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By Ron Rodman

In this blog last month, I wrote about Dr. Billy Taylor and his pioneering work on television as an advocate for jazz. To celebrate Black History Month, it is appropriate to mention another African American musician who was a pioneer on American television: Nat King Cole, jazz pianist and vocalist, was the first African American musician to host a nationally-broadcast musical variety show in the history of television.

Nathanial Adams Coles was born in 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama. He first learned to play piano around the age of four with help from his mother, a church choir director, and by his early teens, was studying classical piano. He was drawn to the music of jazz pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines, and eventually abandoned classical for jazz, which became his lifelong passion. At 15, he dropped out of school to become a jazz pianist full-time, and developed an act with his brother Eddie for a time, which led to his first professional recordings in 1936. He later joined a national tour for the musical revue Shuffle Along, performing as a pianist.

In 1937, Cole started to put together what would become the “King Cole Trio,” the name being a play on the children’s nursery rhyme. As part of the trio, Cole expanded his own role in the group, both playing jazz piano and singing with his rich, velvety baritone voice. The trio toured extensively and finally landed on the charts in 1943 with Cole’s song, “That Ain’t Right.” His first big hit the following year was “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” a song reportedly inspired by one of his father’s sermons. The trio continued its rise to the top with such pop hits as the holiday classic “The Christmas Song” and the ballad “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons.”         

By the 1950s, Nat King Cole emerged as a popular solo performer. He scored numerous hits, with such songs as “Nature Boy,” “Mona Lisa,” “Too Young, ” and “Unforgettable.” He worked with many of the greatest jazz artists in the country, like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, arranger Nelson Riddle, and others.

However, the 1950s was a difficult decade for African American entertainers. In his performances around the country, Cole had encountered racism firsthand, especially while touring in the South. He had been attacked by white supremacists during a mixed race performance in Alabama. Yet, he was also criticized by other African Americans for his less-than-supportive comments about racial integration, and for performances for segregated audiences. Cole considered himself an entertainer and not an activist, and often sought to assimilate with white audiences.

1956 proved to be a pivotal year for Nat King Cole, and he was to become not just an entertainer, but also a pioneer for equal rights. By the mid-1950s, he had achieved status as a mainstream performer and sought to pursue this career as other stars had done — to produce and star in his own television show. His bid for a TV show brought with it a sense of mission. “It could be a turning point,” he realized, “so that Negroes may be featured regularly on television.” Cole realized the stakes were high, and said, “If I try to make a big thing out of being the first and stir up a lot of talk, it might work adversely.” Cole and his agents negotiated with CBS for a show, but his own program never materialized. Cole’s manager then tried NBC, and they successfully reached an agreement for The Nat “King” Cole Show.

The Nat “King” Cole Show debuted on 5 November 1956. The show aired without a sponsor, but NBC agreed to pay for initial production costs; the network assumed that once the show actually aired and advertisers were able to see its sophistication, a national sponsor would emerge. Cole exuded his benign, soft-spoken persona on the set, chatting with the TV audience and singing Broadway and Tin Pan Alley tunes. But the show was innovative in that it also featured Cole in his original role as a jazz pianist, playing and singing with jazz notables such as Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald. Cole also used his connections to bring other high caliber musicians to the show, many of whom voluntarily appeared with minimal compensation. Some of these included Harry Belafonte, Mel Tormé, Frankie Laine, and Peggy Lee (shown below).

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Despite the high musical quality of the show, the race barrier seemed too much for the predominantly white TV audience of the 1950s to overcome. Many national companies balked at sponsorship, as they did not want to upset their white customers in the South who did not want to see a black man on TV shown in anything other than a subservient position. Although NBC agreed to fund the show until a sponsor could be found, Cole decided to cancel the show himself in its second season, disappointed with ratings and lack of sponsorship. Cole was quoted as saying of the doomed series, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.” The last show was aired on 17 December 1957. After he cancelled his show, Nat King Cole continued to appear on other TV shows like The Ed Sullivan Show, The Garry Moore Show, and others.

Though short lived, The Nat “King” Cole Show paved the way for other black entertainers to find their way to television in the next decade. 1967 witnessed the premier of The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show on NBC, as a mid-season replacement that ran for 15 episodes.

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In 1969, singer Leslie Uggams, hosted The Leslie Uggams Show, a musical comedy variety series that aired on CBS for one season in 1969.

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Unfortunately, American audiences still seemed uncomfortable with TV shows hosted by sophisticated black musicians, and it finally took a comedian — Flip Wilson — to host a successful show, The Flip Wilson Show, which ran for four seasons on NBC from 1970-1974.

Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Read his previous blog posts on music and television. 

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Image credit: Publicity photo from the premiere of The Nat King Cole Show. NBC Television. Via Wikimedia Commons.

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By Liz Wollman

Colony Records, which will close on Saturday, September 15th after 64 years of business, is no mere record store. A cavernous, crowded, and never particularly tidy place, Colony has kept one foot firmly in its Tin Pan Alley past, and the other in its media-saturated present. The largest and easily most famous provider of sheet music in New York City, Colony also houses cassettes, CDs, DVDs, karaoke recordings, an absolutely enormous collection of records, and all kinds of memorabilia: pop music action figures and Beatles mousepads; signed, fading photographs of A-, B-, and C-list celebrities from every decade that the store has been open; novelty key chains and promotional buttons from countless Broadway musicals; old concert programs, playbills, and t-shirts; Ramones coffee mugs and “Glee” lunchboxes; and locked shrines in dank corners, filled with dusty Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley collectibles. The staff, depending on whom you talk to, is comprised either of snobbish, standoffish jerks or brilliant, walking encyclopedias who can help you locate a piece of sheet music within seconds of your humming a few notes from the song in question, no matter how obscure. I suppose that genius and churlishness, just like Tin Pan Alley and rock and roll, are hardly mutually exclusive; the owners’ understanding of this is, in the end, likely why Colony managed to last as long as it did.

