Bandslam

Bandslam is a 2009 American musical romantic comedy drama film directed by Todd Graff who co-wrote the screenplay with Josh A. Cagan. The film stars Aly Michalka, Vanessa Hudgens, Gaelan Connell, Lisa Kudrow, Scott Porter, Ryan Donowho, and Tim Jo. The story revolves around Will and Charlotte, who form an unlikely bond through their shared love of music. Assembling a like-minded crew of misfits, the friends form a rock group and perform in a battle of the bands competition called "Bandslam".

The film was initially bought by a studio in 2004. However, in early 2007, Graff and Cagan were hired to rewrite the screenplay, with Graff hired to direct. Produced by Summit Entertainment and Walden Media, principal photography took place in Austin, Texas, with additional scenes filmed in New York City. During filming, the film underwent multiple title changes, including Will and Rock On.

Bandslam premiered in Westwood on August 6, 2009, and was theatrically released in the United States on August 14, 2009. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising the acting and soundtrack. However, the film was a commercial failure, grossing \$12 million worldwide against a \$20 million budget. Critics heavily panned the film's marketing, which many cited as a primary reason for the film's underperformance at the box-office. In a brief cameo, this was David Bowie's final film appearance before his death in 2016.

## Plot

Will Burton is a music enthusiast and a David Bowie fan. When Will's mother Karen finds a new job, he switches to a new school, which he is eager to do since he was bullied at his previous one. During lunch one day at his new school, he meets a girl who says her name is written Sa5m (pronounced Sam; the 5 is silent). She tells him about Bandslam, an annual music competition in which the winning band gets a recording contract. Will and Sa5m quickly become friends but, shortly after, he is sought after by an older girl named Charlotte Barnes. Impressed by his eclectic knowledge of music, Charlotte, who is a gifted singer-songwriter, asks Will to manage her rock/ska band.

Will agrees to help Charlotte's band (later called I Can't Go On, I'll Go On) which includes Bug and Omar, eventually expanding it with more like-minded outcasts. The group's sound starts to come together and their prospects for success look bright. Will starts losing his "loser-status", but the band gets in the way of completing a class project he was doing with Sa5m. After spending a day with Sa5m, Charlotte teaches Will how to properly kiss a girl, by demonstrating on him that night. Will takes Sa5m to the overlook and, after an awkward start, successfully kisses her, after which Sa5m shyly asks Will to accompany her to a movie screening, to which he agrees. However, Will stands up Sa5m, instead going to a concert with Charlotte. After that, Sa5m starts ignoring Will at school; so he visits her house, hoping to apologize. Her mom shows him a video of a younger Sa5m performing "Everything I Own", but when Sa5m arrives home she is outraged and orders Will to leave. As an apology, he makes a touching documentary short about her for his Human Studies project and she eventually forgives him.

After Will accidentally ruins Ben's attempt to reconcile with Charlotte, Ben decides to do a little research on him, in order to ruin his image. He finds out about Will's father, who was sent to prison years ago when he accidentally killed a child while driving drunk. Ben then starts to call Will "Dewey" (just as other students did at his old school), which stands for "DWI" ("Driving While Intoxicated"). Will detests this nickname because it reminds him of his father, of whom he is ashamed. Soon after, Charlotte's father dies and she decides to quit the band. Her father hated how she acted when she was with her ex-boyfriend, so after he got sick she decided to change her image and be nicer to "people like Will." The band members are hurt by this discovery but they decide to go on nonetheless, with Sa5m taking over as lead singer.

On the night of Bandslam, Charlotte comes backstage to apologize to the band for her behaviour. Will and the band accept her apology. Right before going on stage, however, they see Ben's band (the "Glory Dogs") playing the same song that I Can't Go On, I'll Go On were planning to perform, forcing them to change their act at the last minute. Will suddenly remembers the video Sa5m's mother showed him earlier and suggests that they perform "Everything I Own", since it is the only other song Sa5m knows. To buy some time, Will comes out first onstage, but at first he is embarrassingly silent. The students begin to chant "Dewey". He starts to walk off the stage, but then comes back and decides to chant with them instead. After carrying the chant for a while, he finally changes it to, "Do we wanna ROCK?!". The band then takes the stage and performs "Everything I Own".

Although they fail to win the competition, a YouTube video of their performance gains the band popularity at school. David Bowie sees the video and sends an e-mail to Will, explaining that he is starting an indie music label and is interested in having the band as one of their first acts. Will is so excited and overwhelmed that he falls down in the middle of the school hallway.

Will and Sa5m, happily together, attend Charlotte's graduation ceremony.

## Cast

In addition, David Bowie has a cameo appearance as himself, while Ben Kessler, Andy Rector and Juan Lopez appeared as the saxophonist, trombonist and trumpeter of I Can't Go On, I'll Go On.

## Production

### Development

Bandslam was bought by a studio back in 2004, but in late January 2007, Walden Media and Summit Entertainment announced that they would co-finance Bandslam, co-written by Todd Graff and Josh A. Cagan and directed by Graff. Graff was hired to direct in early March 2007 and rewrote the screenplay. Before filming, they had two weeks of music rehearsals. The actors and actresses were designated to play their instruments. Donowho and Michalka had extensive experience with the drums and guitar, respectively, so they were used to their instruments, but Lisa Chung, Scott Porter and Vanessa Hudgens were not. Hudgens told MTV News she didn't expect there to be as much music, and "they are like, 'We are going to have two weeks of music rehearsals,' and I was like, 'What?' But it was really cool. It's definitely not the kind of music I do normally."

### Casting

David Bowie officially began talks in early February 2009 to be in the film. Bowie has a vital role as Will Burton's idol, to whom Burton frequently writes e-mails. He makes a short cameo in the end of the film. Liam Aiken was originally chosen to play Will, but ultimately the role was given to Gaelan Connell. When Connell auditioned for Will, he was recommended to try out for the cellist because of his background playing cello. Director Todd Graff watched his cello audition, and decided to give him the starring role. Originally, Vanessa Hudgens wanted to play the role of Charlotte, but she was cast for the role of Sa5m on January 12, 2008. Hudgens sang "Rehab" for her audition. In order to pursue the role, Hudgens watched The Addams Family and tapped into Wednesday's character.

### Filming

Principal photography began on February 9, 2008, in Austin, Texas. Although the film is set in New Jersey, Graff felt strongly that it was important to shoot in a place with a wide array of great live music to choose from. "I'm a big believer in local scenes," he says. "I think it's the lifeblood of music. Austin is renowned as a music town, and rightly so. They have a ton of really great bands just trying to get their music out there. So, it's great we had an opportunity to use several unsigned local Texas bands." In an interview with Los Angeles Times, director Todd Graff admitted there were cultural incongruities underlying the film. "I know, it's demented. Every once in a while on set I would think to myself, 'I can't believe we got away with this'. I always thought if it only sent one kid to listen to a Velvet Underground record, it would be worth it to me." All of the vocals were filmed live by each of the singing cast members, as mentioned by director Graff.

One of the requirements for the film was that all actors had to be able to provide their own vocals. Because Aly Michalka was on tour with her sister AJ Michalka and Miley Cyrus, she did not arrive in Austin until midway through rehearsals. Conveniently, the tour's last stop was in Austin, where rehearsal and filming for the movie took place. All of the instruments and singing in the movie were recorded by the actors, with the exception of the guitar parts of Vanessa Hudgens and Scott Porter, as well as Lisa Chung's piano parts. Although Hudgens and Porter learned how to play their songs, they were dubbed by guitarists Jason Mozersky and JW Wright. Music Supervisor's Lindsay Fellows and Linda Cohen sourced and cleared all music. Adam Lazus produced all on camera song performances at a local studio in Austin.

## Release

Bandslam held its world premiere in Westwood, California on August 6, 2009. The film was first theatrically released on August 12, 2009, in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and France. It was released on August 13, 2009, in Australia and on August 14 in the United States and Canada. The film was originally intended to be released on April 10, 2009. However, it was pushed back to July 31, 2009, which was the original release date once production started. It was finally moved to its eventual release date of August 14, 2009. The film was titled as "High School Band" in Brazil, The film was previously titled Will during production,. However, it was renamed to Rock On, ultimately ending up being called Bandslam. The film was rated PG in the US for some thematic elements and mild language. In the Philippines, it is rated GP.

### Marketing

Summit Entertainment spent an estimated \$10 million to produce and market Bandslam. The full-length trailer was released in the internet on March 25, 2009. On June 3, 2009, the official poster was released. A novelization of the movie written by Aaron Rosenberg was released on July 9, 2009. Michalka, Hudgens and Connell, hosted a Bandslam Reel Thinking event at the Grammy Museum to promote the importance of music to middle-schoolers. In partnership with Magic 106.7, Summit Entertainment conducted a band contest in Boston suburb's Burlington Mall. Hudgens and Connell attended the contest as judges. Mike Ryan won the contest and performed his original song on August 1, 2009. On August 7, 2009, Hudgens and Michalka were inducted as an honorary girl scouts by the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles. During the induction, a special screening was held for the scouts present. In the UK, browser game Stardoll started a campaign which lets users dress Vanessa Hudgens in Bandslam outfits, view the film trailer, create their own band using Stardoll scenery and virtual guitar gifts to give to friends.

