Broadway Musicals
Martin Gottfried
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
This extraordinary volume explores the musical theater in all its dimensions with nearly 400 pictures, 112 of them in full color, including original production shots of all the great musicals, from Show Boat to A Chorus Line, On the 20th Century, and Sweeney Todd.
The incisive text by critic Martin Gottfried gives a lively account of the musical theater: how musical comedy of the 1920s and 1930s grew into the "musical play" of the 1940s and 1 950s and how that development was overtaken by today's "concept" musical; how songs in a show are "spotted," or placed; how Irving Berlin, who can neither read nor write music, became one of Broadway's greats. Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, Rodgers, and Porter—the musical's giant composers—are highlighted in individual profiles, as are the great directors.