Colony Sporting Goods became Colony Records when its owners, Harold S. (“Nappy”) Grossbardt and Sidney Turk, took it over in 1948. Their sons, Michael Grossbardt and Richard Turk, are the current and will be the last owners. Initially located at 52nd Street and Broadway, Colony moved in 1970 to the Brill Building, at Broadway and 49th Street, where it has remained. On a typical day, visitors to the store include tourists from all over the world, members of the theater industry, professional and amateur musicians, and record and memorabilia collectors. Countless celebrities have patronized Colony in its six decades: Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Elton John, Neil Diamond, and Jimi Hendrix. The bizarrely image-conscious Michael Jackson used to make furtive visits via a back entrance, specifically to buy up enormous amounts of his own memorabilia. According to lore, both Bernadette Peters and Dusty Springfield decided to become entertainers after merely walking by the store and hearing music emanating from it. When James Brown visited, he apparently exclaimed, “This smells like a music store!”

He’s right; it does. And before paying my last visit to Colony this past week, I’d completely forgotten what a music store smells like. Also, what one looks like and feels like.

I am no stranger to Colony. I’ve bought plenty of sheet music from them in the 25 years that I’ve called myself a New Yorker. In that stretch of time, I have been, at various times and sometimes simultaneously, a reasonably good vocalist, a truly terrible pianist, a middling guitar player, and a music scholar who writes frequently about the post-1960 stage musical. I’m not an atypical patron, I think. In the weeks since news of Colony’s closing broke, I’ve heard plenty of people mention that they used to go there regularly when they dabbled in trumpet or in cello, or taught guitar or voice lessons, or before they decided to quit pursuing a career in the theater, or before Amazon started carrying everything they needed.

Yet despite how much it has served us New Yorkers — not to mention the millions of tourists who stroll, sometimes maddeningly slowly, through Times Square at some point during their visit here — I wasn’t terribly surprised by the news that Colony had fallen prey to declining sales, the Internet, and (the final straw) a landlord who plans to quintuple the rent of the store. None of this is shocking, especially when it comes to commercial real estate in Manhattan, which at this point heavily favors conglomerates. Really, the big news to me, at least initially, was not that Colony was closing. It is that Colony has managed to stay open for so very long.

Think about it: Colony opened in 1948. During the 1950s, rock and roll arrived, purportedly to destroy Tin Pan Alley in one fell swoop. During the 1960s, again purportedly, young people en masse abruptly turned their backs on the musical tastes of their elders. During these decades, Colony only grew in size — —so large, in fact, that its owners had to relocate. Its move, in 1970, coincided with one of the darkest periods in New York City’s history. Mired in financial crisis, and inching dangerously close to bankruptcy, New York was hardly a happy place in the 1970s. Times Square, Colony Records’ new home, had become internationally notorious — a sleazy, crime-ridden example of everything that had gone wrong with the urban jungle.

And yet Colony survived it all. It outlasted Beatlemania, psychedelia, disco, punk, hair metal, and hip-hop, MTV, VH1 and the first two decades of the Internet. It outlasted Napster and the dot-com boom. It outlasted Tower Records, HMV, Patelson’s, and Footlight Records. Arguably, it even outlasted, for a while at least, the neighborhood around it; Times Square was given a Disneyfied “facelift” in the early 1990s, which has resulted in a more tourist-friendly and seemingly safer, if also increasingly generic and corporate urban environment. Since it first opened in the postwar era, Colony has grown with and adapted to the times in ways that none of its past competitors managed. My initial reaction, then, was merely to praise Colony — not to mourn it for a second — because in the end, sixty years is a pretty impressive run for a family-owned business in the middle of Times Square.

But then I went to visit, and my logic gave way to a surprisingly emotional wave of nostalgia.

James Brown was right: it’s the smell of the place that gets you first — a mix of old, comfortably dusty things; of vinyl and paper and cool, musty formica. The sounds, too: a mix of Beatles songs blasted through the speaker, competing with several languages being spoken by as many tourists. “Look, honey, a Lady Gaga backpack!” a woman with a thick Long Island accent shouted down the aisle at her absolutely mortified pre-teen son. A man in a suit and sunglasses paced back and forth through the brass section while he talked shop on his phone. “We need to give them more bang for the buck this year,” he said. “Maybe we could get another few animals up on the stage this time around?” As “Strawberry Fields” came on over the speakers, I wandered through the aisle of picked-over cassette tapes, passed a group of Italian women looking at Beatles memorabilia, and found a huge basket of promotional pins from past Broadway musicals. I grabbed three, almost at random, from shows that all flopped at least a decade ago: Nick and Nora, Mayor, James Clavell’s Shogun: The Musical. The producers of those shows would have killed for even a fraction of the run that Colony has had.

I was about to leave, but then I started rifling through music books for the sake of rifling through music books. New ones, used ones, ones for woodwinds, piano, violin, voice, and guitar. They are, I am sure, all available online should I ever decide to become a terrible violinist or a horrible oboeist. But wandering through so much sheet music, being able to reach out and touch it, page through it, admire the quality of the paper is — much like spending an hour or two in a store flipping through records, or cassettes, or CDs — something I’d completely forgotten the pleasure of. I’ve spent a great deal of my life killing time in stores like these. I miss them, even as I understand that times change and modes of commerce with them. The automats are gone, too, from Times Square. So are the dime museums, the grindhouses, the arcades and the penny restaurants, and yes, the notorious if occasionally hilarious XXX theaters (a favorite marquis post from the early 1980s: “Hot As Hell! A Potent Groin Grabber!!”). I am sure that whatever chain store opens up in the place of Colony — be it a Gap, an Urban Outfitters, or a particularly snazzy Applebees — will, someday, also eventually close up shop.

I ended up purchasing the three pins, along with two used books of classic rock and pop songs “for very easy guitar,” which is about my speed these days. Warren, the longtime Colony employee who rang me up, gave me one of the pins for free, and then called my attention to the song that had come on over the speakers. “Man, this is the Beatles before they even sounded like the Beatles, you know?”

“Sure,” I replied, snapping out of my fog of nostalgia to focus on his. “Because it wasn’t their song, right? It was one of the songs they covered. It was originally by — by –”

“It’s ‘Matchbox,’” he said. “Carl Perkins. 1955? No. 1956.”

I chuckled. “Thanks.” I said, taking my bag and preparing to leave Colony for the last time, and realizing that my eyes were welling up. “For everything. I’ll miss you.”