Summit Entertainment's marketing strategies have been criticized. The studio apparently received many calls and e-mails from other studios' heads of marketing, saying the film's campaign may be the worst job they have seen from positioning, title, marketing tie-ins, and targeting audiences. Deadline Hollywood editor Nikki Finke released an e-mail from a Bandslam insider who pointed out that Summit's marketing have basically sold it on to their stars Hudgens and Michalka instead of selling the concept. The e-mail also claims that "they Disneyfied this movie with glitter paint". The insider commented that the bad marketing was particularly unfortunate, a result of the good reviews. Yale Daily News marked that the film had the "Worst Marketing", pointing out that "Summit Entertainment, which has a done an admirable job marketing the Twilight films, completely ruined what should have been a sleeper hit."

### Home media

Bandslam was released on DVD on March 16, 2010.

## Reception

### Box office

Despite receiving positive reviews, the film was not a box office success. Debuting at 2,121 theaters, the film only grossed \$890,000 on its first day and failed to chart in the top 10. In its opening weekend, Bandslam grossed \$2,231,273 in the United States and Canada, ranking \#13 at the box office. The film eventually reached the top 10 and grossed \$50,000 more on the same day. By the end of its run, Bandslam grossed \$5,210,988 domestically and \$7,014,035 internationally, totaling \$12,225,023 worldwide.

### Critical response

Bandslam was well-received critically, before and after it was released. The Broadcast Film Critics Association gave it an 81 rating score and a 4/4 stars rating. As of August 15, 2009, based on 20 reviews collected, Metacritic gave the film a 66% "metacritic" score, indicating generally favorable reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives a score of 82% "fresh" rating based on 104 reviews collected; 85 "fresh" and 19 "rotten" with the reported consensus "Bandslam is an intelligent teen film that avoids teen film cliches, in an entertaining package of music and coming-of-age drama." With the positive critical response from the review Rotten Tomatoes collected, it ranked \#9 in the 10 Tomatoemeters of the Summer. Comparatively, Yahoo! Movies gives a grade of "B−" averaged from 7 critic reviews. Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film a "B", and praised Hudgens' and Michalka's performances as well.

Variety said that "Bandslam" will make its cracking voice heard amid the summer's boy-based blockbuster clique while Joe Williams remarked, "Although it's the wimpy teen musical that prevails, it's the misfit coming-of-age story that leaves an impression." Roger Ebert wrote on his review, that though this isn't a breakthrough movie, it's charming, and not any more innocuous than it has to be. Fort Worth Weekly revealed in their review, "The comedy subsides into some unusually heavy drama in the second half, and only Graff's assured direction keeps it from tipping over into weepiness." Empire and Digital Spy all gave Bandslam a three out of five rating while Independent Weekly and the Deseret News both gave the film two out of four.

Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald revealed that the film was from "the John Hughes playbook of high-school comedies but lack the heart and insight Hughes invested in his pictures.", but still praised the teenage cast saying "The performances in Bandslam are uniformly strong – good enough to make you wish this bunch of charismatic, talented kids had been given better material." Time Out reviewer Derek Adams said that Bandslam is far from exceptional, but is saved by decent character development, a cluster of engaging performances and several amusing deadpan moments. Canada's The Globe and Mail reviewer's conclusion follows: "Bandslam offers some nice observational and comedy moments, and director and co-writer Todd Graff deftly deliver the coming-of-age goods for the three main characters." The Daily Telegraph'''s reviewer Leight Paastch says that the film gives the genre a right old spin thanks to some lively performances and sharp pacing.

Bandslam was The Washington Post's critic choice, having a perfect score of 4/4 stars. Bandslam was somehow associated with High School Musical in a couple of reviews. However, the reviews concluded the comparisons positively, saying that Bandslam was "actually a lot quirkier than the posters would have you believe." New Jersey's local newspaper, The Star Ledger says that the plot is nicely skewed: "Basically, it's the standard teen picture – girl torn between bad boy and nice guy – with a gender switch." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune praised the film by saying: "Bandslam is a pretty good movie given that the odds of it having been a pretty bad movie were steep." Andy Webster of The New York Times said that Bandslam may not entirely break new teen-movie ground, but it does offer intriguing glimpses of performers ready to bolt from the Disney stable.

Hudgens received an amount of praise from reviewers, emphasizing her transition from being associated with her previous commercial character, Gabriella Montez, multiple times. Reviewers also cited her impressive performance in the film. Even though Connell and Michalka each received their fair amount of enthusiastic press, David Waddington of North Wales Pioneer claims that Hudgens "outshines the rest of the cast, failing to fit in with the outcast narrative and making the inevitable climactic ending all the more expected." Hudgens was praised with her performance in the film that The Observer critic, Philip French said that she looks like the young Thandie Newton and "wisecracks like Dorothy Parker." French then adds that "Bandslam is a witty, touching, cleverly plotted film with excellent music."

Reviewers asserted that the film's music mainly lifted to the success of Bandslam from reviews, especially the ska version of "Everything I Own", that the film is full of unexpected pleasures set to a surprisingly retro soundtrack. Similarly, Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter'' emphasized the effect of the film's music-driven comedy set against the backdrop of a high school battle of the bands competition which manages to come up with a fresh backbeat for the familiar alienated teen refrain, boosted by a talented cast and authentic soundtrack.

### Accolades

## Soundtrack

The soundtrack was released under Hollywood Records on August 11, 2009. The soundtrack features tracks from Wilco, The Burning Hotels, Velvet Underground, Peter Bjorn and John, Seventeen Evergreen, Honor Society, the Daze, Nick Drake and David Bowie.

American coming-of-age comedy-drama films


Allegro (musical)

Allegro is a musical by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics), their third collaboration for the stage. Opening on Broadway on October 10, 1947, the musical centers on the life of Joseph Taylor Jr., who follows in the footsteps of his father as a doctor, but is tempted by fortune and fame at a big-city hospital.

After the immense successes of the first two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, Oklahoma! and Carousel, the pair sought a subject for their next play. Hammerstein had long contemplated a serious work which would deal with the problems of the ordinary man in the fast-moving modern world. He and Rodgers sought to create a work which would be as innovative as their first two stage musicals. To that end, they created a play with a large cast, including a Greek chorus. The production would have no sets; props and projections served to suggest locations.

After a disastrous tryout in New Haven, Connecticut, the musical opened on Broadway to a large advance sale of tickets, and very mixed reviews. Agnes de Mille, the choreographer of Rodgers and Hammerstein's previous Broadway productions, both directed and choreographed the work. The show was viewed as too moralistic, and the Broadway run ended after nine months; it was followed by a short national tour. It had no West End production and has rarely been revived. There are two recordings of Allegro, the original cast album and a studio recording released in 2009.

## Conception

Oscar Hammerstein II had always wanted to write a serious drama, one which would address the problems of life confronting ordinary people. By early 1946, three years after his partnership with Richard Rodgers commenced, the duo had two hits (Oklahoma! and Carousel) on Broadway, and success as producers of musicals others had written. In March, Hammerstein approached Rodgers with the idea for a play with two men as the central characters, rather than the usual "boy and girl" format. Over the following weeks, the two discussed it, and the concept evolved into a musical about one man, a doctor's son, which appealed to Rodgers, the son and brother of doctors. By September, the general theme for the story had been established: the struggle of the main character to avoid compromising his principles as he progresses in life.

Hammerstein had thought of writing a play about a man, from birth to death. However, having just killed his leading male character, Billy Bigelow, onstage in Carousel, he was reluctant to kill off another. In the end, he took his protagonist from birth to age 35. He envisioned a simply staged work like Our Town which after its initial run would lend itself to college productions. Allegro was conceived as taking place in an open space, using props and projections to convey scenery to the audience. In addition to the usual singing chorus, there would be a speaking chorus, in the manner of a Greek chorus, which would comment on the action, and speak to both characters and audience.

As background research about the medical profession, Hammerstein interviewed his own doctor. He wrote a few pages of the book before embarking with his wife for Australia to visit his mother-in-law; when his ship arrived in Brisbane he mailed Rodgers part of the remainder. On receiving the packet, Rodgers, who generally did not compose until Hammerstein supplied him with a lyric, immediately sat down and composed three songs. Hammerstein put a good deal of his own experiences into the play. According to his son, William, "Most of the first act was based on his own memories of his own childhood. He had always been intrigued by it, you know; his mother died when he was twelve. I always felt his songs came out of his feelings about her."

Hammerstein spent a year writing and polishing the first act, taking infinite pains over the wording. The second act was more rushed; under a deadline, Hammerstein completed it only a week before rehearsals began. Hammerstein's protegee Stephen Sondheim, who served as a \$25-a-week gofer on the production, stated,

> Years later, in talking over the show with Oscar—I don't think I recognized it at the time—I realized he was trying to tell the story of his life ... Oscar meant it as a metaphor for what had happened to him. He had become so successful with Oklahoma! and Carousel that he was suddenly in demand all over the place. What he was talking about was the trappings, not so much of success, but of losing sight of what your goal is.

