the Woods (1987)

“In a folktale time and setting, a childless baker and his wife are told by a witch that they will be
able to conceive if they can find and bring her four objects: a cow as white as mil, a cape as red
as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as pure as gold. In the course of their quest, The
Bake and his Wife encounter Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack (of “Jack and the
Beanstalk”) and become part of their stories. At the end of the first act, they achieve their goal.
The second act deals with the consequences of what they did to get there” (Sondheim Look I
Made a Hat 57).

One of Sondheim’s most popular works, again with James Lapine as director and book
writer. The first act focuses on fairy-tales (with which we are more or less familiar), and the
second act attempts greater social significance, showing us what happens AFTER the story.
 Passion (1994)
“1863. Milan. Giorgio, a handsome young captain in the Italian army, is having an affair with a
beautiful married woman named Clara. He is unexpectedly sent to a remote military outpost,
where the commanding officer’s cousin Fosca, an unattractive and aggressive young woman
given to fits of hysteria, falls in love with and relentlessly pursues him” (Sondheim Look I Made
a Hat 145).

With book and direction by James Lapine, and based on the film “Passion d’Amore”
(which was based on the novel Fosca), it is a through-composed musical, with recurring themes
that weave throughout the show much like a puzzle. While it won the Tony for Best Original
Score, it was ill received by both critics and audiences.

In 2004, two Sondheim shows, which had previous productions, debuted on Broadway:
Assassins (April 2004)
“A book musical masquerading as a revue, featuring nine of the thirteen assassins who have
attempted to kill the president of the United States” (Sondheim Look I Made a Hat 111).
The musical is a pastiche, as songs reflect the era in which the characters lived.

The Frogs (July 2004, originally written in 1974)

“The time is the present, the place is Ancient Greece. Dionysus, god of wine and drama, is in
despair at the state of the world, and decides that what it needs is a great dramatist to rouse
mankind from its moral torpor. The writer he is passionate about is George Bernard Shaw, and
he takes as his mission a journey to the Underworld to bring Shaw back from the dead and have
him write more plays on earth” (Sondheim Finishing the Hat 285).

The story of Mizner brothers (American entrepreneurs in the early 20th Century) had
several developmental productions, and several titles, including Wise Guys and Gold. A
Washington D.C. production resulted in a cast recording, under the name Bounce. With an initial
reading in 1998, it finally made it to New York, in a production at the Public Theater in 2008.
Road Show (2008)
“A chronicle of two brothers, Wilson and Addison Mizner, who were born in the 1880s and died
in the 1930s. Wilson was a con man, entrepreneur and wit, among other semi-accomplishments;
Addison was an architect. Their personalities were polar opposites, but hteir relationship was
intense and complicated” (Sondheim Look I Made a Hat 179).

Sondheim is currently working with playwright David Ives on a new musical with the
working title Bunuel, based on two films by surrealist Spanish director Luis Bunuel, which both
involve off-kilter dinner parties. “The musical, Sondheim said, is about ‘trying to find a place to
have dinner.’ The first deals with interruptions to dinner, the second is about ‘people who have
dinner and can’t leave,’ which ‘is my cheerful view of the world today’” (Viagas) There were
several readings and workshops of the musical in late 2016, and rumors of a possible fall 2017
production at the Public Theater. Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello (Assassins) is
tapped to direct, and a number of Broadway names have been attached to the workshops and
readings.
 SIR ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER
March 22, 1948 (London, England) –

Since the Broadway opening of Evita in

1979, there has been at LEAST one Lloyd
Webber show running on Broadway. In
London, a Lloyd Webber show has been on the
West End since Joseph and the Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1972. In 1991, he
had SIX shows running on the West End, and Lloyd Webber was the first composer to have
THREE shows running simultaneously on both Broadway and the West End (Cats, Starlight
Express and The Phantom of the Opera).

Early in his career, the apparent trends in his musicals established a “particular image of
what a ‘Lloyd Webber musical’ was. Characteristics included a lightweight plot that involved
some sort of triumph (probably spiritual) over adversity, with punchy songs in derivative styles if
not actual pastiches. In addition, the production design went over-board in scale and effects; it
dwarfed the performers, who were reduced to ciphers in a slight drama in which the more slow
and satisfying development of character had been replaced by the temporary fix of vigorous
action” (Snelson).