He didn’t look surprised at all. “I know,” he said, gently. “We’ll miss you, too.”

Elizabeth L. Wollman is Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College in New York City, and author of Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City and The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig. She also contributes to the Show Showdown blog.

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Luckily I live in New York City, which made it very easy to attend the concert and launch party for the release of The Broadway Lullaby Project on May 7th. Over a dozen of the 26 lullabies were performed, accompanied by their illustrations on the large screen behind the performers at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. And Edie Falco was the evening's host! It was a great night of celebration, and fun to be able to rub elbows with some big deal folks in the Broadway biz. Here's a little photo recap of the evening:

Please visit the website, and consider purchasing a CD or a hardcover book (or ebook!) to help fight breast cancer!

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From the website:

Over the Moon: The Broadway Lullaby Project is both a timeless benefit effort and a uniquely compelling, multimedia experience. The ambitious project — which incorporates a 2-CD, 26-song set; a lavishly-illustrated hardcover book of 17 songs from the album; a corresponding e-book encompassing the entire collection; and a documentary film and web series — gathers many of contemporary musical theatre’s greatest composers and vocalists, as well as illustrators, all of whom have donated their talent to deliver an emotionally affecting set of new lullabies, some written specifically for this project.

This collection puts a fresh spin on the classic lullaby form, creating a warmly expressive song cycle that will touch listeners of all ages, while raising funds for respected breast cancer charities, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Young Survival Coalition. The book features 17 songs from the album, with the lyrics illustrated by some of America’s most esteemed theatrical designers and children’s book illustrators, each offering a memorable visual interpretation of a song from the CD bound in the book. The e-book includes illustrations for all 26 songs.

My illustration accompanies the lullaby titled “I’ll Always Be There,” written by Jeff Blumenkrantz and sung by Victoria Clark.  Please check out the Over The Moon website to find out more about this wonderful project, and how you can help! 

XO~Lauren 

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By Keith Gandal

Want a quick, but apparently reliable measure of how elitist you are?  Go see the 7-hour production of Gatz, in which all 47,000 words of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are, in the course of the play, enunciated on stage.  (If you dare and can afford to.)  If you love every minute of it and find time flying by, you’re probably, well, an arts snob; if you find your reaction mixed, your mind drifting in and out, and your body just plain giving out, well, you’re likely more of a populist.

Consider the following small, statistically meaningless, but provocative sample of reviews you instantly encounter on the web: the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Theatremania all give the play rave reviews, while the New York Post and the New York Daily News both give it 2½ stars (out of 4 and 5 respectively).  Ben Brantley of the New York Times describes the play as “work of singular imagination and intelligence.” Jeremy Gerard of Bloomberg calls it “remarkable,” “as powerful a piece of stagecraft as you may ever see.”  David Finkle of Theatremania finds the play “mesmerizing” and declares, “the lengthy production goes by in what seems like a blink of an eye.”  Meanwhile, Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post gives it a mixed review, asserting that the director “has come up with an inspired concept” and that Gatz is “great, but [it] also grates.” “There are the deadly boring stretches. Very long ones.”  She concludes: “It’s as maddeningly tedious as it is brilliant. By the end, my mind was as numb as my butt.”  And Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News recommends the play, but also calls it a “fanny-numbing readathon.”

In other words, this small sample of reviews breaks down across class lines.  Higher-brow papers or websites are raving, and the lower-brow papers have mixed feelings, including uncomfortable feelings in their behinds.

But is this breakdown really surprising?  A 7-hour production at a cost of $140 seems to demand of its audience members that they have a lot of time and money to spare.  This is at the Public by the way, which was presumably once more public than it is now.  In fact, one thing the play Gatz does quite effectively is to restore Fitzgerald’s now very accessible novel to the inaccessibility, along class lines, that it would have had back in the 1920s.

I want to make clear that I haven’t seen the play and, thus, that my perceptions of its length, its cost, and its reviews are not colored by my having sat through it.  I’m actually quite curious to see it – I’m teaching the novel this term at City College, and I’ve written a recent book that devotes the longest chapter to Fitzgerald’s novel.  Well-meaning colleagues and friends have even suggested I take my class to see the play, given that some reviewers are calling it a major theatrical event, but with regular tickets starting at $140, who c

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Earlier this week, Jerry Bock (perhaps best known for Fiddler on the Roof) passed away, the day after he was honored with Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild. Below, Philip Lambert remembers the great composer.

By Philip Lambert

When Jerry Bock died on November 2, three weeks shy of his eighty-second birthday, the American musical theater lost one of its most expressive, gifted composers. With lyricist Sheldon Harnick, Bock wrote the scores for three of the most celebrated musicals Broadway history, Fiorello! (1959), She Loves Me (1963), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964), and for four other excellent shows during a fourteen-year partnership (The Body Beautiful, 1958; Tenderloin, 1960; The Apple Tree, 1966; The Rothschilds, 1970). His work stands as a testament to the value of musical craftsmanship, dramatic sensitivity, and artistic generosity on the Broadway stage.

After an apprenticeship in early television, and at Camp Tamiment, a summer camp for adults, in the early 1950s, Bock made his Broadway debut with three songs in a revue, Catch a Star! (1955). At that time he wrote mostly with Larry Holofcener, whom he had met at the University of Wisconsin. Bock and Holofcener also teamed with George David Weiss to create a star vehicle for Sammy Davis, Jr., Mr. Wonderful in 1956. But when Bock began working with Sheldon Harnick in 1957 – they were introduced by a mutual friend, Jack Cassidy – his music began truly to blossom and sparkle. Bock and Harnick wrote hundreds of songs of infinite variety in support of disparate stories and characters. Feeding off each other’s formidable talents, the partnership thrived until an array of forces sent them their separate ways in the early 1970s. After that Bock mostly wrote his own lyrics for other new shows, including a very successful series of musicals for young audiences between 2000 and 2007, and music for a feature film (Sidney Lumet’s A Stranger Among Us, 1992). He also worked on personal, private songwriting projects during the last four decades, yielding autobiographical song cycles (Album Leaves, Trading Places) and thematic collections (Noblesse O’ Blues, Three/Four All).