## Rehearsals and tryouts

The duo hired choreographer Agnes de Mille to direct—a move between two theatre functions which was unusual at the time. De Mille had been the choreographer for the dances in Oklahoma! and Carousel, designing ballets which disclosed the characters' psychological states to the audience. She had been concerned about the cohesion of the script as she received it from Hammerstein. When a few days before rehearsals began, she asked Hammerstein what the show was about, the lyricist replied, "It's about a man not being allowed to do his own work because of worldly pressures." De Mille answered, "That's not the play you've written. You haven't written your second act." Hammerstein replied, "But we're already committed to the theatre in New York."

De Mille faced an immense task. Instead of conventional sets, locations were suggested by platforms, images projected onto backdrops, and lighting—there were 500 lighting cues, at the time a Broadway record. There were forty stagehands, needed to shift sixty partial sets, with objects moved onto the stage by a semicircular track hidden by an elaborate series of curtains. According to de Mille biographer Carol Easton, "Allegro was a leviathan of a show, on a scale exceeding the grasp of any individual."

Rehearsals took place in three New York locations, for principals, singers, and dancers. The production contained 41 principals and over a hundred dancers. De Mille also choreographed the dances, which were both extremely complicated and provided the framework for the scenes which made up the show. During the dances, Joe learns to walk, falls in love, goes astray, and then gets back on the proper track. De Mille used adults in children's clothes for the dances when Joe is a child; since there were no actual children on stage to provide scale, the illusion worked. The dance which accompanied "One Foot, Other Foot" was based on de Mille's own experiences in watching her own son Jonathan learn to walk.

Sondheim later expressed his view of de Mille's directing, calling her "a horror. She treated the actors and singers like dirt and treated the dancers like gods ...[she was,] I think, an extremely insensitive woman, an excellent writer, and a terrible director, in terms of morale, anyway. That was my first experience of bad behavior in the theatre." However, Rufus Smith, who played the minor role of the football coach, stated, "Never again in my life will I experience what it is like to stop a show cold, by doing exactly what she taught me". The immense job of directing the play finally proved too big for de Mille, who stated "I can't do the new dances and the new songs and the new book," and Hammerstein stepped in to direct the dialogue. According to Rodgers biographer Meryle Secrest, at this point the cast was up in arms over de Mille's treatment of them. James Mitchell, one of the dancers in the production, later stated that de Mille was better at directing dancers than actors, as actors come to the stage with preconceived notions about how to play a part, and dancers do not.

The first tryout, in New Haven, Connecticut, did not go to plan. During the first act, William Ching, playing Joseph Taylor Sr., was singing "A Fellow Needs a Girl" when the scenery wall began to collapse, forcing him to hold it up until the stagehands noticed. Dancer Ray Harrison caught his tap in a track in the stage, tore the ligaments in his knee and was carried from the stage, screaming. Lisa Kirk, the first Emily, fell into the orchestra while singing "The Gentleman Is a Dope". She was catapulted back onto the stage with no pause in her singing, to great applause by the audience. Sondheim remembered,

> Next day in the New York Herald Tribune ... Billy Rose, of all people was saying, "A star is born." Next night she comes back, came to the same point in the song, and starts to fall, and the entire audience gasps because they'd all read the Herald Tribune. She recovers quickly, they all sigh, and she gets another ovation. Oscar came backstage at the end and said, "You do that a third time and you're fired."

The disasters of the New Haven opener concluded during "Come Home", a song near the end of the play—the quiet urgings of the chorus and Joe's mother to entice him to return to his small town. A false fire alarm went off, and the audience began to push towards the exit. Joshua Logan, who was in attendance, loudly ordered the crowd to sit down, which it did. One of the Boston tryouts that followed New Haven was marked by boisterous behavior by conventioneers, until Hammerstein yelled, "Shut up!" and the audience subsided.

## Synopsis

### Act 1

The play opens with Marjorie Taylor in bed, in 1905. Wife of small-town doctor Joseph Taylor, she has just had a son. The people of the town predict great things for Joseph Taylor Jr., or Joe as he will come to be called (Musical number: "Joseph Taylor, Jr."). Joe learns what a baby learns: the comforting presence of his mother, the presence of another figure, who does not smell as nice, and who always leaves as soon as he picks up his black bag. Joe is seen as a baby and then not again as a child; the audience takes his perspective. Joe's grandma notices him trying to walk, calls for Marjorie to witness the first steps, and once he takes them, as the chorus states, "the world belongs to Joe" ("One Foot, Other Foot"). Joe grows to school age, and loses his beloved Grandma. He is comforted by Jennie Brinker, a businessman's daughter. The two grow to high school age and date, though Joe lacks the nerve to kiss her, to Jennie's frustration. As Joe prepares to leave for college, Dr. Taylor hopes that his son will help him in his medical practice, and he and Marjorie wonder if Joe will marry Jennie ("A Fellow Needs a Girl").

At the freshman mixer ("Freshman Dance"), the audience finally sees Joe onstage. He marvels at his new world, in which he is a loner ("A Darn Nice Campus"). Joe serves ineffectively as a cheerleader ("The Purple and the Brown"), rooting for the Wildcats, whose star player is Joe's freshman classmate Charlie Townsend. Both are pre-medical students and soon become close friends. The friendship helps both; Joe gains entrance to Charlie's fraternity and social circles, while Charlie is allowed to copy Joe's conscientious schoolwork.

While Joe is at college, Jennie remains at home, and her wealthy father, Ned Brinker, who disapproves of Joe for spending so many years in school before earning a living, encourages her to find other boyfriends. Jennie does not bother to conceal these romances in her letters; Joe is finally fed up, and goes on a double date with Charlie and two girls. Beulah, Joe's date, is initially enthusiastic about the budding romance ("So Far") but walks away in disgust when Joe, who is unable to keep thoughts of Jennie from his mind, falls asleep after a passionate kiss. Jennie breaks up with the boy that Joe was afraid would marry her, and she is waiting for Joe when he returns home ("You Are Never Away"). Marjorie Taylor is convinced that Jennie is the wrong girl for Joe, and after a confrontation with Jennie when she tells her this, Marjorie dies of a heart attack. Despite the disapproval of both families ("What a Lovely Day for a Wedding"), Joe and Jennie marry, a wedding observed by the unhappy ghosts of Marjorie and Grandma ("Wish Them Well").

### Act 2

It is the Depression. Joe makes a bare living as assistant to his father. Mr. Brinker's business has failed, and he lives with the couple, who are experiencing poverty for the first time in their lives. The poverty affects Jennie more than Joe—the new Mrs. Taylor dislikes life as an impoverished housewife ("Money Isn't Everything"). When she learns that Joe turned down a lucrative offer from a prominent Chicago physician, who is Charlie's uncle, Jennie at first rages. When she finds that is not effective, she gets him to change his mind through guilt—if he accepts Dr. Denby's offer, he can earn the money to start the small hospital of which his father dreams and they will have the money to bring up a child properly.

Joe accepts the job, and sadly leaves his father. He soon finds himself ministering to hypochondriacs; he is required to spend time at cocktail parties marked by useless conversation ("Yatata, Yatata, Yatata"). Charlie is also part of the practice, but the former football star has turned to drink. Joe himself is becoming careless due to the distractions; one mistake is caught by his nurse, Emily, who greatly admires the physician Joe could be ("The Gentleman Is a Dope"). Denby congratulates Joe on his skills, both medical and social. The elder doctor has less time for a nurse, Carrie Middleton, who has worked at his hospital for thirty years and once dated him, but who is involved in a labor protest—Denby orders her fired at the request of Lansdale, an influential trustee and soap manufacturer. Charlie, Joe and Emily comment on the frenetic pace of the Chicago world in which they live ("Allegro").

Joe has become increasingly disillusioned by his life in the city, and worries about his former patients in his home town. He learns that Jennie is having an affair with Lansdale. As Joe sits, head in hands, his late mother and a chorus of the friends he left behind appeal to him to return ("Come Home"). Joe has been offered the position of physician-in-chief at the Chicago hospital, replacing Denby, who is taking an executive position, or as the elder doctor terms it, being "kicked upstairs". At a dedication of a new pavilion at the hospital, Joe has a revelation and shifts the path of his life; as he does so, Grandma appears and calls for Marjorie to come watch, an echo of the scene in which he learned to walk. Joe refuses the position, and will return to his small town to assist his father, accompanied by Emily and Charlie, but not by Jennie (Finale: "One Foot, Other Foot" (reprise)).