Lloyd Webber’s work is marked by several on-going collaborations, including:

• Tim Rice, lyricist for Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Joseph…, and new songs for The
Wizard of Oz
• Harold Prince, director of original Broadway productions of Evita and The Phantom of
the Opera.
• Don Black, lyricist on Tell Me on a Sunday/Song and Dance, Aspects of Love, Sunset
Boulevard, and Stephen Ward.

Lloyd Webber was born to a musical family: his father was a professional organist and
taught at the Royal College of music, his mother was a piano teacher and his brother is an
internationally renowned cellist. Though his background may have suggested a career in
classical music, Lloyd Webber’s earliest compositions were actually pop songs. “In 1966, when
Lloyd Webber’s collaboration with Tim Rice in earnest, they worked on several pop songs,
Rice’s primary medium… yet it was not through them that the composer and lyricist became
successful” (Snelson).

In addition to his work as a composer, Lloyd Webber created The Really Useful Group in
1977, a company involved in theatre, television, film and concert productions, record and music
publishing, and more. Beyond Lloyd Webber’s shows, the company has produced or co-
produced: Bombay Dreams (London and Broadway), Lend Me a Tenor (London and
Broadway), The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music (London and Toronto). The company has
owned a number of West End theatres, often housing Lloyd Webber musicals.
In recent years he has been a producer, judge or guest judge on reality casting shows,
including: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, Any Dream Will Do, Grease: You’re the
One That I Want, I’d Do Anything, and Over the Rainbow.

In 1992 Queen Elizabeth II knighted Lloyd Webber. In 1997, he was made a life-peer,
Baron Lloyd-Webber, and sits as a Conservative member of the House of Lords.

THE SHOWS
(dates listed below note Broadway runs; West End productions may have opened earlier)

Jesus Christ Superstar (October 12, 1971 - June 30, 1973)

With lyrics by Tim Rice, a frequent Lloyd Webber collaborator, the show began as a rock album,
before being staged on Broadway. Highlighting the political and personal struggles of Jesus,
Judas, Mary Magdalene, and the disciples, the original production was essentially a rock concert
with a plot. Despite receiving mixed reviews, it won the Tony Awards for Best Original Score
and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Ben Vereen, Judas).

Evita (September 25, 1979 – June 27, 1983)

Evita began as a rock-opera concept album, was a huge hit in London, and became a pre-sold hit
before opening on Broadway. Loosely based on the life of Eva Peron, it explored a corrupt
period of Argentinean history, with Che Guevara inserted to act as a narrator and moral
commentator. Entirely through composed, Lloyd Webber’s concept was to write less for plot
and more for visually exciting effect (a trademark of the Rice-Lloyd Webber collaboration).
Evita won seven Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, Best
Actress in a Musical (Patti LuPone, Eva Peron), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Mandy
Patinkin, Che), Best Direction of a Musical, and Best Lighting Design.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (January 27, 1982 – Sept. 4, 1983)
The show began in 1968 as a 15-minute performance at the school of Lloyd Webber’s son.
Joseph… makes heavy use of pastiche with songs like: “One More Angel in Heaven” (country)
and “Benjamin’s Calypso” (calypso). Nominated for seven Tony Awards, it won none.

Cats (October 7, 1982 - September 10, 2000)

Primarily a dance musical, the lyrics for Cats were adapted from T. S. Eliot’s poetry collection
“Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”. Cats featured several innovations for the stage,
including the use of body microphones for the cast, the costume and make-up effects, and the
hydraulics used in the junkyard set. Cats holds the record for the second-longest run on
Broadway, 7,485 performances.

Song & Dance (September 18, 1985 – November 8, 1986)

The musical was originally two separate works: “Variations”, based on a theme by Paganini and
written for Lloyd Webber’s brother Julian, a classical cellist, and a rock band, and “Tell Me On
A Sunday”, a one-act song cycle about a young English girl in America. The first act features
ONLY the actress (Bernadette Peters on Broadway), and the second act is all-dance, with an
ensemble of dancers.

Starlight Express (March 15, 1987 – January 8, 1989)

The story of a boy’s dream about his toy trains coming to life, it featured performers on roller-
skates, dressed as trains, zooming on tracks through the audience. Lloyd Webber got the idea for
the show when he was asked to write music for “The Little Engine That Could”. The Gershwin
Theater was remodeled for $2.5 million for the original Broadway production.