Jerry Bock was the master of what Lehman Engel called the “musical costume.” He could dress up a song in any style, from the nineteenth-century parlor song (for Tenderloin) to the jazz shouter (in The Apple Tree). He would immerse himself in the style and culture of the story he was helping to tell and then transport the audience there with musical references and flavorings. In She Loves Me he took us to Hungary, in The Rothschilds to the power centers of eighteenth-century Europe. In his most successful show, Fiddler on the Roof, he drew from his own background and heritage to evoke a turn-of-the-century Russian shtetl. Of that experience, he said in 2008, “I simply could not stop the brood of melodies and harmonies that waited to be born.”

There was, in other words, no single Jerry Bock “style.” His style was simply an acute sensitivity to the dramatic requirements of the project at hand. He and Harnick would work tirelessly on each of their scores searching for perfect dramatic support, during development, rehearsals, and pre-Broadway tours, usually producing two or three times the number of songs a

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By Robin S. Rosenberg

I recently saw a preview for the musical Spider-Man: Turn Out the Dark. It’s not really a musical; it’s a spectacle. It succeeds as a spectacle, fails as a musical, and hangs itself as a Spider-Man origin story. It’s easier to find good things to say about the spectacle aspect, so I’ll start by reviewing that aspect of the play.

Spider-Man: The Spectacle

Director/writer Julie Taymor and co-writer Glen Berger wanted to create a spectacle-something that was more than a musical. They succeeded. The sets were a wonder to behold (especially in the first half of the show). Aerialists, dressed as Spider-Man, the Green Goblin, and Arachne, flew about the stage and balcony, allowing viewers to feel a part of the production. In fact, because of the numerous injuries suffered by actors during rehearsals and previews, when the aerialists flew overhead it made me wonder-what if their cables broke and they fell on the audience? (And wouldn’t that be analogous to what New York’s pedestrians would wonder if an actual Spidey and actual Green Goblin were duking it out in the skies above Manhattan, without the cables?)

Even as a spectacle, though, the pacing of it didn’t work for me. Most of the spectacular elements were in the first half of the show, so when the effects and wow elements were fewer (and repeating) in the second half, it was a let down. During the last hour of the play, I kept looking at my watch. If you see the play and leave at intermission, you’ll see the best parts. Grade for spectacle (especially the first half): A.

Spider-Man: The Musical

In a good musical, the songs move the story forward. Unfortunately, the music in this play didn’t do this very effectively. The actors often spoke a “recap” of the gist of the song in order to transition to the next scene or to move the story along. (If you see this play, bring along some tissues or napkins to stuff into your ears: some songs were so loud that I had to cover my ears with my hands; I didn’t enjoy those.)

As you may know, the songs were written by Bono and The Edge, and it showed. The songs didn’t have the structure or feel of a “Broadway musical,” which is okay in theory, but not in this execution. Sad to say, none of the songs were memorable – they didn’t have a great “hook” as do many Broadway songs or even U2 songs. Plus the feel of the music didn’t match up with Spider-Man’s character or story. Grade for music: B- (I’m being generous here, taking effort into consideration in my grade)

Spider-Man: The Origin Story

I’ve read (or seen) almost every Spider-Man origin story there is because I’m writing a book on origin stories that includes a chapter on Spider-Man’s origins. I was looking forward to this musical to see how it compared with previous origin stories of the Webbed Wonder. I was disappointed. There isn’t a whole lot of character development here, and there isn’t much more of a plot; what plot there is focuses too much on Mary Jane and not enough on Peter. Even though Peter/Spider-Man is a comic book character, his story is rich in the human drama of shouldering the burden of

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Little monsters, (Gaia Online users, and kids in general can do their part to aid earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan. Lady Gaga designed “We Pray For Japan” bracelets available in her online store and can be purchases with an added... Read the rest of this post

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Happy 5th birthday, Twitter! (The service is most popular with 20-24 year olds, and their tastes are definitely reflected in the list of most-followed accounts — Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Britney Spears. In other social media news, Facebook... Read the rest of this post

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On our way to "Memphis" yesterday we stopped in the Fashion District, rode the crowded elevator to the second floor of Mood, and shopped where the Project Runway stars shop—got lost among countless bolts of fabric (does anyone actually know how many bolts of fabric lie supine at Mood?).  Oh, this was a great thing to do.  Yes, I did come home with Mood feathers and a T-shirt.  Next we went to Parsons and stood inside its skinny lobby.  All so that I could say (to any who would listen; will you listen?):  I stood among the vapors of Mondo and Austin. 

"Memphis" was just what I needed yesterday—third-row orchestra seats, center, thanks to my brother.  I loved the storyline of this show, surged ecstatic about the stage sets, felt the hammering heart of the big dance numbers, totally dug that gospel choir.  I loved the two big guys who danced like there are no dance rules and who sang with such peppy abandon.

Just before the show began, I received a note from my agent, Amy Rennert (who always remembers), and another from Tamra Tuller, that dear soul, who was writing to say that my Small Damages jacket—a sample from the first run—would be waiting for me at home when I returned.  It's gorgeous!  It's debossed!! It, in some unpossess-able way, belongs to me.  And at this dark hour, dawn, I am still trying to figure out how to take a photograph of it so that you can see what the fabulous Michael Green calls its "special touches."  Philomel made an investment in this jacket. It shows. "You need to frame that one," my husband, the artist of inscrutable high standards, said.

On the bus home from NYC, our son called.  He's an extremely happy kid.  No, not a kid.  He's a young man with the right friends and a bright future and such a knack for analysis and writing that he earned an A plus on a big paper this week.  "What did the professor say?" I asked.  Quietly, then, never boastful, my son answered.

"Well," he said.  "He actually called it awesome."

"Awesome," I repeated.  "Wow. Was there more?"  I have to ask; my kid is immune to bragging and strut. 

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There was no question in my mind which video to begin with today.  I cannot help but think that meeting Quentin Blake must be akin to meeting Roald Dahl.  The man is a living legend and this video is a true treasure.  Would that every illustrator were half so thorough when discussing the preservation, creation, and process that goes into their art.  A very big thank you to Jonathan Cape Graphic Novels for the link.

Mind you, Quentin had some stiff competition for the top video of the day.  He only narrowly beat out this Reading Rainbow remix.