## Musical numbers

Act I

- "Overture" – Orchestra
- "Joseph Taylor, Jr." – Ensemble
- "I Know It Can Happen Again" – Grandma Taylor
- "Pudgy Legs" – Ensemble
- "One Foot, Other Foot" – Ensemble
- "Children's Dance" – Orchestra with Children
- "Grandmother's Death: I Know It Can Happen Again (Reprise)" – Grandma Taylor
- "Winters Go By" – Ensemble
- "Poor Joe" – Ensemble
- "Diploma" – Ensemble
- "A Fellow Needs a Girl" – Dr. Taylor and Marjorie Taylor
- "Dance: Freshmen Get Together" – Orchestra with Ensemble
- "A Darn Nice Campus" – Joe Taylor
- "Wildcats" – Ensemble and Joe Taylor
- "Jennie Reads Letter: A Darn Nice Campus (Reprise)" – Jennie Brinker
- "Scene of Professors" – Professors, Joe Taylor, Jennie Brinker, and Ensemble
- "So Far" – Beulah
- "You Are Never Away" – Joe Taylor and Ensemble
- "You Are Never Away (Encore)" – Joe Taylor and Ensemble
- "Poor Joe (Reprise)" – Ensemble
- "What a Lovely Day for a Wedding" – Ensemble and Mr. Brinker
- "It May Be a Good Idea for Joe" – Charlie Townsend
- "Finale Act I: I Know It Can Happen Again/To Have and To Hold/Wish Them Well" – Ensemble

Act II

- "Entr'acte" – Orchestra
- "Money Isn't Everything" – Jennie Brinker and Other Wives
- "Dance: Money Isn't Everything" – Orchestra
- "Poor Joe (Reprise)" – Ensemble
- "You Are Never Away (Reprise)" – Joe Taylor
- "A Fellow Needs a Girl (Reprise)" – Majorie Taylor
- "Ya-ta-ta" – Charlie Townsend and Ensemble
- "The Gentleman Is a Dope" – Emily
- "Allegro" – Charlie Townsend, Joe Taylor, Emily and Ensemble
- "Allegro" Ballet – Orchestra with Ensemble
- "Come Home" – Marjorie Taylor and Ensemble
- "Finale Ultimo: Ya-ta-ta/Come Home/One Foot, Other Foot" – Ensemble

## Production history

Given the outstanding success of Oklahoma! and Carousel, Allegro was anticipated with close interest by the theatre community and public. The musical attracted \$750,000 in advance sales, at a time when the top price ticket for a Broadway musical was \$6.

Allegro opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre on October 10, 1947. It starred John Battles as Joseph Taylor Jr., Annamary Dickey as Majorie Taylor, William Ching as Dr. Joseph Taylor, Roberta Jonay as Jennie Brinker, Lisa Kirk as Emily, and John Conte as Charlie Townsend. A special performance the afternoon of the opening for friends and associates generated wild applause; the audience at the official opening that evening clapped little. As de Mille's husband, Walter Prude, put it, Allegro went over "like a wet firecracker".

The mixed reviews prompted ongoing discussions of the play's merit, continuing well after the first night. Some of the news that the show generated had nothing to do with its worth—de Mille had dancer Francis Rainer fired, and Rainer alleged that the dismissal was due to her union activism. After Actors Equity became involved, Rainer was rehired. More bad publicity came when the producers proposed to dismiss several orchestra and chorus members to cut costs so the show might continue through the summer of 1948, and the fired performers also alleged dismissal for union involvement. The show closed July 11, 1948 after 315 performances, and in the fall, a national tour began. The national tour ran eight months, much shorter than that of Oklahoma! or Carousel. No London production was mounted. According to Thomas Hischak in his The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia, the show made a small profit; other sources state that the show lost money.

The show was popular in the 1950s among amateur drama societies, because of the large cast with no star and the bare stage. It has rarely been revived professionally: the St. Louis Municipal Opera presented it in 1955; Goodspeed Musicals presented it in Connecticut in 1968. An abridged version was presented Off-Off-Broadway in 1978 by Equity Library Theatre.

In March 1994 a staged concert version was presented by New York City Center Encores!, with a cast that included Stephen Bogardus (Joseph Taylor Jr.), Karen Ziemba and Jonathan Hadary. Christopher Reeve was the narrator, and the concert was directed by Susan H. Schulman. A revised version of Allegro, re-written by Joe DiPietro, who was a protege of Oscar's son James Hammerstein, was produced at the Signature Theatre (Arlington, Virginia) in January 2004. This version cut the musical in size and scale. The cast was cut with some characters being combined; the original, lavish orchestrations were simplified.

The Canadian premiere of Allegro took place in 2004, staged by the Toronto Civic Light-Opera Company. With full orchestra and a cast of 30, the production was designed and directed by Joe Cascone, and became one of the inspirations for the all-star 2009 recording. It was attended by Ted Chapin, Bruce Pomahac and Dena Hammerstein, respectively, CEO of the Rodgers & Hammerstein organization, director of music for R&H, and Hammerstein's daughter-in-law. The production was a major success, both artistically and financially for the company.

The Astoria Performing Arts Center in cooperation with Actor's Equity mounted a production from May 1–17, 2014 in Astoria, Queens, New York, Tom Wojtunik director. APAC has offices in the historic Kaufman Astoria Studios; APAC's performance space is located within the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church.

A 90-minute edited version directed by John Doyle was presented by the Classic Stage Company in New York City in November 2014.

The show received its European première in a revival that took place at the Southwark Playhouse, London UK, running from August to September 2016 to positive reviews.

## Music and recordings

### Musical treatment

Although Allegro is filled with music, the music is fragmented, as the characters often break into song briefly. The character of Joe was unusual for a male lead of the time in having relatively little to sing; Joe has only one solo number ("A Darn Nice Campus"). Important songs are given to minor characters, such as "So Far", given to Beulah, who only appears on the one date with Joe. Author and composer Ethan Mordden calls Rodgers's technique "the deconstruction of theatre music, to match the show's deconstruction of traditional theatre design".

Rodgers's music is more subtle than in his previous musicals, and his melodies more muted. The key changes are less dramatic than in other musicals of that time. Rodgers did not intend for the songs to become hits; instead they were designed to draw the audience into the action, as onstage events were described subjectively in song.

### Recordings

An original cast recording was released in 1947, heavily abridged. According to Hischak, only Lisa Kirk as Emily shines on the recording, which he calls "sad evidences of a very ambitious undertaking". Originally issued by RCA Victor Records on five 78s, sales were poor; Victor did not reissue it on LP during the rapid transition from 78s to long-playing records in 1949–1950, when most record companies were hastily transferring their entire catalogues onto the new medium. The recording was made available briefly in simulated stereo in the 1960s, and was reissued in the 1970s in the original mono. The original cast recording was released on compact disc in 1993.

A studio recording of the complete score was made in 2008, with an all-star cast featuring Patrick Wilson as Joe, Nathan Gunn and Audra McDonald as his parents, Marni Nixon as Grandma, Laura Benanti as Jennie, Liz Callaway as Emily, Judy Kuhn as Beulah, Norbert Leo Butz as Charlie, with special appearances by Stephen Sondheim, Schuyler Chapin and, through archival audio recordings, Oscar Hammerstein. The album, produced by Sony Masterworks Broadway, was released on February 3, 2009. According to musical theatre author John Kenrick, "this all star studio cast glorifies all that is right with this melodious and sometimes adventurous score".

Vocalist Jo Stafford had a pop hit with 'The Gentleman Is a Dope' in 1947.

Frank Sinatra took 'A Fellow Needs a Girl' to Number 24 in 1947. Another song from the musical, 'So Far', was the B-Side of the 78 rpm record.

## Critical reception

The musical received mixed reviews following its opening night. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson opined that Rodgers and Hammerstein had "just missed the final splendor of a perfect work of art". Robert Coleman of the New York Daily Mirror stated that "Allegro is perfection", and added that it was "a stunning blending of beauty, integrity, intelligence, imagination, taste and skill ... it lends new stature to the American musical stage". Ward Morehouse of The Sun wrote that Allegro was "distinguished and tumultuous. It takes its place alongside of Oklahoma! and Carousel as a theatrical piece of taste, imagination, and showmanship."

However, Wolcott Gibbs of The New Yorker called the musical "a shocking disappointment". Robert Garland, in the New York Journal American suggested that Rodgers and Hammerstein "had confused allegro [which means at a fast pace] with, say, lento, which means 'slow', 'unhurried', and even downright 'serious'". Critic George Jean Nathan, in a special piece in the Journal American, decried "such hokum mush as the familiar wedding scene and the ghost of a mother who returns at intervals to keep her son from error, but a cocktail party chatterbox number paraphrased from an old Noël Coward movie, a college number dittoed from an earlier George Abbott one, and various other elements hardly rivaling the daisy in freshness". In Theatre Arts, Cecil Smith called Allegro "acceptable only as an exercise in stagecraft, not as a work of art ... Allegro fails where Our Town succeeded ... Joseph Taylor, Jr.'s life has little or nothing to tell us about our own lives." Louis Kronenberger of New York P.M. called the show "an out-and-out failure."

De Mille's direction and choreography were reviewed generally positively; Cecil Smith applauded her for the "ease and flawless design with which Miss de Mille brings mobility to these non-dancing [singing and speaking choruses] ... no previous musical has approached Allegro in consistency of movement, expertness of timing and shapeliness of visual patterns. Times dance critic John Martin stated, "Allegro has definitely made history" for de Mille's giving "form and substance to material with little of either". Dance Magazine praised her for creating "the illusion of space and depth far beyond the confines of the proscenium".

As the disagreement continued past the opening night, Wayne Abrams wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "Nobody is neutral about Allegro. The Hammerstein-Rodgers-de Mille musical play is either nigh unto perfection or a dismal flop. There's that much room for disagreement."

## Aftermath

Hammerstein was embittered by audience and critical reaction to his book, and felt they misunderstood it. Public perception was that Hammerstein had implied that small-town folk were good while their big-city cousins were neurotic and venal. The lyricist objected, pointing out that the worst character in the musical was a small-town girl, but according to Hammerstein biographer Hugh Fordin, "he knew it was his fault that the message was not clear." In a preface to the published script, issued in 1948, Hammerstein tried again to make his point:

> It is a law of our civilization, that as soon as a man proves he can contribute to the well-being of the world, there be created an immediate conspiracy to destroy his usefulness, a conspiracy in which he is usually a willing collaborator. Sometimes he awakens to his danger and does something about it.