The Phantom of the Opera (January 26, 1988 - present)

Music: Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics: Charles Hart (additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe)
Book: Richard Stilgoe and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber
Based on: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1911)

Since The Phantom of the Opera, Lloyd Webber’s shows have met with less financial
and popular success. Additional Broadway shows include: Aspects of Love (April 8, 1990 –
March 2, 1991); Sunset Boulevard (November 17, 1994 – March 22, 1997) based on the Billy
Wilder film about aging silent-film star Norma Desmond; By Jeeves (October 28, 2001 –
December 30, 2001) 15 previews, 73 performances; and The Woman in White (November 17,
2005 – February 19, 2006). School of Rock (December 6 2015 – present) has been more well-
received than Lloyd Webber’s shows of the 2000s, opening to mostly positive reviews, and
nominated for four Tony Awards.

There are several Lloyd Webber works that have had West End or regional productions,
but have not appeared on Broadway. These include: Whistle Down the Wind, and The Beautiful
Game (later revised as The Boys in the Photograph). Love Never Dies, a sequel to The Phantom
of the Opera, has played in London (the first time a musical sequel has appeared on the West
End), but a planned Broadway production has been postponed indefinitely. The West End
production closed for four days in October 2010 to undergo plot changes, and lyrical rewrites.
The Melbourne, Australia production was better received by audiences and critics, and was
filmed for DVD release. Stephen Ward, a new Lloyd Webber musical with collaborators Don
Black and Christopher Hampton based on the Profumo Affair (a 1961 political scandal), opened
on the West End in December 2013 and ran less than four months, though a cast album did
preserve the score. In an article discussing the financial burden of producing new musicals,
Lloyd Webber acknowledged: "I haven’t had a hit in 20 years," Lloyd Webber continued. "I've
written six musicals in that time. I'm resigned now to the fact that anything I do probably nobody
is going to like” (Hetrick”).

Lloyd Webber and Rice recently wrote new songs for a London production of The
Wizard of Oz, which later played Toronto and an US National Tour. There have also be recent
revivals of Lloyd Webber’s early works: 2012 saw the first revival of Evita (starring Ricky
Martin as Che), and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival production of Jesus Christ Superstar
transferred to Broadway for several months, with most of the Stratford cast intact. Cats had a
Broadway revival which played 593 performances in 2016, and in 2017 Glenn Close reprised the
role of Norma Desmond in a Broadway revival of Sunet Boulevard.
 STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
(March 6, 1948 – )

Born in New York, Schwartz’s family moved to France

when he was 15 months old. Living abroad for three years, he
displayed a great ability to pick up language. A gifted student,
he skipped grade six, and at the age of 12 he was admitted to the
Julliard School of Music, where he studied performance, theory
and composition.

As a child he lived next door to composer George

Kleisinger during the time he was composing the musical Shinbone Alley. Schwartz attended the
show, and at nine years old he knew his goal: “from then on, that was my ambition and
direction—to write for the Broadway musical theatre.”

At the suggestion of scenic designer Jo Mielziner (Pal Joey, Carousel, Annie Get Your
Gun, Streetcar Named Desire, South Pacific, Gypsy), Schwartz studied for a BFA in drama from
1964-1968 at the Carnegie Institute. While at college he discovered Motown and pop music. He
also became involved in a student run organization that presented annual musicals to promote
cooperation between the various majors at the school.

One of the shows he worked on there was Pippin, Pippin (1967), conceived by another
student about family issues relating to the sons of King Charlemagne, specifically his illegitimate
son Prince Pepin. A vanity recording of the show received interest from a producer, which
excited Schwartz, but co-writer Ron Strauss declined. A backers' audition led to his signing with
agent Shirley Bernstein (Leonard’s sister), but his dad had to sign the contract since he was
under 21.

His first writing for Broadway was the title song for the 1969 play Butterflies are Free
(for which he earned $25/week).

Due to frustrations about the business and the lack of success of his shows, Schwartz has
“left the business” several times during his career. After Working in 1978 he became depressed
and withdrew for three years, after Children of Eden he attended graduate school at NYU to
become a therapist.

