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By Tony Harcup

Journalists are heroes to some and scumbags to others but the truth is that most are somewhere in the middle, trying to do as good a job as they can, often in difficult circumstances. That, at least, is the view of Tony Harcup, author of A Dictionary of Journalism. We asked him to tell us about some of the good – and not so good – things that journalists do. Do you agree with the below?

The nine best things about journalists:

1. We tell you things that you didn’t even know you didn’t know.
2. Our default position is healthy scepticism.
3. We know that there’s no such thing as a stupid question.
4. Our way with words translates jargon into language that actual people use.
5. We juggle complex intellectual, legal, commercial and ethical issues every day, simultaneously and at high speed, all while giving the impression of being little deeper than a puddle.
6. Our lateral thinking spots the significance of the dog that didn’t bark (noting in the process that Sherlock Holmes was created by a journalist).
7. We speak truth to power (or, at least, we say boo to a goose).
8. Our gallows humour keeps us going despite the grim stories we cover and the even grimmer people we work with (perhaps the most literal exponent of the art was journalist Ben Hecht who wrote the movies His Girl Friday and The Front Page about hacks covering a hanging).
9. We identify with other journalists as fellow members of society’s awkward squad (which is why even those of us who have left the frontline of reporting and become “hackademics” still can’t stop saying “we”).

The nine worst things about journalists:

1. We have a tendency to tell young hopefuls that all the quality has vanished from journalism compared to when we started out (journalists have been harking back to a mythical golden age for well over a century).
2. Our scepticism can sometimes become cynicism.
3. We routinely demand public apologies or resignations from anyone accused of misbehaviour (except ourselves).
4. Our way with words is too often used to reduce individuals or communities to stereotypes.
5. We have been known to conflate a popular touch with boorish anti-intellectualism.
6. Our collective memory lets us down surprisingly often. (We won’t get fooled again? Don’t bet on it.)
7. We are in danger of viewing the world through the eyes of whoever employs us, forgetting that, while they might hire us, they don’t own us.
8. Our insistence that we are something of a special breed is a bit rich given that most journalistic jobs have more in common with The Office than with All The President’s Men.
9. We eviscerate politicians for fiddling their expenses while celebrating hacks from the golden age (see no. 1) for doing exactly the same.

Tony Harcup is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield. A Dictionary of Journalism, first edition, will be published 15 May 2014. It covers over 1,400 wide-ranging entries on the terms that are likely to be encountered by students of the subject, and aims to offer a broad, accessible point of reference on an ever-topical and constantly-changing field that affects everyone’s knowledge and perception of the world.

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By Rosemary Herbert

Canonize or confine to the dustbin of literary history? How do the editors decide?

Well may readers wonder how scholars decide which story/author to canonize and which to confine to the dustbin of literary history. This was an issue I dealt with in several books for Oxford University Press, including The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing, for which I served as editor in chief, and the anthologies that I edited with the late Tony Hillerman, The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories and A New Omnibus of Crime. With the Companion, I had the privilege of drawing on the expertise of sixteen advisory editors. But final judgment on which stories to include in our two anthologies fell to just Tony and me. Fortunately, in Tony, I had a great resource and support in making decisions that we both took quite seriously, even while we indulged in some good laughs along the way.

Tony Hillerman is well known to readers as the author of numerous novels about Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, Navajo Tribal Policemen who solved crimes at the cultural crossroads of the American Southwest. He won numerous awards for his fiction. But while his skills as an editor are less recognized, they deserve to be celebrated, too. Take it from one who edited two anthologies with him: Tony Hillerman knew his genre. He also possessed a wonderful playfulness and sense of humor.

Both of the anthologies that Tony and I edited were designed to represent developments in the literary history of crime writing. In The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories, our goal was to illustrate the rise of detective fiction in the United States from earliest times to the close of the twentieth century. In our next book, A New Omnibus of Crime, our mission was to bring together stories representing seventy-five years of genre innovations that have occurred since Sayers published her landmark anthology, The Omnibus of Crime.

We knew it was a tall order to follow in Sayers’ footsteps, so we decided to tread carefully. We pulled together reams of short stories and, over a period of months, we pored over them earnestly in our own homes.

We were looking for stories that took steps forward from the fiction of Sayers’ day. We wanted to demonstrate how mystery writers over the last three quarters of a century allowed the love element — which had been largely shunned in Sayers’ time as a distraction from the mystery plot — to enter and enrich their stories. We sought to showcase the growth of the regional crime story by selecting some distinctly regional writings. We decided to show how some contemporary crime writers dare to leave the stain of crime on the scene instead of tidying up as thoroughly as did Sayers’ contemporaries. And of course we wanted to make sure a variety of sleuths and crime types would be found in A New Omnibus of Crime. We found stories that feature private eyes and policeman, nosey neighbors and accidental sleuths, murder in the mean streets and plots cooked up over Christmas pudding. We were just as ready to be original in our choices as we were to carefully consider stories that already stood tall in the landscape of crime and mystery writing.

Finally, we got together in Tony’s home just outside of Al

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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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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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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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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. 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 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. 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 an odd week so far here at Biblio File. First off, I was really hoping to get The Sisters Grimm Book 6: Tales From the Hood, but Amazon is saying that they don't know when it will ship. (It was supposed to ship Monday.) All the other book sites say that it's not coming out until May. Poo.

Then, a book I had ordered used, Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century got refunded because the used seller ran out of copies. (WTF?!) So, no book for me. It's a little on the pricey side to be buying new. Luckily, it looks like my school library has it, so I can still read it for the paper I'm writing.