According to Frederick Nolan, in his book about the pair's music, "Reexamined today, Allegro's main fault seems to have been that it was ahead of its time, the integration of story and music far too advanced even for audiences now becoming accustomed to musicals which actually had stories." Sondheim noted, "Allegro was an attempt to use epic theatre in contemporary musical theatre. It used a Greek chorus, and tried to tell the story of a life, not through events but through generalities. This is now what would be called a Brechtian approach."

A decade after Allegro'''s premiere, after learning of his terminal cancer, Hammerstein returned to the musical, hoping to correct its flaws, but he did not complete the project. While recording an oral history tape for Columbia University, Hammerstein stated, "I intended Dick to write music for it [the chorus in Allegro] but we wound up reciting the chorus instead ... I'm not blaming anyone, because we all accepted it, we all collaborated ... but it was a mistake." Rodgers later stated that the show was "too preachy, which was the one fault that Oscar had, if any," and "[n]othing to be ashamed of, certainly". Rodgers further defended the play, "The comments we made on the compromises demanded by success, as well as some of the satiric side issues—hypochondria, the empty cocktail party—still hold."

The relative failure of Allegro reinforced the team's determination to have another hit. Author James Michener recalled his meeting with the duo over the possibility of converting his book Tales of the South Pacific into a musical. "They were inwardly burning because of the reception accorded to Allegro. Those fellows were so mad I was fairly certain that they could make a great musical out of the Bronx telephone directory." That project would become South Pacific and be a tremendous hit.

Hischak ties the failure of Allegro'' to a change in the pair's style:

> The failure of Allegro only partially tarnished the reputation of Rodgers and Hammerstein; after all, it was a very respectable flop. Yet the long-term repercussions were more serious. Never again would R&H experiment so boldly and risk losing their audience. They would continue to come up with surprising and wonderful things, but the days of radical and foolhardy innovation were over. From then on they would stick to the tried and true. Allegro marked the end of the R&H revolution.

## Awards and nominations

### Original Broadway production

Musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein


Jaws (novel)

Jaws is a novel by American writer Peter Benchley, published in 1974. It tells the story of a large great white shark that preys upon a small Long Island resort town and the three men who attempt to kill it. The novel grew out of Benchley's interest in shark attacks after he learned about the exploits of Montauk, New York shark fisherman Frank Mundus in 1964. Doubleday commissioned him to write the novel in 1971, a period when Benchley worked as a freelance journalist.

Through a marketing campaign orchestrated by Doubleday and paperback publisher Bantam, Jaws was incorporated into many book sales clubs catalogues and attracted media interest. After first publication in February 1974, the novel was a great success, with the hardback staying on the bestseller list for 44 weeks and the subsequent paperback edition selling millions of copies the following year. Reviews of the novel were mixed, with many literary critics finding the prose and characterizations amateurish and banal, despite the novel's effective suspense.

Film producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown read the novel before its publication and bought the film rights, selecting Steven Spielberg to direct the motion picture adaptation. The film Jaws released in June 1975, omitted the novel's several subplots, and focused primarily on the shark and the characterizations of the three protagonists. Jaws became the highest-grossing movie in history up to that time, becoming a watershed film in motion picture history and the first summer blockbuster film. Three sequels followed the film, which were met with mixed to negative responses.

## Synopsis

The story is set in Amity, a fictional seaside resort town on the south shore of Long Island, New York within the "Hamptons" region; the novel places it halfway between Bridgehampton and East Hampton. One night, a massive great white shark kills a young tourist named Christine Watkins while she skinny dips in the open waters after she and a man make love on the beach. After finding the partially-eaten remains of her body washed up on the beach, investigators realize she was attacked by a shark. Amity Police chief Martin Brody orders the beaches closed, but mayor Larry Vaughn and the town's selectmen overrule him out of fear for damage to summer tourism, Amity's main industry. With the connivance of Harry Meadows, the editor of the local newspaper, they hush up the attack.

A few days later, the shark kills a young boy and an elderly man within half an hour of each other. Ben Gardner, a local fisherman is hired by Amity's authorities to kill the shark, but he disappears. Brody and his deputy Leonard Hendricks discover Gardner's boat anchored off-shore, empty and covered with large bite holes, one of which has a massive shark tooth stuck in it. Blaming himself for the latest deaths, Brody again attempts to close the beaches, while Meadows investigates the Mayor's business contacts to find out why he is determined to keep the beaches open. Meadows discovers Vaughn has ties to the Mafia, who are pressuring the mayor to keep the beaches open in order to protect the value of Amity's real estate, in which the Mafia has invested a great deal of money. Meadows also recruits ichthyologist Matt Hooper from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for advice on how to deal with the shark.

Meanwhile, Brody's wife Ellen is lamenting the loss of her youth and the affluent lifestyle she had before marrying Brody and having children. Coincidentally, Ellen dated Hooper's older brother when she was in college. After Hooper attends a dinner party at the Brody's, Ellen, intent on recapturing her juvenescence and joie de vivre, decides to instigate a sexual encounter with him; the next day, she phones Hooper and invites him to lunch at a restaurant several miles away from Amity. The two have several drinks, flirt with each other, then go to a motel together. Throughout the rest of the novel, Brody suspects Ellen and Hooper have had a liaison, and he is obsessed and tormented by the thought.

News of the shark attacks spread and with the beaches still open, tourists pour into Amity, hoping to glimpse the killer shark. Brody sets up patrols on the beaches to watch for the fish. After a teenaged boy narrowly escapes another attack close to the shore, Brody closes the beaches and hires Quint, a professional shark hunter, to kill the shark. Brody, Quint and Hooper set out on Quint's vessel, the Orca, and the three men are soon at odds with one another. Quint dislikes Hooper, dismissing him as a spoiled rich college boy. Hooper is angry over Quint's methods, especially when he disembowels a blue shark, and uses an illegally caught unborn baby dolphin as bait. Brody and Hooper also argue, as Brody's suspicions about Hooper's possible tryst with Ellen consume him. At one point, a heated argument ensues with Brody strangling Hooper for several seconds.

Their first two days at sea are unproductive, but they do come in contact with the shark by the end of the second day. Upon seeing the fish for the first time and estimating the shark to be at least 20 ft (6.1 m) long and weighing in at roughly 5,000 lb (2,300 kg), Hooper is visibly excited and in awe at the size of it.

Larry Vaughn visits the Brody house before Brody returns home and informs Ellen that he and his wife are leaving Amity. Before Vaughn leaves, he tells Ellen that he always thought he and Ellen would have made a great couple. After he is gone, Ellen reflects that her life with Brody is much more fulfilling than any life she might have had with Vaughn, and begins feeling guilty over her prior thoughts of missing the life she had before marrying Brody.

On the third day, after seeing the size of the shark, Hooper wants to bring along a shark-proof cage, to take photos of it and then to use it in an attempt to kill it with a bang stick. Initially, Quint refuses to bring the cage on board, even after Hooper offers to pay him \$100, considering it a suicidal idea, but he relents after Hooper and Brody get into a heated argument. Later that day, after several unsuccessful attempts by Quint to harpoon the shark, Hooper goes underwater in the shark cage. However, the shark attacks the cage, something Hooper did not expect. After destroying the cage, the shark kills and eats Hooper. Brody informs Quint that the town cannot afford to pay him any more money, but Quint is determined to kill the shark regardless of the money.

When Quint and Brody return to sea the following day, the shark attacks the boat. After Quint manages to harpoon it several times, the shark leaps out of the water and onto the stern of the Orca, tearing a huge hole in the aft section which causes the boat to begin sinking. Quint plunges another harpoon into the shark's belly, but as the fish settles back into the water, Quint's foot becomes entangled in the rope attached to the harpoon, and he is pulled underwater and drowns. Brody, now floating on a seat cushion, spots the shark slowly swimming toward him; he closes his eyes and prepares for death. However, just as it arrives within a few feet of him, the shark succumbs to its wounds and dies before it can attack. The shark slowly sinks down out of sight, dragging Quint's entangled body behind it. The lone survivor of the ordeal, Brody watches as the dead shark disappears into the depths and then he begins to paddle back to shore on his makeshift float.

## Development

Peter Benchley had a long time fascination with sharks, which he frequently encountered while fishing with his father Nathaniel in Nantucket. As a result, for years, he had considered writing "a story about a shark that attacks people and what would happen if it came in and wouldn't go away." This interest grew greater after reading a 1964 news story about fisherman Frank Mundus catching a great white shark weighing 4,550 pounds (2,060 kg) off the shore of Montauk, New York.

In 1971, Benchley worked as a freelance writer struggling to support his wife and children. In the meantime, his literary agent scheduled regular meetings with publishing house editors. One was Doubleday editor Thomas Congdon, who had lunch with Benchley seeking book ideas. Congdon did not find Benchley's proposals for non-fiction interesting, but instead favored his idea for a novel about a shark terrorizing a beach resort. Benchley sent a page to Congdon's office, and the editor paid him \$1,000 for 100 pages. These pages comprised the first four chapters, and the full manuscript received a \$7,500 total advance. Congdon and the Doubleday crew were confident, seeing Benchley as "something of an expert in sharks", given the author self-described "knowing as much as any amateur about sharks" as he had read some research books and seen the 1971 documentary Blue Water White Death. After Doubleday commissioned the book, Benchley then started researching all possible material regarding sharks. Among his sources were Peter Matthiessen's Blue Meridian, Jacques Cousteau's The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea, Thomas B. Allen's Shadows in the Sea, and David H. Davies' About Sharks and Shark Attacks.