I’ve been trying to identify all the books in the video but it is incredibly tough.  I can account for Carl Hiaasen’s Flush, Christopher Paul Curtis’s Elijah of Buxton, and what appears to be a Civil Rights book that I can never quite catch the title of.  Other spotted books are welcome.  Mention them!  And thanks to mom for the link.  Probably the only time you’ll ever see the New Orleans Bounce on this blog, I’d wager.

Benefit books come out occasionally but rarely do they incorporate Broadway stars.  Over the Moon: The Broadway Lullaby Project is benefiting breast cancer research.  You’ve got big name vocalists singing songs from big name composers with a book illustrated by big name artists (for the most part).  Here’s the roster:

” . . . the project’s book component also features a distinctive cover illustration by fabled cartoonist/playwright Jules Feiffer, along with a foreword written by stage and screen legend Julie Andrews and her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. Among the award-winning illustrators lending their talents are Selina Alko, Lynne Avril, Paulette Bogan, Beowulf Boritt, Lauren Castillo, R. Gregory Christie, Seymour Chwast, Jane Dyer, Richard Egielski, Daniel Glucksman, Julia Gran, Ying-Hwa Hu, Genevieve LeRoy-Walton, Betsy Lewin, Anna Louizos, Victor Mays, Emily Arnold McCully, Wendell Minor, Barry Moser, Jon J Muth, Sean Qualls, Peter H. Reynolds, Marc Simont, Javaka Steptoe, Melissa Sweet, Cornelius Van Wright, Neil Waldman, Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, Tony Walton, Gary Zamchick, and Paul O. Zelinsky.”

I had no idea Jules Feiffer was a fable.  And here I was convinced he was a real person.  In any case, impressive list of names!  A couple I don’t know but most I do. And here, on a related note, is a glimpse at one of the songs.

Thanks to Rich Michelson for the info.

Speaking of Julie Andrews, I’m sure you’ve all seen Stephen Colbert’s interview with her in conjunction with his own picture book release of

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Click HERE to read "Topsy Turvy Christmas" on CWAHM.com!________

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One of the best things about working at Oxford University Press is finding older books you didn’t know about. A couple of days ago I came across The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales: The Western Fairy Tale Tradition from Medieval to Modern, edited by Jack Zipes. I decided to put the volume to the test. Would it have the modern musical interpretation of fairy tales? It did! Below is the entry about one of my favorite shows, Into the Woods.

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. In the original post below Hishak reflects on past Tony award winners and losers. Be sure to check back every week on Tuesday for more from Hischak on Tony.

Looking back over the past 59 years of Tony Award winners and losers, two lists cause a great deal of lament for musical theatre lovers: those undeserving shows that won, particularly in a season when there were superior offerings, and the outstanding musicals that were passed over by the Tony voters. Over the years there have been seasons in which the offerings were so mediocre that an undeserving musical won, just as there were years in which too many good shows opened and only one could carry home the Tony. (Actually, in 1960 there was a tie between Fiorello! and The Sound of Music.) So let’s revisit some cases of musicals that were, as Julie Andrews would say, egregiously overlooked.

While no two fans of American musical theatre will completely agree on what constitutes a superior musical, some titles recur so frequently that you can say they’re the popular choices. Keeping that in mind, I offer a list of the ten most acclaimed Americans musicals that didn’t win the Tony Award for Best Musical. In order of their Broadway bow, they are:

The Most Happy Fella
West Side Story
Gypsy
She Loves Me
Hair
Follies
Chicago
Dreamgirls
Sunday in the Park With George
Ragtime

In some cases these outstanding shows had some stiff competition. The Most Happy Fella lost to My Fair Lady, West Side Story to The Music Man, and Gypsy to those double winners Fiorello! and The Sound of Music. She Loves Me had to compete with Hello, Dolly!, the radical Hair bumped heads with the patriotic 1776, Chicago could not survive the avalanche of awards for A Chorus Line, and Ragtime was up against The Lion King. Other seasons the contest was close and the Tony voters’ selection of Nine over Dreamgirls or Sunday in the Park With George‘s loss to La Cage aux Folles is understandable even if most theatre lovers today might disagree. Then there is Two Gentlemen of Verona‘s win over Follies, a decision that seems ridiculous today and wasn’t even all that popular in 1971. Many of these shows were just unlucky, opening in the wrong season; Follies, put simply, was robbed.

Looking at the musicals that were giant hits without benefit of a Tony Award for Best Musical is a less subjective exercise. This list tends to favor more recent shows since the definition of a box office hit has changed in the last 20 years and the newer moneymakers are earning more than anyone in the 1950s could’ve imagined. Here then are the top ten Tony-less Broadway success stories in the order of their opening gross:

Grease
Pippin
The Magic Show
Dancin’
Miss Saigon
Beauty and the Beast
Smokey Joe’s Cafe
Aida
Mamma Mia!
Wicked

Some may want to include one or two of these titles on the first list and only history will tell if they are right. But let’s face it, you don’t see many revivals of The Magic Show or Dancin’ anymore. On the other hand, Grease has returned to Broadway twice and is probably the champ, winning no Tony Awards in 1972 and crying all the way to the bank ever since. It’s also interesting to note that the scores of three of the above, Pippin, The Magic Show, and Wicked, are by Stephen Schwartz. The Tony voters have never been kind to Schwartz. But that’s a story for another time.

If choosing a superior musical is contentious, deciding which shows simply did not deserve the Best Musical Tony is even more fraught with controversy. Traditionalists might argue that the Tony Winners from the past six years all qualify as undeserving. Younger viewers will point to old favorites such as Wonderful Town or Kismet as over-praised winners. Then there are those not-really-a-musical shows like Fosse and Contact that seem to have won unfairly, not because of quality but because of definition. Recognizing that no one can agree completely, here’s my list of the ten Best Musical Tony winners that ought not to have won, regardless of the competition:

Redhead
Hallelujah, Baby!
Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Will Rogers Follies
Crazy for You
Passion
Fosse
Contact
Avenue Q
Jersey Boys

The upcoming 2008 Tony Awards will probably add a title to two or even all three of these lists. Will The Little Mermaid become the next Tony-less box office bonanza? Will In the Heights be added to your “should have won” list? Stay tuned.

