Broadway Bookshelf — Biography — Page 10

Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.

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Biography Books

The Fabulous Lunts: A Biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne

(10/13/2005)

For 40 years, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the most acclaimed stage actors in America. From 1928 (six years after their marriage) until their retirement in 1960, they appeared only togethermost notably in drawing-room comediesperfecting the subtle team playing that became their hallmark. In this comprehensive biography, Brown, theater professor at Western Illinois University, meticulously documents the couple's lives. Describing the perishable art of stage performance (the Lunts made few f...

The Fabulous Lunts: A Biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne

The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan

(1/1/2005)

Lovers of Gilbert and Sullivan will be in heaven with the publication of these two books, which nicely complement each other. Stedman (English, Roosevelt Univ., Chicago) offers an outstanding study of this playwright and his often overlooked works, with much of its value deriving from its study of Gilbert without Sullivan. The author is a recognized expert on Gilbert as well as the Victorian time period, and she shows him to be a complex and interesting man who often found himself at odds with ...

The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan

The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet

(1/1/2004)

This collection of specially written essays offers both student and theatregoer a guide to one of the most celebrated American dramatists working today. Readers will find the general and accessible descriptions and analyses provide the perfect introduction to Mamet's work. The volume covers the full range of Mamet's writing, including now classic plays such as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross, and his more recent work, Boston Marriage, among others, as well as his films, such as The Ver...

The Girl Who Fell Down: A Biography of Joan McCracken

(9/18/2003)

An overnight sensation for her 1943 comedic role as "The Girl Who Falls Down" in the groundbreaking musical Oklahoma!, McCracken established the prototype dancer-comedienne, headlining in ballet, stage, film, and television productions before her life was tragically cut short by complications from diabetes. Author Lisa Jo Sagolla draws on extensive interviews with McCracken's friends, family, and colleagues to paint a complex portrait of the petite, blue-eyed, and sprightly entertainer as a w...

The Girl Who Fell Down: A Biography of Joan McCracken

John Gielgud: The Authorized Biography

(4/1/2003)

Part of the generation of great Shakespearean actors that included Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, and Laurence Olivier, Gielgud outlived them all--to the very end performing in movies, reading Shakespeare on the radio, and hawking California wines on TV--to die at 96, on the verge of the new millennium. Ironically, he was a late bloomer. Early stage appearances in the 1920s were awkward and unsure, as were his first attempts in the movies. But Gielgud, driven by love of the craft and his fa...

O'Neill: Son and Artist

(11/25/2002)

The turbulent, often tragic life of America's greatest playwright, Eugene O'Neill, is laid bare in this acclaimed and insightful biography.

O'Neill Volume I: Son and Playwright

(11/25/2002)

The turbulent, often tragic life of America's greatest playwright, Eugene O'Neill, is laid bare in this acclaimed and insightful biography

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A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett

(7/1/1990)

Mandelbaum, who writes about musical theater for several New York publications, here pays tribute to the accomplishments of the young director-choreographer who died of AIDS in 1987. He traces the evolution of Bennett's style from his early works (including Company and Follies ) to the high point of his career, A Chorus Line , and beyond ( Ballroom ; Dreamgirls ). The major part of the book is devoted to the longest-running show in Broadway history. The chapter on the improvisatory workshops in ...

A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett

The Show Business Nobody Knows

(1/1/1973)

Wilson was writer with the New York Post whose column ran from 1942 until 1983. His chronicling of the Broadway scene during the "Golden Age" of show business formed the basis for his book 'The Show Business Nobody Knows' which was published in 1971.

In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox

(11/30/-0001)

Who but Carol Burnett herself has the timing, talent, and wit to pull back the curtain on the Emmy-Award winning show that made television history for eleven glorious seasons? In Such Good Company delves into little-known stories of the guests, sketches and antics that made the show legendary, as well as some favorite tales too good not to relive again. Carol lays it all out for us, from the show’s original conception to its evolution into one of the most beloved primetime programs of its ge...