Benchley procrastinated finishing the novel and only began writing in earnest once his agent reminded him that if he did not deliver the manuscript, he would have to return the writer's advance. As this money had been spent, Benchley had no choice. His hastily written first-draft partial manuscript was derided by Congdon, who did not like its comic tone. Congdon only approved the first five pages, which made it into the published book without any revisions, and asked Benchley to follow the tone of that introduction. After a month, Benchley delivered a broader outline of the story and rewritten chapters to which Congdon gave his approval. The manuscript took a year and a half to complete. During this time, Benchley worked in his makeshift office above a furnace company in Pennington, New Jersey during the winter, and in a converted turkey coop in the seaside property of his wife's family in Stonington, Connecticut during the summer. Congdon dictated some changes to the rest of the book, including a sex scene between Brody and Ellen which was changed to Ellen and Hooper. Congdon did not feel that there was "any place for this wholesome marital sex in this kind of book". After various revisions and rewrites and sporadic advance payments, Benchley delivered his final draft in January, 1973.

### Title and cover

Shortly before the book went to press, Benchley and Congdon needed to choose a title. Benchley had many working titles during development, many of which he calls "pretentious", such as The Stillness in the Water and Leviathan Rising. Benchley regarded other ideas, such as The Jaws of Death and The Jaws of Leviathan, as "melodramatic, weird or pretentious". Congdon and Benchley brainstormed about the title frequently, with the writer estimating about 125 ideas raised. The novel still did not have a title until twenty minutes before production of the book. The writer discussed the problem with editor Tom Congdon at a restaurant in New York:

> We cannot agree on a word that we like, let alone a title that we like. In fact, the only word that even means anything, that even says anything, is "jaws". Call the book Jaws. He said "What does it mean?" I said, "I don't know, but it's short; it fits on a jacket, and it may work." He said, "Okay, we'll call the thing Jaws.

For the cover, Benchley wanted an illustration of Amity as seen through the jaws of a shark. Doubleday's design director, Alex Gotfryd, assigned book illustrator Wendell Minor with the task. The image was eventually vetoed for sexual overtones, compared by sales managers to the vagina dentata. Congdon and Gotfryd eventually settled on printing a typographical jacket, but that was subsequently discarded once Bantam editor Oscar Dystel noted the title Jaws was so vague "it could have been a title about dentistry". Gotfryd tried to get Minor to do a new cover, but he was out of town, so he instead turned to artist Paul Bacon. Bacon drew an enormous shark head, and Gotfryd suggested adding a swimmer "to have a sense of disaster and a sense of scale". The subsequent drawing became the eventual hardcover art, with a shark head rising towards a swimming woman.

Despite the acceptance of the Bacon cover by Doubleday, Dystel did not like the cover, and assigned New York illustrator Roger Kastel to do a different one for the paperback. Following Bacon's basic concept, Kastel illustrated his favorite part of the novel, the opening where the shark attacks Christine Watkins. For research, Kastel went to the American Museum of Natural History, and took advantage of the Great White exhibits being closed for cleaning to photograph the models. The photographs then provided reference for a "ferocious-looking shark that was still realistic." After painting the shark, Kastel did the female swimmer. Following a photoshoot for Good Housekeeping, Kastel requested the model he was photographing to lie on a stool in the approximate position of a front crawl. The oil-on-board painting Kastel created for the cover would eventually be reused by Universal Pictures for the film posters and advertising, albeit slightly bowdlerized with the woman's naked body partially obscured with more sea foam. The original painting of the cover was stolen and has never been recovered, leaving Bacon to speculate that some Hollywood executive now has it.

## Themes and style

The story of Jaws is limited by how the humans respond to the shark menace. Much detail is given to the shark, with descriptions of its anatomy and presence creating the sense of an awesome, unstoppable threat. Elevating the menace are violent descriptions of the shark attacks. Along with a carnivorous killer on the sea, Amity is populated with equally predatory humans: the mayor who has ties with the Mafia, a depressed, adulterous housewife and criminals among the tourists.

In the meantime, the impact of the predatory deaths resemble Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People, with the mayor of a small town panicking over how a problem will drive away the tourists. Another source of comparison raised by critics was Moby-Dick, particularly regarding Quint's characterization and the ending featuring a confrontation with the shark; Quint even dies the same way as Captain Ahab. The central character, Chief Brody, fits a common characterization of the disaster genre, an authority figure who is forced to provide guidance to those affected by the sudden tragedy. Focusing on a working class local leads the book's prose to describe the beachgoers with contempt, and Brody to have conflicts with the rich outsider Hooper.

## Publication history

Benchley says that neither he nor anyone else involved in its conception initially realized the book's potential. Tom Congdon, however, sensed that the novel had prospects and had it sent to The Book of the Month Club and paperback houses. The Book of the Month Club made it an "A book", qualifying it for its main selection, then Reader's Digest also selected it. The publication date was moved back to allow a carefully orchestrated release. It was released first in hardcover in February 1974, then in the book clubs, followed by a national campaign for the paperback release. Bantam bought the paperback rights for \$575,000, which Benchley points out was "then an enormous sum of money". Once Bantam's rights lapsed years later, they reverted to Benchley, who subsequently sold them to Random House, who has since done all the reprints of Jaws.

Upon release, Jaws became a great success. According to John Baxter's biography of Steven Spielberg, the novel's first entry on California's best-seller list was caused by Spielberg and producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, who were on pre-production for the Jaws film, buying a hundred copies of the novel each, most of which were sent to "opinion-makers and members of the chattering class". Jaws was the state's most successful book by 7 p.m. on the first day. However, sales were good nationwide without engineering. The hardcover stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for 44 weeks – peaking at number two behind Watership Down – selling a total of 125,000 copies. The paperback version was even more successful, topping book charts worldwide, and by the time the film adaptation debuted in June 1975 the novel had sold 5.5 million copies domestically, a number that eventually reached 9.5 million copies. Worldwide sales are estimated at 20 million copies. The success inspired ABC to invite Benchley for an episode of The American Sportsman, where the writer swam with sharks in Australia, in what would be the first of many nature-related television programs Benchley would take part in.

### Audio adaptations

A 6-part abridged adaptation read by John Guerrasio was broadcast on BBC Radio 7 in 2008. A 10-part abridged adaptation read by Henry Goodman was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2018 as part of its Book at Bedtime program.

An unabridged audio adaptation read by Erik Steele was released by Blackstone Audio in both CD and downloadable format in 2009. A French translation, Les Dents de la Mer, read by Pascal Casanova was released exclusively by Audible Studios in downloadable format in 2018.

## Critical reception

Despite the commercial success, reviews were mixed. The most common criticism focused on the human characters. Michael A. Rogers of Rolling Stone declared that "None of the humans are particularly likable or interesting" and confessed the shark was his favorite character "and one suspects Benchley's also." Steven Spielberg shared the sentiment, saying he initially found many of the characters unsympathetic and wanted the shark to win, a characterization he changed in the film adaptation.

Critics also derided Benchley's writing. Time reviewer John Skow described the novel as "cliché and crude literary calculation", where events "refuse to take on life and momentum" and the climax "lacks only Queequeg's coffin to resemble a bath tub version of Moby-Dick." Writing for The Village Voice, Donald Newlove declared that "Jaws has rubber teeth for a plot. It's boring, pointless, listless; if there's a trite turn to make, Jaws will make that turn." An article in The Listener criticized the plot, stating the "novel only has bite, so to say, at feed time," and these scenes are "naïve attempts at whipping along a flagging story-line." Andrew Bergman of The New York Times Book Review felt that despite the book serving as "fluid entertainment", "passages of hollow portentousness creep in" while poor scene "connections [and] stark manipulations impair the narrative."

Some reviewers found Jaws's description of the shark attacks entertaining. John Spurling of the New Statesman asserted that while the "characterisation of the humans is fairly rudimentary", the shark "is done with exhilarating and alarming skill, and every scene in which it appears is imagined at a special pitch of intensity." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt praised the novel in a short review for The New York Times, highlighting the "strong plot" and "rich thematic substructure." The Washington Post's Robert F. Jones described Jaws as "much more than a gripping fish story. It is a tightly written, tautly paced study," which "forged and touched a metaphor that still makes us tingle whenever we enter the water." New York reviewer Eliot Fremont-Smith found the novel "immensely readable" despite the lack of "memorable characters or much plot surprise or originality"; Fremont-Smith wrote that Benchley "fulfills all expectations, provides just enough civics and ecology to make us feel good, and tops it off with a really terrific and grisly battle scene".