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. In the original post below Hishak reflects on past Tony losers. Be sure to check back every week on Tuesday for more from Hischak on Tony.

The Tony nominations are made by a relatively small group of individuals who come up with the candidates for each category. The voters are a few hundred people in the theatre profession who then choose from the nominated names and titles. So while a person can be nominated many times over the years, only the voters can create winners and losers. Nonetheless, shortsightedness can sometimes be seen in the nominations. In 1963 the committee nominated A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for best musical, actor (Zero Mostel), featured actors (David Burns and Jack Gilford), featured actress (Ruth Kobart), book (Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart), producer (Hal Prince), and director (George Abbott). Yet Stephen Sondheim‘s score was absent. Did the committee dislike him? No, they felt the show’s success had little to do with the score. They nominated two British scores (Oliver! and Stop the World – I Want to Get Off), Little Me, and the forgettable Bravo Giovanni. They should be embarrassed.

Another embarrassment occurred in 1996 when it was clear this small group strongly disliked Big and Victor/Victoria. Certainly not musical theatre classics, but the committee nominated anything rather than those two shows. Rent and Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk were both refreshing picks (Rent won) but to round out the category they added the widely panned revue Swinging on a Star and the dark and forgotten Chronicle of a Death Foretold. With nominations like that, the voters could hardly be faulted for the outcome. Yet who else is to blame for the bizarre and oddly opinionated results over the years? Let’s look at three people Tony has no love for.

1. Walt Disney. I know he’s dead and never produced a New York show in his lifetime, but his name on a Broadway marquee is enough to send most Tony voters into a snit. Remember, the voters are people in the theatre profession. The Disney Company, even after six musicals, is considered an upstart outsider. They call the Disney offerings “theme park” shows, which proves that they’ve only visited Six Flags. When the very conventional Beauty and the Beast opened in 1994, it was in the grand tradition of British pantomime and Broadway family spectacle that has been around since Babes in Toyland (1903). The nominating committee included Beauty and the Beast in nine categories, including Best Musical. But the voters gave the Best Musical Tony to the poorly-reviewed and unpopular Passion. The lone Tony for Beauty and the Beast went to the costumes because Ann Hould-Ward was a Broadway designer, not a Disney person. Of course, the joke was on the voters. Passion closed six months after the ceremony while Beauty and the Beast ran 14 years. The Tony voters have similarly rejected all the subsequent Disney musicals except The Lion King which they correctly saw as theatre auteur director Julie Taymor’s re-imagining of the popular film. More simply put: they liked The Lion King on stage because it didn’t resemble the movie. The Little Mermaid on Broadway is a popular recent entry but if it walks away with more than one or two minor awards, I’ll be very surprised. The Tony voters still aren’t ready to allow the interloping Disney Company to run Broadway.

2. Stephen Schwartz. With such long-run hits as Godspell, Pippin, The Magic Show and Wicked to his credit, Schwartz doesn’t really need a Tony. So is it mere coincidence that Tony has overlooked Schwartz? Doubtful. I believe many Tony voters see Schwartz as an American version of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, a songwriter who is rich and popular because he’s more “pop” than Broadway. Ask voters what their favorite Schwartz score is, they’ll probably say The Baker’s Wife, a beautiful if conventional romantic musical that never made it to Broadway. Schwartz’s score for Pippin lost to Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Understandable, even if it’s a case of apples and oranges. And The Magic Show nominations were odd, to say the least. Non-acting magician Doug Henning was put up for best featured actor (!) but the lively, delightful score was ignored. What was nominated instead? The Wiz (which won), Shenandoah, The Lieutenant and Letter for Queen Victoria. Not exactly tough competition. When the Off-Broadway Godspell was finally a contender in 1977, the Schwartz score was considered a familiar classic so everyone voted for Annie. On the Twentieth Century beat his score for the short-lived Working. He also wrote the lyrics for another admired but shorter-lived musical, Rags, which lost to Les Misérables. In 2004 it looked like Schwartz might win a well-deserved Tony at last when he made a sensational comeback to Broadway with his score for Wicked. The fact that the voters opted for the non-score of Avenue Q is incredible. Maybe they were trying to be hip, but overlooking the score of the big show was an embarrassment that will be laughed about for decades.

3. Julie Andrews. Everybody loves Julie Andrews. I mean everybody. Except Tony. The fact that she’s never won a Tony Award is even odder because to many she represents the best of American musical theatre. Andrews’ indelible Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady lost to Judy Holliday in Bells Are Ringing, another legendary performance. Camelot was not even nominated for Best Musical (Bye Bye Birdie won that year) and Andrews’ Guenevere lost to Elizabeth Seal in Irma la Douce. Is this suspicious or what? When Andrews finally returned to Broadway in the problematic Victor/Victoria, her performance was the only nomination the musical received. Miffed at the committee for they way they ignored every other aspect of the show, she announced she wouldn’t accept the award if she was voted Best Actress. Equally annoyed, the voters gave it to Donna Murphy for The King and I. Murphy had already won a Tony for Passion and here was a chance to make up for past errors. But it was not to be. Everybody else still loves Julie Andrews though.

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. Below are the answers to this morning’s quiz. Be sure to check back next week on Tuesday for another quiz about the Tonys.

1. The musical Passion (1994) ran only 280 performances, the shortest run on record for a Best Musical winner. Hallelujah, Baby! (1967) ran only two weeks longer but it had closed before it won the Tony so the award could not help business.

2. Poet T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) won when his light verse was set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber for Cats (1982).

3. Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Mostel won for the original 1962 production, Silvers and Lane won for the 1972 and 1996 revivals, and Alexander won when he played Pseudolus and other roles in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (1989).

4. The Threepenny Opera (1954). In 1956 the American Theatre Wing gave a special Tony to the long-running Off Broadway musical.

5. It was their Broadway debut. Bosley in Fiorello! (1959), Smith in Follies (1971), Holliday in Dreamgirls (1981), Martin in My Favorite Year (1992), McDonald in Carousel (1994), Heredia in Rent (1996) and Foster in Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002).

6. Chicago. The 1997 production won the Revival Tony and is still running.

7. Ethel Merman lost to Mary Martin in The Sound of Music in 1960. Bernadette Peters lost in 2004. Angela Lansbury won in 1975, Tyne Daly in 1990. Will Patti LuPone follow suit?