In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox

Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance

(2005)

In this authoritative biography, Deborah Jowitt explores the life, works, and creative processes of the complex genius Jerome Robbins (1918-1998), who redefined the role of dance in musical theater and is also considered America's greatest native-born ballet choreographer. This meticulously researched and elegantly written story of a life's work is illuminated by photographs, enlivened by anecdotes, and grounded in insights into ballets and musical comedies that have been seen and loved all ove...

Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance

Harold Prince: A Director's Journey

(2004)

"The story of Prince's career is inseparable from the history of the American musical theatre for the past 40 years...In-depth accounts of musicals Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Cabaret, Company, and Sweeney Todd will be of interest to any musical theatre buff." -American Theatre

Harold Pinter - Biography

(2007)

London theater critic Michael Billington draws on interviews with the noted British dramatist, his friends, and coworkers to explore the links between Harold Pinter's life and works like The Birthday Party and Betrayal. He discovers a good deal of autobiography, as well as political commentary on the power struggle implicit in male-female relations. The account of Pinter's youth in London's East End and his close friendships with other smart, iconoclastic Jewish boys is especially good. Intelli...

Kander and Ebb

(2009)

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb collaborated for more than forty years, longer than any such partnership in Broadway history. Together they wrote over twenty musicals. Their two most successful works, Cabaret and Chicago, had critically acclaimed Broadway revivals and were made into Oscar-winning films. This book, the first study of Kander and Ebb, examines their artistic accomplishments as individuals and as a team. Drawing on personal papers and on numerous interviews, James Lev...

Convserations with Peter Brook

(2010)

"No man reveals his depth, or his truth, without a challenge," the groundbreaking theater director Peter Brook told Croyden (In the Shadow of the Flame, etc.). Again and again in this fascinating collection of interviews with Brook about his extraordinary body of work-from tiny performances in African villages to his masterpiece, a nine-hour production of the Hindu epic The Mahabharata-Croyden shows how the craft of journalism can rise to the level of art itself by challenging an artist to revea...

The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett

(2004)

From A to Z, this is an indispensable guide to the works, life, and thought of one of the most important writers of our time. The Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett was a literary treasure, and this work represents the only comprehensive reference to the concepts, characters, and biographical details mentioned by, or related to, Beckett. Painstakingly and lovingly compiled by acclaimed Beckett scholars C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski, it is alphabetical, cross-referenced, and laid out ...

Edward Albee: A Singular Journey

(2000)

The American playwright Edward Albee's greatest glories came early in his career. When his first play, The Zoo Story, debuted in Provincetown, Mass., in 1960, he was called, as Gussow (cultural writer for the New York Times) puts it here, "our homegrown equivalent of Beckett." After his masterpiece, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was staged in 1962, Albee was heralded as the voice of his generation. Then came two decades of debilitating alcoholism and commercial and critical flops. However, his...

The Theatre of Suzuki Tadashi

(2007)

Suzuki is Japan's best-known director. He has been internationally acclaimed for his postmodern adaptations of classics by Nanboku, Euripides, Shakespeare, and Chekhov since the 1970s, and, equally, for his powerful actor-training system, which combines elements of Noh and Kabuki with Western realism. Inviting artists from around the world to perform at his Toga and Shizuoka International Festivals, Suzuki has fostered productive exchanges with Jean-Louis Barrault, Robert Wilson, Kanze Hisao, A...

Stage Struck Me!

(2008)

"The Stage Struck Me!" is a funny, informative and sometimes sad account of the life of a jobbing actor and writer in the 1940s and 1950s, full of anecdotes about the famous, the infamous, the charming and the downright loopy people he met along the way. After joining the South African Army and serving as a gunner in the coastal artillery, Neville Phillips was transferred to the entertainment unit where he spent four years doing shows for the Allied troops in North Africa and Italy. In 1946 he w...

Putting It On: The West End Theatre of Michael Codron

(2011)

Michael Codron is undoubtedly the leading producer of postwar British theatre. Still active after an astonishing half-century in the industry - he is 80 this year - every major British dramatist of the period has had a production under the Codron banner: Alan Ayckbourn, Alan Bennett, Michael Frayn, Simon Gray, David Hare, Joe Orton, John Mortimer, Harold Pinter and Patrick Marber, to name just a few. Describing himself as 'A man of vulgar taste with an impeccable streak', he has had many hits wi...

