The Secret Life of the American Musical
Page 35
Trotter, Tariq “Black Thought”
“Try Her Out at Dances”
Tune, Tommy
Tunick, Jonathan
“Turn It Off”
“Twin Soliloquies”
Uggams, Leslie
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe)
“Under the Sea”
Urinetown
Vallee, Rudy
Valli, Frankie
Van Dyke, Dick
vaudeville
Verdon, Gwen
“Vie Bohème, La”
Vietnam War
“Waiters’ Gallop”
Walker, Don
Walker, Nancy
Walston, Ray
Walt Disney Company
Washington, George
Waters, John
Webber, Andrew Lloyd
“We Can Do It”
Wedding Singer, The
Wedding Singer, The (film)
Wedekind, Frank
Weede, Robert
“Weekend in the Country, A”
Weill, Kurt
“We Kiss in a Shadow”
“Welcome to the ’60s”
Wesleyan University
West Side Story; music and lyrics of; opening number of; original vs. studio cast albums of; story, theme, and characters of
“What’d I Miss?”
“What Is This Feeling?”
What Makes Sammy Run?
“What’s the Use of Wond’rin?”
Wheeler, Hugh
“When Mabel Comes in the Room”
“When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich”
Who’s Tommy, The
“Why Can’t the English?”
Wicked
Wildcat
Wilder, Alec
Wilder, Thornton, xn
“Willkommen”
Will Rogers Follies, The
Willson, Meredith
Wilson, August, xn
Wilson, Lanford
Winchell, Walter
Winokur, Marissa Jaret
“With a Little Bit of Luck”
“Without You”
Wittman, Scott
“Wizard and I, The”
Wizard of Oz, The (film)
Wolfe, George C.
Wonderful Town
Wong, B. D.
World War II
“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?”
Yale Drama School
Yale Repertory Theatre
Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, The (Wallop)
“Yorktown”
“You and Me (But Mostly Me)”
“You Can’t Stop the Beat”
You Can’t Take It with You
“You Do Something to Me”
“You Gotta Get a Gimmick”
“You’ll Never Get Away from Me”
Youmans, Vincent
Young, Brigham
“You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile”
“You’re Timeless to Me”
“Your Eyes Are Blue”
You’ve Got Mail (film)
“You’ve Got Possibilities”
“You’ve Got That Thing”
Zagat, Tim
Zaks, Jerry
Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr.
Ziegfeld Follies, The; of 1936
Ziegfeld Theater
“Zip”
Zippel, David
Acknowledgments
Over the past thirty years or so, hundreds of theater artists and craftspeople have been my tutors. Some are quoted in the text of this book, but many more are not. There is no possible way to name them all, though I am grateful to each one, more than I can say. Their wisdom, expertise, and passion appear on every page of this book. Without them, I’d still be staring at old issues of Variety, wondering what a “tuner” is.
As for the book itself, I owe the greatest of thanks to my editor, Sarah Crichton, who was a first-rate cheerleader and eagle-eyed reader; a great source of advice literary, structural, and practical; and a wonderful person to have lunch with. The staff at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, particularly Marsha Sasmor but also the production editor Scott Auerbach, the copy editor Cynthia Merman, and the proofreaders Lisa Silverman and Nancy Inglis. Jeff Seroy has been an energetic and helpful resource in the marketing and publicity department, and Rodrigo Corral was flexible and imaginative in devising a concept for the cover. Courtney Hodell had the very first interest in the book as an editor, and I owe her great thanks, too. In addition, my agents, Becky Sweren and David Kuhn, took more time than they should have needed to teach me how to get into this business, and I thank them for their patience and belief in someone who had never done this before. Gail Winston, who encouraged me to just start writing, got me to David and Becky, and I’m grateful.
Several key readers of early drafts of all or part of the text had important questions and made important corrections that led to better and more accurate drafts. My thanks go to Stephen Sondheim, Rob Berman, Ted Chapin, Jennifer Gilmore, and David Schwartz; all of them made significant contributions. Michael Gildin and Josh Clayton helped me in many ways, small and large.