In the years following publication, Benchley began to feel responsible for the negative attitudes against sharks that his novel engendered. He became an ardent ocean conservationist. In an article for the National Geographic published in 2000, Benchley writes "considering the knowledge accumulated about sharks in the last 25 years, I couldn't possibly write Jaws today ... not in good conscience anyway. Back then, it was generally accepted that great whites were anthropophagus (they ate people) by choice. Now we know that almost every shark attack on a human is an accident: A shark mistakes a human for its normal prey." Upon his death in 2006, Benchley's widow Wendy declared the author "kept telling people the book was fiction", and comparing Jaws to The Godfather, "he took no more responsibility for the fear of sharks than Mario Puzo took responsibility for the Mafia."

## Film adaptation

Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, film producers at Universal Pictures, both heard about the book before publication at the same time. Upon reading it, both agreed the novel was exciting and deserved a feature film adaptation, even if they were unsure how to accomplish it. Benchley's agent sold the adaptation rights for \$150,000, plus an extra \$25,000 for Benchley to write the screenplay. Although this delighted the author, who had very little money at the time, it was a comparatively low sum, as the agreement occurred before the book became a surprise bestseller. After securing the rights, Steven Spielberg, who was making his first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express, for Zanuck, Brown and Universal, was hired as the director. To play the protagonists, the producers cast Robert Shaw as Quint, Roy Scheider as Brody and Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper.

Benchley's contract promised him the first draft of the Jaws screenplay. He wrote three drafts before passing the job over to other writers; the only other writer credited beside Benchley was the author responsible for the shooting script, actor-writer Carl Gottlieb who appears in the film as Harry Meadows. Benchley also appears in the film playing a brief onscreen role as a TV reporter. For the adaptation, Spielberg wanted to preserve the novel's basic concept while removing Benchley's many subplots and altering the characterizations, having found all of the characters of the book unlikable. Among the major changes were the removal of the adulterous affair between Ellen Brody and Matt Hooper and Mayor Larry Vaughn's connections to the mafia. Quint became a survivor of the World War II USS Indianapolis disaster, and changing the cause of the shark's death from extensive wounds to a scuba tank explosion. The director estimated the final script had a total of 27 scenes that were not in the book. Amity was also relocated; while scouting the book's Long Island setting, Brown found it "too grand" and not fitting the idea of "a vacation area that was lower middle class enough so that an appearance of a shark would destroy the tourist business." Thus now the setting was an island in New England, filmed on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Released in theaters in 1975, Jaws became the highest-grossing film ever at the time, a record it held for two years until the release of Star Wars. Benchley was satisfied with the adaptation, noting how dropping the subplots allowed for "all the little details that fleshed out the characters". The film's success led to three sequels, with which Benchley had no involvement despite them drawing on his characters. According to Benchley, once his payment of the adaptation-related royalties got late, he called his agent and she replied that the studio was arranging a deal for sequels. Benchley disliked the idea, saying, "I don't care about sequels; who'll ever want to make a sequel to a movie about a fish?" He subsequently relinquished the Jaws sequel rights, aside for a one-time payment of \$70,000 for each one.

1974 novel by American writer Peter Benchley


Birthday-number effect

The birthday-number effect is the subconscious tendency of people to prefer the numbers in the date of their birthday over other numbers. First reported in 1997 by Japanese psychologists Shinobu Kitayama and Mayumi Karasawa, the birthday-number effect has been replicated in various countries. It holds across age and gender. The effect is most prominent for numbers over 12.

Most people like themselves; the birthday is associated with the self, and hence the numbers in the birthday are preferred, despite the fact that they appear in many other contexts. People who do not like themselves tend not to exhibit the birthday-number effect. A similar effect, the name-letter effect, has been found for letters: people tend to prefer the letters that are part of their name. The birthday-number effect and the name-letter effect are significantly correlated. In psychological assessments, the Number Preference Task is used to estimate implicit self-esteem.

There is some evidence that the effect has implications for real-life decisions. One lab study revealed an increase in a favourable attitude towards prices when they were secretly manipulated to match subjects' birthday dates, thus resulting in a higher chance of purchase. However a second study using birth year as price did not lead to the same result. A study of the liking of products found that participants with high self-esteem liked products better if the product names unknowingly involved their birthday number and letters of their name. Some field research into the impact of the birthday-number effect on bigger life decisions (e.g. where to live) is controversial.

## Background

Throughout history, societies have had numbers they consider special. For example, in ancient Rome the number 7 was auspicious, in Maya civilisation the number 13 was sacred, in modern-day Japan people give three, five, or seven gifts for luck, and in China the number 8 is considered lucky and 4 is avoided whenever possible. In Western cultures the number 13 is often considered unlucky, hence the term triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13.

Controlled experiments with numbers date back to 1933 when the researcher Dietz asked Dutch people to name the first number to come to mind between 0 and 99. The number 7 was mentioned most, as it was in various later replicas of the study in other countries. The number 7 also came out on top in studies that asked people to name their favourite number. In an online poll by Alex Bellos, a columnist for The Guardian, more than 30,000 people from all over the world submitted numbers, with 7 the most popular. All numbers under 100 were submitted at least once and nearly half of the numbers under 1,000. Marketing researchers King and Janiszewski investigated number preference in a different way. They showed undergraduate students random numbers and asked them to say quickly whether they liked the number, disliked it, or felt neutral. The number 100 had the highest proportion of people liking it (70%) and the lowest proportion of people disliking it (5%). The numbers 1 to 20 were liked by 9% more people than the higher numbers; the numbers that are the result of rote-learned multiplication tables (i.e. 2 × 2 to 10 × 10) were liked by 15% more people than the remaining numbers. The researchers concluded that number fluency predicts number preference: hence multiplication table numbers are preferred over prime numbers.

The closely related field of letter-preference research dates back to the 1950s. In 1985, Belgian psychologist Nuttin reported the unexpected finding that people tend to disproportionately prefer, unknowingly, the letters of their own name. The name-letter effect has been replicated in dozens of follow-up studies in different languages, cultures and alphabets, no matter whether participants selected their preferred letter from a random pair, or picked the top six of all letters in the alphabet, or rated each individual letter. Nuttin predicted that because the driving force behind the name-letter effect is an unconscious preference for anything connected to the self, there would also be a birthday-number effect.

## Original study

In 1997, researchers Shinobu Kitayama and Mayumi Karasawa observed that studies repeatedly showed that Japanese people do not seek to maintain and enhance their self-esteem, unlike Europeans and Americans. Whereas research with Western participants found that, on average, people falsely believe they are better than average, that they take credit for successes and blame others for failures, and that they overestimate the chances of good fortune happening to them, studies with Japanese did not reveal such self-enhancing tendencies. In addition, in cross-cultural studies, Japanese reported self-esteem to be hurt more by failures than boosted by successes, the opposite of what was reported by Americans. All these studies involved participants being aware that their self-esteem was being evaluated, and hence they are said to be measures of explicit self-esteem. This made Kitayama and Karasawa wonder. It seemed unlikely to them that Japanese have no positive feelings attached to their selves. They hypothesized that somehow Japanese do not allow these feelings to be detected overtly. To test this, they ran two experiments that hid the aim of assessing self-esteem, measuring instead implicit self-esteem. Because by definition implicit self-esteem is not accessible to introspection, measures of it do not rely on direct self-reports but on the degree to which objects associated with the self generate positive versus negative thoughts. The first experiment was a replica of Nuttin's 1987 study of letter preference, looking for an effect tied to letters of the participant's name. The second experiment involved numbers, looking for an effect tied to numbers representing the day of the month a participant was born (between 1 and 31) and the month of their birthday (between 1 and 12).

### Method

For the letter experiment, they asked 219 Japanese undergraduate students to rate each of the 45 hiragana, part of the Japanese writing system, according to how much they liked it. For the number experiment, they asked 269 Japanese undergraduate students to rate the numbers between 0 and 49 on attractiveness. The number 49 was chosen as the upper limit to mask the true aim of the study, which 31 (being the maximum number of days in a month) might have hinted at. Likewise, the number 0 was included for disguise. Participants had to give ratings on a six-point scale, ranging from 1, if they disliked the number very much, to 6, if they liked it very much. Once done, participants were asked for various demographic data, including their birthdays.

### Results

Analysis of the letter preference data revealed a name-letter effect: an enhanced liking for letters in the participant's own name. Analysis of the number preference data revealed a birthday-number effect. For each number, the researchers first calculated the mean liking by participants who did not have that number in their birthday. These means served as a baseline. For each participant 50 relative liking scores were computed between the baseline of a number and the actual preference. The mean liking scores for different types of numbers showed that participants disproportionately preferred numbers in their birthday. The effect was stronger for higher numbers, over 12, than for lower numbers. The effect was weakest for males and their birth month (only a 0.03 difference from the mean), and strongest for females and the day of their birthday (0.77 difference with the mean). Overall, women showed a greater liking for the numbers in their birthday than men did.

### Explanations

Kitayama and Karasawa concluded that the patterns in the findings from both experiments were most consistent with the hypothesis that the preference is due to an attachment to the self. These feelings leak out to stimuli that are closely associated with the self, not just names and birthdates, but also, implicitly, their constituent letters and numbers. Since most people like themselves, most people are found to have positive feelings for these constituent parts. The researchers suggested that the effect is stronger for higher numbers because in daily life these numbers are less saturated with other meanings, other than their associations with birthdays.