Putting It On: The West End Theatre of Michael Codron

Lenya the Legend

(1998)

Born Karoline Blamauer in Vienna in 1898, Lenya spent an impoverished childhood there before launching her career in Zurich and then Berlin, where she met and married Weill. The toast of the Berlin arts scene, Weill and Lenya left Germany in 1933 following the election of Hitler as chancellor. Weill was Jewish and an advocate of freedom of expression--his play Der Silbersee ("The Silver Lake"), which contained a caricature of Hitler, had already been banned by the authorities. The couple went to...

Ingmar Bergman: A Life in the Theater

(1992)

A revised and expanded edition highlights the developments that have occurred in the interim since the first edition with reference to Bergman's triumphant return to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm after years of self-imposed exile.

Before the Parade Passes By: Gower Champion and the Glorious American Musical

(2005)

On August 25, 1980, the curtain fell on the first night of the original production of 42nd St. David Merrick, the shows megalomaniacal producer, stepped to the footlights and told the audience that the shows director, Gower Champion, had died that afternoon. Some believe he took the classic Broadway musical with him. Starting his career as one-half of a song and dance team with his wife, Gower and Marge Champion first wowed audiences in nightclubs around the world and then moved to Hollywood whe...

Before the Parade Passes By: Gower Champion and the Glorious American Musical

Barbra Streisand

(2009)

Barbra Streisand's story is electric from the time she burst on the scene in the 1960s. She has won every top award for her work on stage and screen and in the recording studio. Nick Yapp tells the story and illuminates it with rare images from Terry Fincher, Bill Eppridge and Terry O'Neill. It s a unique presentation of a very special super star.

Kurt Weill - On Stage: From Berlin to Broadway

(2004)

A provocative but uneven look at the composer of The Threepenny Opera, Lady in the Dark and other well-known musicals, this biography traces Weill's career from his satirical Weimar collaborations with Brecht to the musicals he created for Broadway after fleeing the Nazis in 1933. Brooklyn College film professor Hirsch (Harold Prince and the American Musical Theater) draws on extensive documentation from New York's Kurt Weill Foundation and new interviews with surviving participants to argue tha...

Kurt Weill - On Stage: From Berlin to Broadway

Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather

(2007)

Although she was arguably the most influential female blues and jazz singer of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as a major Black figure in 20th century theatre, cinema, radio, and television, she is now the least remembered. In Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather, Stephen Bourne documents the career of this monumental figure in American popular culture, offering new insights into the work of this forgotten legend. Supplemented by fourteen photographs, this biography leaves little doubt as to why-for decade...

Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell

(2011)

When it comes to living life to its fullest, Rosalind Russell's character Auntie Mame is still the silver screen's exemplar. And Mame, the role Russell (1907-1976) will always be remembered for, embodies the rich and rewarding life Bernard F. Dick reveals in his biography, Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell, now available in paperback. Drawing on personal interviews and information from the archives of Russell and her producer-husband Frederick Brisson, Dick begins with Russell's chil...

Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell

Zero Dances: A Biography of Zero Mostel

(2004)

Talent propelled Zero Mostel from the Orthodox Jewish home of his immigrant parents to the underground nightclubs where he began his career doing stand-up comedy and on to theatre, film, and television. But whatever the medium and whatever the role - comic or serious or frequently both - the personality of the man was inescapable. He was always Zero. Twenty-one years after his death, the extraordinary Zero Mostel reappears in the unconventional biography he deserves. Arthur Sainer's research, pa...

Under the Rainbow: The Real Liza Minnelli

(1996)

The daughter of Judy Garland and movie director Vincente Minnelli, Liza Minnelli has endured excruciating trauma and failure and exhilarating passion and success - with the help of drugs, lovers, and a few close friends. Under the Rainbow is the touching story of a bewildered little girl searching for the childhood she never had and a love that has eluded her. There are two Lizas: the dynamic entertainer whose dramatic voice and stage presence embraced the romantic imagination of her audience; a...