Jordan Roth has been generous beyond measure in allowing me the time to write this book; without his support, I could never have done it. And a succession of assistants at Jujamcyn Theaters—beginning with Beth Given and including Danielle DeMatteo, Lindsay Meyer, and Cristina Boccitto—has been tireless in keeping me on track.
John Barlow made hundreds of original cast albums available to me, and without his generosity in sharing them I would never have been able to be so opinionated about them.
The writers whose work has inspired me since childhood, and whose lyrics and occasional dialogue have been quoted here, were essential; some of them pre-date me by half a century or more, and others are very much with us and continue to make new work and to push the art form forward. I’m grateful to all of them: Lee Adams, Howard Ashman, Chad Beguelin, Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Bock, Leigh Brackett, Mel Brooks, Abe Burrows, Martin Charnin, George M. Cohan, Cy Coleman, Vernon Duke, Fred Ebb, William Faulkner, Melvin Frank, Jules Furthman, Ira Gershwin, Adam Guettel, Marvin Hamlisch, Oscar Hammerstein II, Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Herman, David Henry Hwang, John Kander, Jerome Kern, Edward Kleban, Tony Kushner, Jonathan Larson, Arthur Laurents, Carolyn Leigh, Alan Jay Lerner, Frank Loesser, Frederick Loewe, Robert Lopez, Joe Masteroff, Alan Menken, Bob Merrill, Norman Panama, Trey Parker, Richard Rodgers, Sigmund Romberg, Marc Shaiman, Matthew Sklar, Stephen Sondheim, Joseph Stein, Michael Stewart, Matt Stone, Charles Strouse, Jule Styne, Jo Swerling, Jeanine Tesori, Scott Whitman, Thornton Wilder, Meredith Willson, and David Zippel.
More than to anyone, I owe my thanks to my wife, Linda, who has been going to the theater with me since four days after we met, in 1971, and who advised me every step of the way on the text as it came into being. She read draft after draft, made countless small and large suggestions and corrections, and never once complained about my sometimes overwhelming preoccupation with getting it finished. I don’t know how she did it.
A Note About the Author
Jack Viertel is the senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters. He has been involved in dozens of productions presented by Jujamcyn since 1987, including multiple Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winners, from City of Angels to Angels in America. He has also helped shepherd six of August Wilson’s plays to Broadway. He is the artistic director of New York City Center’s acclaimed Encores! series, which presents three musical productions every season. In that capacity he has overseen fifty shows, for some of which he adapted the scripts. He conceived the long-running Smokey Joe’s Café and the critically acclaimed After Midnight and has been a creative consultant on many shows, including Hairspray, A Christmas Story, and Dear Evan Hansen. He was the Mark Taper Forum’s dramaturg and the drama critic and arts editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and he has spent a decade teaching musical theater at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. You can
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Tuning Up: or, How I Came to Write This Book
A Note About the Shows Discussed—and a Few Other Matters
1. Overture
2. Curtain Up, Light the Lights: Opening Numbers
3. The Wizard and I: The “I Want” Song
4. If I Loved You: Conditional Love Songs
5. Put On Your Sunday Clothes: The Noise
6. Bushwhacking 1: Second Couples
7. Bushwhacking 2: Villains
8. Bushwhacking 3: The Multiplot, and How It Thickens
9. Adelaide’s Lament: Stars
10. Tevye’s Dream: Tent Poles
11. La Vie Bohème: Curtain: Act 1
12. Intermission
13. Clambake: Curtain Up: Act 2
14. Suddenly Seymour: The Candy Dish
15. All er Nothin’: Beginning to Pack
16. The Small House of Joseph Smith, the American Moses: The Main Event
17. I Thought You Did It for Me, Momma: The Next-to-Last Scene
18. You Can’t Stop the Beat: The End
19. Curtain Call: How Woody Guthrie—of All People—Changed Broadway Musicals Forever
Notes
Listening to Broadway
Index
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Sarah Crichton Books
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2016 by Jack Viertel
All rights reserved
First edition, 2016
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Viertel, Jack.
The secret life of the American musical: how Broadway shows are built / Jack Viertel. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-374-25692-0 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-374-71125-2 (e-book)
1. Musicals—United States—History and criticism. 2. Musicals—United States—Analysis, appreciation. I. Title.
ML1711 .V37 2016
792.60973—dc23
2015023713
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