An alternative explanation for the birthday-number effect that had to be tested is mere exposure. If it were true that the numbers in one's birthday are used disproportionately in one's daily life, then the preference for numbers in one's birthday could simply be a preference for what is most frequent. Zajonc found in his 1960s and 1980s lab studies that familiarity can strongly influence preference, and coined the term "mere exposure effect". But Kitayama and Karasawa argued that even if people did see numbers from their own birthday more, this would still be negligible in comparison to the overall quantity of numbers they encounter in daily life. This is in line with the argument other researchers have used to rule out mere exposure as an explanation for the name-letter effect.

Kitayama and Karasawa concluded that Japanese people do indeed have warm feelings towards themselves, just like Americans and Europeans, but that these feelings are masked when explicitly asked for. They speculated that the reason for this masking lies in the Japanese tendency to attend to negative, undesirable features by way of improving the self.

## Subsequent studies

### Early follow-up studies

The first follow-up study looked at cultural differences. Blass, Schmitt, Jones, and O'Connell used US undergraduate students as participants to replicate the original study. In their paper presented at the American Psychological Association's annual conference in Chicago, in August 1997, they reported the same result: a preference for birthday numbers. They did find a much stronger effect though, which according to the researchers could be due to Americans' tendency towards self-enhancement.

The second follow-up study was done in 1998 by Kitayama and Uchida. They sought to investigate the relationship between a person's name-letter effect and his or her birthday-number effect, given that Kitayama and Karasawa had suspected a single driving force behind both. As they had predicted, Kitayama and Uchida found that within a person the two effects were correlated. Later studies confirmed this finding.

In 2000, Bosson, Swann and Pennebaker tested seven measures of implicit self-esteem, including the birthday-number task and name-letter task, and four measures of explicit self-esteem. They used a seven-point rating scale instead of the six-point scale Kitayama and Karasawa had used, and they only looked at the day of the birthday. On average, respondents scored their birthday number 0.73 higher than the other numbers. When the researchers retested all seven implicit self-esteem measures, the birthday-number task was one of three that produced similar results. From the weak or non-significant correlations between the implicit and explicit self-esteem measures they concluded that implicit and explicit self-esteem are tapping different underlying constructs.

### Later follow-up studies

Later studies investigated aspects of the effect. Koole, Dijksterhuis, and van Knippenberg sought to explore how automatic the preference process was. They did this with both numbers and letters. They divided participants into two groups. The first group was asked to give quick, intuitive reactions stating preferences for the stimuli. The second group was asked to reason why they liked some numbers better than others and to analyse which features of the numbers they liked. As the researchers had predicted, they found that both the birthday-number effect and name-letter effect disappeared in the 'thinking' condition. They argued that thinking about reasons instigates deliberative overriding of implicit self-esteem effects. This conclusion was supported by looking at correlations between the effects: whereas in the feeling condition the strength of a participant's birthday-number effect was correlated to his or her name-letter effect, no such correlation was found in the thinking condition.

Jones, Pelham, Mirenberg, and Hetts investigated how the effect held up under so-called 'threats' to the self. Earlier research by Koole, Smeets, van Knippenberg, and Dijksterhuis had already shown that the name-letter effect is influenced by a perceived threat. Jones, Pelham, Mirenberg, and Hetts first made some participants write about a personal flaw and then gave all participants the Number Preference Task and the Letter Preference Task. What they found was consistent with previous findings: people who liked themselves a lot liked the numbers in their birthday and the letters of their name even more when an aspect of their self seemed under threat. This is predicted by the theory of unconscious self-enhancement. It can not be explained by mere exposure theory.

Nickell, Pederson, and Rossow looked for effects with significant years. They asked 83 undergraduate students to rate, on a scale from 1 to 7, how much they liked the years between 1976 and 2001, the months of the year, the seasons, times of day, and even types of pet in an attempt to disguise the aim of the study. Analysis of the data showed that participants liked the year of their birth much more than the average of the four years after they were born. The researchers also found that the year of high school graduation was also liked better than average. Of the months of the year, the most liked month was the one in which the participants were born.

Falk, Heine, Takemura, Zhang and Hsu investigated the validity of implicit self-esteem measures to assess cultural differences. They subjected Canadian and Japanese participants to a series of tests, one of which was rating the numbers to 40 by how much participants liked them. Because the researchers saw little to no correlation between the various implicit self-esteem measures, they did not draw any conclusions about cultural differences. Stieger and Krizan explored cross-cultural differences in number preferences, specifically the day on which Christmas is celebrated as a contributor to number preference. They asked participants from six countries to rate numbers between 1 and 36. They found that in countries where gifts are exchanged on 24 December participants disproportionately preferred the number 24, whereas in countries that do this on 25 December participants preferred 25. They concluded that cultural influences need to be taken into account if these preferences are used to reflect individual differences.

## Application

In psychological assessments, the birthday-number effect has been exploited to measure implicit self-esteem. The Number Preference Task is often used in combination with the more popular Letter Preference Task, sometimes jointly called the Initials and Birthday Preference Task (IBPT). The most popular method to measure implicit self-esteem is the Implicit Association Test.

There is no standard method for applying the task. The most commonly used one is a rating task, which involves having participants judge all the numbers under a certain threshold (typically over 31 to mask the purpose of assessing connections to dates), indicating how much they like them on a 7-point rating scale. There is no standard algorithm for calculating implicit self-esteem. At least six algorithms are in use. In their meta-analysis of the name-letter effect, Stieger, Voracek, and Formann recommend using the ipsatized double-correction algorithm. The algorithms are typically applied to both the number of the day and of the month.

Stieger, Voracek, and Formann recommend that the task involve both letter preference and number preference, that it be administered twice, and that the instructions focus on liking rather than attractiveness. The Number Preference Task has been used to measure implicit self-esteem in contexts as diverse as parenting and mental habits.

## Wider implications

Researchers have looked for wider implications of the birthday-number effect on preferences, both inside and outside the lab. A body of controversial research under the umbrella of implicit egotism, starting with Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones, has investigated whether people unknowingly make life decisions based on their name letters or birthday numbers. Skeptics say that the claim that letters influence life decisions is an extraordinary one that requires extraordinary evidence. Based on analysis of US field data Pelham et al. concluded that people disproportionately live in towns whose names contain numbers that match the numbers in their birthday. They looked at people who were born on 2 February, 3 March, 4 April, etc. up to 8 August, and at people who lived in towns with numbers in them, such as Two Rivers, Three Oaks, Four Corners, etc. But in his critical analysis of this study Simonsohn argued that its reliability is questionable, as it found only a small number of residents with matching numbers. Simonsohn tried to replicate the finding in different ways but without success. He found no effect of just the day of birthday on the town (e.g. the second of any month, not just February). He also found no effect of birthday number on street, address, or apartment number.

Jones, Pelham, Carvallo and Mirenberg investigated the influence of number preference on interpersonal attraction. In a lab study they showed US participants text profiles of people. The profiles came with a prominently displayed, seemingly arbitrary code that was explained as merely to help the researchers keep track of the profiles. One half of the participants were shown a code that matched their birthday (e.g. someone born on 8 September saw a partner profile with the code "09-08"); the other half a non-matching code (e.g. "03-23"). All participants were shown exactly the same profile. They had to rate how much they thought they would like the person in the profile. The results showed that participants liked the profiles significantly more when the code matched their own birthday numbers. Relative to participants in the control condition, participants in the birthday-association condition could at the end of the test more accurately recall the code, but only 5 of 110 participants mentioned the matching code as a potential influence. Jones et al. concluded that people's preferences for their own birthday numbers are potent enough to influence people's attraction to other people. Pelham and Carvallo subsequently looked at interpersonal attraction using field data. They used statewide marriage records to conclude that people disproportionately marry people who share their birthday numbers. They also found that brides disproportionately chose their own birthday numbers and birth months as wedding dates.

Coulter and Grewal investigated if the birthday-number effect could be exploited in sales and marketing. Over 200 participants of an online survey were asked about an advertisement for a pasta dinner, where the price was secretly matched to the day of the month of their birthday. For example, someone born on the 16th of a certain month would see the price "\$39.16". The researchers found that matching numbers increased price liking and purchase intention. When introducing a perceived threat to the self into the task, they found an exaggerated effect. From this they concluded that the positive affect linked to birthday-numbers transfers directly to consumers' price predilections, and ultimately affects their purchase intentions. Keller and Gierl sought to replicate Coulter and Grewal's study. They manipulated the prices in advertisements for pizza and a music streaming service to match the birthday (day, year) of the participants in their lab study. They did not find any disproportionate liking of matching prices, neither for the year the participant was born in or the day. Keller and Gierl concluded that there must be some prerequisites such as priming stimuli to trigger the effect, although they suggested it is possible that their participants, who all happened to have been born between 1990 and 1999, saw their birthyear as price so often in real life that it had become too common.

Smeets used name and birthday matching in a product-liking experiment. He made up product names for a DVD that matched both part of the participant's name and his or her birthday. For example, a participant named Mariëlle, born on 14 May, would get an ad for a DVD-player named "DVD-Ma 14" in the self-relevant condition and "DVD-Pu 30" in the control condition. He found that high self-esteem participants liked products more if the product names were self-relevant than if they were not. He also found the opposite happened among low self-esteem participants: they liked products better if they were not self-relevant.

Subconscious tendency of people to prefer the numbers in the date of their birthday