Under the Rainbow: The Real Liza Minnelli

Bette Midler: Still Divine

(2002)

Growing up a self-proclaimed "ugly, fat little Jewish girl with problems," Bette Midler traded in her job at a Hawaiian pineapple processing plant for a trip to the Big Apple where, in the early 1970s, she re-created herself as the Divine Miss M, a brassy, bawdy cabaret act performing in a gay bathhouse. By the end of the decade, she had an Oscar nomination (for The Rose) to go with her two Grammys, two Golden Globes and Tony award. After a rough start (her 1982 movie Jinxed was prophetically ti...

Ethel Merman: The Biggest Star on Broadway

(2005)

For nearly three decades Ethel Merman virtually guranteed Broadway success. This in-depth portrait details her career, marriages, affairs, and her children. It includes a complete glossary of all of Merman's appearances.

Ethel Merman: The Biggest Star on Broadway

Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman

(2009)

Broadway star Ethel Merman's voice was a mesmerizing force and her vitality was legendary, yet the popular perception of La Merm as the irrepressible wonder falls far short of all that she was and all that she meant to Americans over so many decades. This marvelously detailed biography is the first to tell the full story of how the stenographer from Queens, New York, became the queen of the Broadway musical in its golden age. Mining official and unofficial sources, including interviews with Merm...

Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman

Mary Martin Broadway Legend

(2008)

South Pacific. The Sound of Music. Peter Pan. As the star of these classic Broadway musicals, Mary Martin captivated theater audiences with her impish persona and magnificent voice. Now Ronald L. Davis fills a major gap in theater history, moving beyond Martin's own 1976 memoir to provide a complete picture of her life and career. Lively and engaging, Davis's biography is the first book-length portrait of the theater icon, spanning her lifetime to reveal facts about her childhood, marriages, an...

Frank Loesser: A Most Remarkable Fella

(2000)

The daughter of one of America's most prolific and enduring composers turns her pen to an engaging, revealing portrait of her father, her family and the life they shared in the giant shadow that his fame cast. With the 1992 Broadway revivals of Guys and Dolls and The Most Happy Fella, Frank Loesser's music once again reverberates around the nation. Loesser was the composer, lyricist and driving force behind these classics, as well as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Where's C...

Sammy Davis Jr. Gonna Do Great Things

(2011)

A major reappraisal of the life of legendary entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., Gonna Do Great Things is at once an intimate portrait and an exuberant celebration of a wholly American icon. Through his multifaceted talent and personality, Sammy became one of the most magnetic and contentious figures in modern entertainment history. His outstanding talents as a dancer, singer, actor, impressionist, and comedian, combined with his close association with megastars and his interracial marriage, made him ...

Jerry Herman Poet Of The Showtune

(2004)

The first in-depth biography of the celebrated composer/lyricist who created Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles This revealing and comprehensive book tells the full story of Jerry Herman’s life and career, from his early work in cabaret to his recent compositions for stage, screen, and television. Stephen Citron draws on extensive open-ended interviews with Jerry Herman as well as with scores of his theatrical colleagues, collaborators, and close friends. The resulting book—...

Victor Herbert A Theatrical Life

(2008)

Victor Herbert is one of the giants of American culture. As a musician, conductor, and, above all, composer, he touched every corner of American musical life at the turn of the century, writing scores of songs, marches, concerti, and other works. But his most enduring legacy is on a different kind of stage, as one of the grandfathers of the modern musical theater.Now, Victor Herbert has the biography he deserves. Neil Gould draws on his own experience as a director, producer, and scholar to craf...

Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway

(1995)

Lorenz Hart singlehandedly changed the craft of lyric writing. When Larry Hart first met Dick Rodgers in 1919, the commercial song lyric consisted of tired cliches and cloying Victorian sentimentality. Hart changed all that, always avoiding the obvious, aiming for the unexpected phrase that would twang the nerve or touch the heart. Endowed with both a buoyant wit and a tender, almost raw sincerity, Hart brought a poetic complexity to his art, capturing the everyday way people talk and weaving it...