BROADWAY SHOWS

Pippin (1972)
Based on the same source material as the college version of the show, “not a single note or lyric
remained the same”. Director/Choreographer Bob Fosse re-imagined many aspects of the show,
including the framework of the Players. Fosse and Schwartz did NOT see eye-to-eye about the
show, and Schwartz was often shut out of rehearsals.
*Pippin was the first Broadway musical to have a television commercial.

The Magic Show (1974)

The show was built around magician Doug Henning, who couldn’t sing. The songs set up the
illusions throughout the show.

Godspell (1976)
Originally opening Off-Broadway in 1971, Schwartz was brought in to write a “commercial”
score for the show, which had started as a Director’s Project at Carnegie Mellon. In the show, 10
clowns acting out parables from the bible. In Act 1, solos are sung at moments of revelation or
conversion, while Act 2 follows the Last Supper and the final moments of Jesus’ life before His
betrayal. The Off-Broadway production opened only months before Jesus Christ Superstar.

Working (1978)
Schwartz was the librettist and director of this musical, which set out to be a “documentary”
musical, based on the book of interviews Working: People Talk About What They Do and How
They Feel About What They Do, by Studs Terkel. The show featured songs by a number of
composers, including Schwartz, Craig Carnelia, James Taylor and Mary Rodgers.

Rags (1986)
Schwartz is the lyricist of the musical, with music by Charles Strouse and book by Joseph Stein.
Though the show does poorly on Broadway, Schwartz learned a great deal about lyric writing
working with the experienced Broadway writers.

Wicked (October 30, 2003 to present)

Music and Lyrics by: Stephen Schwartz
Book by: Winnie Holzman (“My So-Called Life”)
Based on: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire.

DISNEY (& OTHER ANIMATED MUSICALS)

 After Howard Ashman’s death to AIDS, Schwartz was invited to work with composer
Alan Menken on Disney’s Pocahontas. The first song from this collaboration, “Colors of the
Wind”, won Oscar for Best Original Song (1995); the composer and lyricist reteamed for
Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Schwartz was hired as composer AND lyricist for
Mulan, but during turmoil at Disney he also accepted an offer from Dreamworks SKG to write
music and lyrics for King David. Despite a clause in his contract, Disney considered this a
conflict of interest, and ultimately fired Schwartz.
In 2007 he returned to Disney as a lyricist for Enchanted. Three songs from the movie
were nominated for Best Song at the Oscars, but lost to “Falling Slowly” from Once.

OTHER SHOWS

A number of Schwartz’ musicals have been popular, regional and stock production
successes, but have never played the Broadway stage. The popularity of several musicals has
been maintained through cast recordings.

The Baker’s Wife

After a TERRIBLE out-of-town process, the show never made it to Broadway. It was based on
the French film “La Femme du Boulanger”, with a book by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof).
Producer David Merrick had a different vision than the creators, and fired actors, actresses,
directors and choreographers in an effort to solve problems. Merrick pulled the song
“Meadowlark” after a matinee (he had always hated it), and it was restored to the show only after
citing a union rule.

Children of Eden
Based on the first nine books of Genesis, Children of Eden opened to mixed/poor reviews in
London in 1991. It was reworked through various America Regional Theatres, culminating in a
1997 production at the Paper Mill Theatre and 1998 Cast Recording.

Captain Louie
A family musical based on the children’s book The Trip by Ezra Jack Keats, Captain Louie
played Off-Broadway in 2005. Schwartz began work on the score in the late ‘80’s, while
working on Rags, and there have been several versions of the show.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon

An opera, and the first significant new stage piece from the composer since Wicked, it made its
New York debut in the 2011 New York City Opera Season. The composer's son, director Scott
Schwartz, directed the production.
Séance on a Wet Afternoon is described as "a psychological thriller about a medium,
Myra Foster, her doting husband Bill, and the spirit of their deceased eleven-year-old son,
Arthur, who speaks to Myra and is her contact for her séances. Because Myra has never received
the recognition she feels her gifts merit, they hatch a plan: they will kidnap the daughter of a
local wealthy industrialist, and keep her safe while the media frenzy over her abduction builds.
When Myra has a 'vision' that leads to the successful recovery of the girl and the ransom, her
fame will be assured."
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