8. Best Orchestrations. Jonathan Tunick won for Titanic.

9. Frankie Michaels as Young Patrick in Mame and Daisy Eagan as Mary Lenox in The Secret Garden.

10. Tommy Tune. He has Tonys for Best Leading Actor in a Musical, Best Featured Actor in a Musical, Best Director of a Musical, and Best Choreographer. Harvey Fierstein has also won Tonys in four different categories but half were for nonmusicals: as author of Best Play, Best Actor in a Play, Best Actor in a Musical, and Best Book for a Musical.

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. In the quiz below Hischak questions your Tony knowledge. Post your answers in the comments section. We will post the answer sheet later today.

1. The Tony Awards are named after actress and director Antoinette Perry (1888-1946), founder of the American Theatre Wing. What was her long-running comedy hit, later turned into a successful feature film starring Jimmy Stewart?
2. Name the musical star, ever a tabloid presence for her many marriages, battles with substance abuse, and ability to poke fun at her own image, who caused quite a stir in 1977 when it was discovered that, due to the strenuous dancing in the show, parts of her singing were prerecorded. She won the Tony anyway.

3. Although The Phantom of the Opera won the Best Musical and six other Tonys in 1988, the Best Book and Best Score went to another musical that season. A 2002 revival, which added three little pigs, won Best Revival of a Musical. Name the musical.

4. The 1956 Tonys were the first in which musicals were nominated. Before that only a winner was announced. Damn Yankees won over what Rodgers and Hammerstein musical? Maybe if Julie Andrews—who auditioned but was told by Richard Rodgers to focus on getting the part of Eliza Doolittle instead—had stayed with the production, it would have had better luck.

5. Although The Producers cleaned up at the 2001 Tony Awards, winning most of the major awards, an earlier musical is the only one to win Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, Best Director and all four musical performance Tonys for a musical. The earlier show could clean up again at the 2008 Tonys, in a different incarnation. Name that show.

6. In 1999, Parade was the only nominated musical with a book; the other three nominees were revues. Which one won? Hint: Ann Reinking and Chet Walker channeled another choreographer in numbers such as “Razzle Dazzle”, “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “Big Spender”.

7. What 1950s musicals won eight Tony Awards but was not revived on Broadway for fifty years? When it was, Donna Murphy lost to Idina Menzel for Best Actress in a musical.

8. It sometimes happens that someone is nominated for two different musicals in one season. For what two shows, impressive in very different ways, was Trevor Nunn nominated for Best Director of a Musical at the same Tony Awards ceremony?

9. Four girls and two boys were nominated together for the Best Featured Actress Tony for what 1959 musical?

10. “What worst piemaker in London has hosted the most Tony telecasts?”

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. Below are the answers to this morning’s quiz.

1. Harvey (1944). It was also her last Broadway credit.

2. Liza Minnelli in The Act.

3. Into the Woods. Book by James Lapine, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

4. Pipe Dream.

5. South Pacific (1949). The four winning performers were Mary Martin, Ezio Pinza, Juanita Hall, and Myron McCormick.

6. Fosse was the winner. The other revues were The Civil War and It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues.

7. Wonderful Town (1953).

8. Les Misérables and Starlight Express. He won for the first.

9. The Sound of Music (1959). Six of the seven Von Trapp kids were nominated for Best Featured Actress and the eldest Von Trapp, Lauri Peters, was nominated separately. They all lost to Patricia Neway as the Mother Abbess in the same show.

10. Angela Lansbury.

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Where do the wonderful world of theatre and the world of film collide?  Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television is here to document the scene. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entries on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more.

There are only two shows that have won the Best Musical Tony Award and gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar in their film versions: My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. What does this say about the compatibility of the two awards? Well, it points out once again that theatre and film are two very different media. It also suggests that many great stage musicals were turned into less-than-satisfying movies. You might even go so far as conclude that Tony voters and Oscar voters have very different ideas about what makes an exceptional musical.

Let’s look at the champs in each medium. The Producers holds the record for winning the most Tony Awards, 12 including Best Musical. The film version however, which was a scene-by-scene replica of the Broadway production, won no Oscars. In Hollywood, the musical that won more Academy Awards (10) than any other is West Side Story. Yet on Broadway the original stage production only earned one Tony, for the choreography of Jerome Robbins. The Tony voters that season favored The Music Man in most categories; yet when it was faithfully filmed the year after West Side Story, it only won a lone Oscar, for best scoring. Of course the competition must be considered. The Music Man was up against Lawrence of Arabia (the Best Picture winner), To Kill a Mockingbird, The Longest Day, and Mutiny on the Bounty. West Side Story only had to contend with Fanny, The Hustler, Judgment at Nuremberg and The Guns of Navarone.

The obvious disadvantage in Hollywood is that musicals are nominated against all kinds of movies whereas on Broadway they compete against other musicals. Tony-winning musicals must be turned into satisfying films (no easy task, that) and then hope they open in a year when the comedies, dramas, and even Hollywood-grown musicals aren’t so impressive. Consider these well-made but unlucky movie versions of Tony Award musicals: The King and I lost to Around the World in 80 Days, Hello, Dolly! to Midnight Cowboy, Fiddler on the Roof was defeated by The French Connection, and The Godfather beat Cabaret. The many outstanding film versions of Tony musicals that were not even nominated for Best Picture include The Pajama Game, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Evita, Hairspray and Sweeney Todd.

Aside from My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, which stage-based musicals has Hollywood liked? The only others to win the Best Picture Oscar are the aforementioned West Side Story, the British Oliver!, and the surprise hit Chicago. While none of their stage versions won the Tony Award, they were all Tony-quality shows so it’s not too surprising that they made excellent films and won Oscars. Also, each was done on quite an impressive scaled, having been “opened up” for the screen. Oliver! managed to beat out such worthwhile films as The Lion in Winter, Rachel, Rachel, Romeo and Juliet, and Funny Girl (a Broadway hit but not a Tony winner). Chicago won over the less-impressive competition of The Pianist, Gangs of New York, The Hours, and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Finally, one can’t help but heave a sigh of regret and look at all the Tony-winning musicals that were turned into disappointing films. No one spends much time wondering why Oscar nominations didn’t go to South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, Kismet, Bye Bye Birdie, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Man of La Mancha, A Little Night Music, The Wiz, A Chorus Line, Annie, The Phantom of the Opera, or Rent. As much as these stage works were (and are) beloved by audiences, theatre goers would probably agree with Oscar that the screen versions were lacking.

