Historian Amnon Kabatchnik Releases New Book BLOODY BROADWAY, VOLUME II

Drama professor, historian, director, and writer Amnon Kabatchnik has penned a new book in his reference series. Kabatchnik's latest, Bloody Broadway: Plays of Menace, Murder, and Mystery, Volume II is now available wherever books are sold in hardcover and trade paper editions.

In his latest work, Amnon Kabatchnik focuses on the entity known as Broadway which began with the stage contributions of the American actor-director-playwright William Gillette. Gillette's major success was Sherlock Holmes, a compilation of half-a-dozen short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle crafted into a cohesive plot line Kabatchnik examines the period from 1930-1960, when a number of prolific melodramatists-such as Hal Reid, Clyde Fitch, Owen Davis, George M. Cohan, Elmer Rice, and John Willard--whipped up various four-act plays featuring plays populated by flamboyant villains, brawny heroes, and damsels in distress. Moreover, Kabatchnik includes details on how acts of crime, albeit in a more subtle approach by providing psychological insights, began to emerge in the works of notable playwrights, such as August Strindberg, Maxim Gorky, Bertolt Brecht. Kabatchnik also details how works from England came to Broadway, including plays of betrayal, violence, and detection by W. Somerset Maugham, J. B. Priestley, and Daphne Du Maurier, followed by the French Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Jean Genet, the Hungarian Laszlo Fodor, the German Ernst Toller, the Spanish Garcia Lorca, and the Italian Ugo Betti. Also, Kabatchnik examines various American writers mixing their ink with blood, including Damon Runyon, James Baldwin, Arthur Miller, and William Faulkner, as well as the Nobel Prize winners Eugene O'Neil, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway.

Bloody Broadway, Volume II concentrates on the period from 1930-1960 and includes detailed analyses on such plays as A Slight Case of Murder (1935), Of Mice and Men (1937), Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), The Crucible (1953), Speaking of Murder (1956), West Side Story (1957), Cue for Passion (1958), as well as works from out of town to New York, including An Inspector Calls (1945), Requiem for a Nun (1951) and others.

In all, Bloody Broadway. Volume II examines 88 plays which are presented chronologically. Each entry includes a plot synopsis, production data, opinions by critics and scholars, as well as biographical sketches of playwrights and key actors-directors.

Amnon Kabatchnik, now retired, was a professor of theater at SUNY Binghamton, Stanford University, Ohio State University, Florida State University, and Elmira College. Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, Kabatchnik received his BS degree in theatre and journalism from Boston University where he graduated summa cum laude, and won the Rodgers & Hammerstein Award. Kabatchnik also holds an MFA degree in directing from the Yale School of Drama. He directed numerous dramas, comedies, thrillers, and musicals in New York and across the United States. He is the author of Sherlock Holmes on the Stage, the seven-volume series Blood on the Stage, Horror on the Stage, Courtroom Dramas on the Stage, Volumes I and II, Murder in the West End: The Plays of Agatha Christie and Her Disciples, Volumes I and II, Bloody Broadway: Plays of Menace, Murder, and Mystery, Volume I.