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Beautiful Mornin': The Broadway Musical in the 1940s, by Ethan Mordden
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"Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy," one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody and kickline form its musical shows. The form had been running on empty for too long, as a formula for the assembly of spare parts--star comics, generic love songs, rumba dancers, Ethel Merman. If Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn't existed, Broadway would have had to invent them; and Oklahoma! and Carousel came along just in time to announce the New Formula for Writing Musicals: Don't have a formula.
Instead, start with strong characters and atmosphere: Oklahoma!'s murderous romantic triangle set against a frontier society that has to learn what democracy is in order to deserve it; or Carousel's dysfunctional family seen in the context of class and gender war.
With the vitality and occasionally outrageous humor that Ethan Mordden's readers take for granted, the author ranges through the decade's classics--Pal Joey, Lady in the Dark, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Phinian's Rainbow, Brigadoon, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific. He also covers illuminating trivia--the spy thriller The Lady Comes Across, whose star got so into her role that she suffered paranoid hallucinations and had to be hospitalized; the smutty Follow the Girls, damned as "burlesque with a playbill" yet closing as the longest-run musical in Broadway history; Lute Song, in which Mary Martin and Nancy Reagan were Chinese; and the first "concept" musicals, Allegro and Love Life. Amid the fun, something revolutionary occurs. The 1920s created the musical and the 1930s gave it politics. In the 1940s, it found its soul.
- Sales Rank: #976377 in Books
- Color: Purple
- Published on: 1999-10-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.40" h x 1.10" w x 6.00" l, 1.24 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Once again establishing that he is as impressive a nonfiction writer as he is a novelist (How Long Has This Been Going On?; Buddies), Mordden analyzes the many notable hits (and egregious flops) of the 1940s, and describes how they figured intoAand indeed establishedAthat period's importance to the Broadway musical theater. It was a decade of many milestones, chief among which was the emergence of Rodgers and Hammerstein with 1943's unlikely groundbreaker, Oklahoma ("all Broadway gaped as these two partnered up"), followed in 1945 by Carousel ("the piece that truly tells us what a Rodgers and Hammerstein show was"). Mordden's references are up-to-the-minute (he cites the late 1990s Encores! series of revivals at New York's City Center) and his research is meticulousAin his chapter on a particularly significant '40s development, "The Cast Album," he trounces the widely held notion that Oklahoma was the first show to be recorded (it was 1900's Floradora). His gift for the piquant phrase is delightfully evident (Harold Arlen's music for a Bloomer Girl duet is "a slithery wisteria jazz"), as is his fondness for the direct approach (Irving Berlin's Miss Liberty "was a total disaster... a bomb with two wonderful elementsAthe score and the dancing"). And though he delivers the expected encomiums to such stars of the decade as Agnes de Mille and Ethel Merman, he frequently airs provocative, somewhat unusual opinions, as when he says of the composer of Lady in the Dark and Lost in the Stars, "the Broadway musical would not have been what it was without Kurt Weill." Nor would it be nearly as enjoyable without this perceptive, witty and informative guided tour. (Oct.) America, following 1997's Make Believe (the 1920s) and 1998's Coming Up Roses (the '50s).
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
For Broadway musicals, the decade of the 1940s opened with Oklahoma! and closed with South Pacific. In Mordden's opinion, Oklahoma! was a breakthrough and defining moment in musical theater due to its introduction of strong characters, atmosphere, and the integration of dance and song into the fabric of the story. Mordden (Make Believe: The Broadway Musical in the 1920s and Coming Up Roses: The Broadway Musical in the 1950s) uses the first third of his book to establish this belief, with explanations of other musicals that had innovative elements from the 1920s and 1930s. He also analyzes other 1940s musicals, such as On the Road, Annie Get Your Gun, Finian's Rainbow, and Brigadoon as well as lesser-known works. Recommended for theater collections.AJ. Sara Paulk, Coastal Plain Regional Lib., Tifton, GA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The 1940s were a time of change in the American musical. Although still sporadically popular, the old-fashioned musical comedy, with its silly plots and dependence on big stars, was being supplanted by such more serious, carefully conceived, and artfully executed shows as Oklahoma! and Carousel. This "Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution" was accompanied by another revolution, in recording technology, which produced the original cast record album, which helped transform hit shows into theatrical classics. Mordden's passionate, literate, painstakingly researched history charts the ups and downs of this crucial decade. As in his Make Believe (1997) and Coming Up Roses (1998), on the 1920s and 1950s musical, respectively, he focuses not only on a decade's big successes--in the '40s, Kiss Me Kate, Brigadoon, and Rodgers and Hammerstein's early work--but also on important shows that didn't become hits--such as, in the '40s, Lady in the Darkand shows that never had a chance. This procedure reveals how the musical form evolved, which innovations were readily accepted, and which were rejected. Essential reading for musical theater fans. Jack Helbig
Most helpful customer reviews
30 of 34 people found the following review helpful.
Another masterpiece, even when walking the edge
By John McWhorter
Ethan Mordden is my favorite author of all time -- his breadth and depth of knowledge and critical acumen are utterly unsurpassed among writers on vintage American popular culture. In this book as in all of his others, the way he can, in a few quick, masterful strokes, make you feel like you are at an obscure, unrecorded musical which now exists only as yellowing files in a few libraries is nothing less than astounding. His combination of erudtion, wit and insight never fail to take my breath away. The decade-by-decade series of which this book is the third helps make life worth living, this one helping make sense of a particularly challenging ten years in musicals' history. Near the end, Mordden does indulge in some nervy speculations that could use some more backup, though. Was homophobia really the reason WHERE'S CHARLEY didn't get a cast album? If Porter's music for KISS ME, KATE was so good because he knew the score would be preserved on a record, then why didn't he keep writing at this level afterwards? Since SOUTH PACIFIC came at the end of the decade, we'd like it to be an apotheosis of the developments over that time, but would we really say that of this fine but chunky piece of work if it had come along in 1945? If the invention of the cast album was really why shows started running longer, then why have runs continued getting even longer since? Yet Mordden is such a treasure that one simply takes these as questions you wish you could take up with the master. Overall, no one writing in his bailiwick even approaches him; this book, like all of his work, is a national treasure.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Can't get enough of Mr. Mordden's mordant musical theater observations
By Victor Thomas
One day, someone will stitch together Ethan Mordden's Broadway musical books into one cohesive review of 20th century theater. In the meantime, Beautiful Mornin' is one of his tiptop decade reviews, and critical to his book series as this is the decade when Oklahoma changed everything since it opened. He is really good at tying together separate musical efforts into a larger context, and enlivens his accounts with some decidedly opinionated takes on what's god and what's not good. That is what makes this chronicle fun. He revels in his subject, and the writing shows that.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
History Written with Wit and Style
By David
I have two advanced degrees in history and have read hundreds...and I mean hundreds of history books for one reason or another. But I have to say this series, especially this book, as well as the one immediately before and after it, are brilliant. I went into them knowing a great deal about the American musical theater but left with double the knowledge and a real, out loud laugh or two. Amazing books--if you love this very American art form, read these books!
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