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By Cassie Ammerman- Publicity Assistant

Thomas Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical, Hischak offers over two thousand entries on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more.

We asked Hischak what he thought of Off Broadway musicals making the leap to Broadway, and he gave quite an impassioned argument for keeping them Off Broadway. Watch the video after the jump.

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Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber.  The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history.  In the original post below we learn five new things about West Side Story.

1. Did you know that choreographer Jerome Robbins insisted on making the Jets snap their thumbs against their index fingers instead of their middle fingers? Try it, it’s much harder. That’s the point. Robbins wanted to make the Jets stand out from other finger snapper.

2. Did you know that in Arthur Laurents first two libretto drafts Maria kills herself with dressmaking shears. Starting with the third draft, five more drafts, and the final draft, a mortally wounded Tony finds Maria alive, and the lovers are able to share a few final moments together.

3. Did you know that some of the great tunes in West Side Story contain recognizable connections with famous classical melodies? My favorites are the allusions to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and the theme Wagner created to depict the Redemption through Love in his Ring cycle, since in these cases Bernstein’s references are so interesting dramatically as well as musically.

4. Did you know that Sondheim was originally listed as a co-lyricist with Leonard Bernstein? When the early reviews ignored Sondheim’s contribution, Bernstein offered the Broadway newcomer sole lyricist billing and the royalty split that went with it. In an unthinking moment he would always regret Sondheim replied, “Don’t be silly. I don’t care about the money,” and turned down the opportunity to split the 4% lyric royalties. Instead of receiving 2% of the lyric royalties, Sondheim thus retained his original 1%.

5. Did you know that the film soundtrack of West Side Story was the Number 1 best selling album of 1962 from May 5 to June 16 and again for the week of October 6-13?

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Lights on Broadway: A Theatrical Tour from A to Z by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Elliot Kreloff, with Brian Stokes Mitchell

This A to Z book takes readers into the world of the theater, teaching the words that go with the shows.  From grip to marquee, readers will find plenty of words they don’t know.  But this book is much more than vocabulary because alongside each definition, there are quotes from Broadway actors, directors, choreographers, composers, writers and more.  This book is pure inspiration for those who have the acting bug and who long to be on stage. 

Ziefert and Kreloff have created a book that captures the excitement, glitz and joy of the stage.  Ziefert offers definitions that convey an excitement about the subject, always avoiding being dry.  Kreloff’s art is loud, bright and nicely stylized, suiting the subject matter perfectly. 

Give this to young actors and class clowns. It could also be used when doing a production in class to give a sense of what the larger picture of performing is.  A joyful riot of a picture book, this book will serve as the basis for many big dreams.  Appropriate for ages 5-8.

Reviewed from library copy.

Also reviewed by Sommer Reading and Read Along with Biblio.

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Little Diva by LaChanze, illustrated by Brian Pinkney

Tony Award-winning actress LaChanze brings us the story of Nena, a little girl who wants to be a diva.  Right now she is a D.I.T.: a Diva In Training.  She wears stylish clothes, does vocal exercises, and even helps her mother with her yoga.  Her mother is a diva already, a Broadway star.  Nena gets to accompany her mother to the theater where there are costumes, wigs, and makeup and much more backstage.  Nena sits in her special place to watch her mother onstage.  Then she has to go home where she tells her Nana all about the show before heading to bed to plan her own performance for tomorrow.

LaChanze brings a breezy tone to this picture book that really captures the dreams of a youngster wanting to be just like her mother.  The allure of the stage is brought to life in the book.  I particularly enjoy the fact that diva is meant positively.  It doesn’t mean tantrums and drama, rather it is art, craft and the theater.  Pinkney’s art matches the breezy style of the text so well.  He uses free-flowing lines and swirls of color to show this young diva’s life.  There is an effortlessness to this book that makes it a pleasure to read.

Perfect for any little divas in your life that would have problems taking a short bow.  Appropriate for ages 4-7.

Reviewed from copy received from Feiwel and Friends.

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Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber.  The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history.  In the original post Block challenges readers to test their Tony knowledge.  We will post the answers next Wednesday so be sure to check back.

1. Who is Tony?

2. What was the first musical to win the Tony for Best Score?

3. What was the first musical to win the Tony for Best Musical?

4. What was the second musical to win the Tony for Best Musical?

Hint: This show made its debut only a little more than three months after the first winner.

5. In what year were the Tony Awards first nationally televised?

6. Who has the most Tony Award wins in the Best Score category?

7. What other lyricists and composers (or lyricist-composers) have won two or more Tony’s in the Best Score category?

8. Who has received more Tony’s than anyone else since the awards were established?

9. One winning musical in the Best Score category was the only musical nominated that year.

10. What year produced arguably the most impressive line-up of Tony nominated musicals?

11. So far there has been only one tie in the Best Musical category? Name the two shows.

12. Fourteen times in the last fifty years the Best Musical and Best Score winners were not the same. No less than half of these disparities have occurred in the past twelve years. What are the names of these last seven shows that won the Tony for Best Musical but not Best Score? What shows did win for Best Score in those years?

13. Name the two Best Musicals that went on to win Best Picture Oscars.

14. Name the three Best Musicals losers that went on to win Best Picture Oscars.

15. Starting in 1994, the Tony Awards decided to make the Best Musical Revival its own category instead of forcing musicals to share the award with revivals of plays. In the years since, the Best Musical Revival category has often proven to be fiercely competitive. Name the three winning revivals that first appeared before the launching of the Tony Awards and the four winning revivals that did not win a Tony Award for Best Musical the season of their Broadway debut.

16. The Four Questions: What show won the Tony for Best Musical in 1984? What Pulitzer Prize winning show lost that year? Who wrote the winning score? What controversial remarks did the winner utter on national television?

17. One composer had been dead for nearly 70 years when he won for Best Score. Who was this composer and what musical did he write?

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