Cole Porter: A Biography

(1979)

In 1933 Irving Berlin wrote to composer-lyricist Cole Porter, ”I am mad about Night and Day.” Millions of others throughout the world have been ”mad about” that Porter gem, as well as dozens of others, including, to name just a few, Begin the Beguine, From This Moment On, It’s De-Lovely, Just One of Those Things, Love for Sale, and My Heart Belongs to Daddy. Cole Porter (1891-1964) set new standards for popular song-writing, and his lyrics and melodies are as bright and sophisticated t...

Cole Porter

(2000)

This richly told biography reveals the private and public life of one of the most important and beguiling composer/lyricists of the century -- the incomparable Cole Porter, whose songs were the essence of wit and sophistication and whose life was marked by tragedy, courage, sorrow, and secrecy.

Ira Gershwin: Selected Lyrics

(2009)

The collaboration of Ira and George Gershwin was one of the summits of American popular music. Ira Gershwin's lyrics-with their stylish simplicity, exuberant comic invention, and colloquial eloquence-have entered the culture, and Robert Kimball has collected the most memorable of them into a beguiling collection that includes Fascinating Rhythm Oh, Lady, Be Good! Someone to Watch Over Me 'S Wonderful My One and Only How Long Has This Been Going On? I've Got a Crush on You Embraceable ...

George Gershwin: His Life and Work

(2007)

This comprehensive biography of George Gershwin (1898-1937) unravels the myths surrounding one of America's most celebrated composers and establishes the enduring value of his music. Gershwin created some of the most beloved music of the twentieth century and, along with Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter, helped make the golden age of Broadway golden. Howard Pollack draws from a wealth of sketches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, books, articles, recordings, films, and other materia...

Judy Garland: Beyond the Rainbow

(2000)

Morley and Leon's profusely illustrated overview of the singer-actress beloved as much for her pathetic life as for her performances has the signal virtue of acknowledging her core fandom--gay men. Garland's appeal to gay men quite possibly arose out of her love, however misplaced, for her improvident and alcoholic as well as homosexual father. One very close friend was a gay man, two of her five husbands were homosexual, and she urged her daughter Liza to marry the homosexual Peter Allen. Compl...

Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz

(2004)

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the longest-running song-writing partnership in Broadway history, having first joined forces in 1962. The creators of such groundbreaking musicals as Chicago, Cabaret, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, Kander and Ebb have helped to push American musical theater in a more daring direction, both musically and dramatically. Their impact on individual performers has been great as well, starting with the handpicked star of their first musical: an untested ni...

Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That

As Thousands Cheer: The Life Of Irving Berlin

(1996)

A look at the life and prolific career of one of America's most successful songwriters.

As Thousands Cheer: The Life Of Irving Berlin

Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography

(2009)

Julie Andrews is the last of the great Hollywood musical stars, unequaled by any in her time. In My Fair Lady, Julie Andrews had the biggest hit on Broadway. As the title character in Mary Poppins, she won an Academy Award. And, in 1965, The Sound of Music made her the most famous woman in the world and rescued Twentieth Century Fox from bankruptcy. Three years later, the disastrous Star! almost put the studio back under, and the leading lady of both films fell as spectacularly as she had ris...

Fanfare: Unauthorized Biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber

(1990)

A biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber, this book looks at his bohemian upbringing, his relationships with his brother and Tim Rice and his application of classical training to the world of pop music. The author has also written "In For a Penny: the Unauthorized biography of Jeffrey Archer".

Fanfare: Unauthorized Biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber

Cats on a Chandelier: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story

(1999)

From Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to Cats and the Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber aims to please. On top of being a composing genius, Lloyd Webber produces, and owns and runs his own company. Cats on a Chandelier is the complete story of this controversial man. Through personal conversation, Michael Coveney is able to bring us an intimate look into the life of a man who has perhaps changed musical theatre forever.

Cats on a Chandelier: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story

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