Also, I'm having serious problems understand how to assign LC classification numbers to books (last week's lecture was a very, very bad one to miss. Stupid back.) I'm also completely blocked on this paper that's due tomorrow, and I need to come up with about 1,000 more words. I also fear that the 1,500 words I have so far don't make much sense. Oh, the insecurities of school.

AND THEN BRETT FAVRE RETIRED FROM FOOTBALL! I mean, ok, he's had a good career and it was a good season to end on (even though the last pass he threw in his career has to be one of the most painful) but... still. I feel like I should go home to Wisconsin so I can mourn with my people.

But! I found the rest of the Drina series at a price I'm willing to pay. And, inspired by the movie Helvetica, I added some super-fun buttons to my Zazzle store. More fonts will be added soon.

Also, I started physical therapy today, which I know a lot of people complain about. Yes, it's hard work, but it makes my back feel so much better! So, in the end, it's all good! And, while driving up the GW Parkway this morning to get to my appointment, the Potomac was super muddy and brown, because of the rain we got last night, but there were daffodils! In bloom! A whole host of little yellow heads that were so... jocund. (So, we all know what Friday's poem will be. 9th grad English has severely warped my mind when it comes to daffodils.) The ones in my yard are only about 7 inches tall, but there's a clump of them coming up.

Did I mention it might snow on Saturday?

But, let's talk about some books, m'kay?

She's a Witch Girl Kelly McClymer

Pru, our magical cheerleader, is back! In this latest installment, Pru is out of remedial magic classes, which means doing even more studying and homework--to the point where she's almost failing math--the one class she was good at. It's a good thing she doesn't have time for boys, because the only way she can get head cheerleader Tara to buy into mortal cheer competitions is by giving Tara along time with her Pru's super-hott next door neighbor, Angelo.

Of course, then it turns out that Angelo might not be as mortal we we thought, and when Agatha finds out about the squad's mortal cheering, she puts a stop to it completely, including cheering at games against mortal schools. This might just get the squad actually working together.

With Pru worrying about things like school and getting Agatha to change her mind, she doesn't spend as much time worrying about being kewl--her social status isn't as precarious as it was in previous volumes. Pru's greater concern about bigger issues, as well as more exploration of the mortal/witch divide takes away some of the plot lines that were becoming annoying and opens new doors for the series to stay fresh. My favorite installment to date!

When Irish Guys Are Smiling Suzanne Supplee

A new Students Across the Seven Seas!

This time we have Delk, who's moneyed Nashville, but after her mother dies, the whole debutante scene just isn't for her. This is especially true when her dad remarries someone young enough to be Delk's sister!

So, Delk is off to Ireland. Holed up in a castle in the Irish countryside, Delk tries to hide her mother's death from her new friends, trying to get fresh start, plus there's the super-cute Pather, who works at the school and lives at a farm down the lane.

Delk's having so much fun, she may never want to go back to Tennessee!

This is my favorite SASS book so far (ok, it's tied with The Sound of Munich). There isn't a lot of drama between Pather and Delk--there's is a pretty straight-forward romance. Delk's drama is much more internal, and her friends have some serious drama, which breaks the mold of this series a little bit.

Miki Falls: Winter Mark Crilley

This is the last volume of the Miki Falls series! And just when Miki and Hiro think they're going to get away with their forbidden love...

Well, we wouldn't have much a story if they didn't get caught, now would we? Of course, all traces with Hiro's existence in Miki's town have been erased, so people are thinking she's a little cuckoo...

I continue to adore Crilley's unusual framing structure, lots of trapezoids and small and large frames on one page--many of his pages remind me of a shattering mirror.

There's also a cool feature-ette at the end of the book on the making of Miki-- including early character sketches, and how the story line has changed over time.

This book will make NO SENSE if you haven't read the previous 3, but I adored this series and highly recommend it.

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I'm doing NaNoWriMo. Are you? Today's song is very important in my story (about the inherit drama of high school choir.) You Are the New Day. I'm trying something new wand this one goes to Amazon, not Napster...

Anyway, here are some more graphic novels for you to look at.

So, earlier this year, I was quite taken with Mark Crilley's Miki Falls: Spring.

I was less taken with Summer. Miki and Hiro are doing the brand-new couple thing, which has it's own issues. Then Miki learns that Hiro is about to take the love out of a relationship involving her best friend, so of course, she tries to stop it and makes a HUG MESS out of things. And then there's Reika, Hiro's ghost from the past who is making it very clear to Miki that Hiro is hers.

I was disappointed, but it turns out it was the perfect bridge novel to...

Autumn (which is the best so far). Reika is going to tell the elders about Miki and Hiro. Once the elders know, they will do everything to keep them apart--forever. So, they run away. Once they're hiding out in the mountains, Miki discovers the awful truth that Hiro's hold spirit, Anra, sees Miki as a Neverfind-- someone who will never be able to hold on to true love. Should she go back to her safe life at home? Or should she stay and enjoy love while she has it?

Crilley has an interesting frame style. He uses a lot of trapezoids that often make the action look like it's taking place in a shattered mirror. He also will sometimes put several actions into one frame. I first really noticed this with Autumn, where it really ties in well with the tenseness of the situation and Miki's emotional state at the time. I love it.

So, it's just a few more months until Winter. I can't wait.

Also, I just read Death Note 7: Zero by Tsugumi Ohba.

Nothing startling or crazy about this one. If you liked the other previous 6, you'll like this.

We get a lot of the back story about what Light was thinking when he gave up his death note and volunteered for custody. Then, using Misa's eye power, he does what he always meant to do.

With that done, things don't get easier for Light--they get harder as new people come onto the scene. New people, who are taking hostages in exchange for information he's unwilling to give. Still looking forward to Book 8!

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