Contents: In splendid three and four page
spreads on the authors' selection of the greatest Broadway musicals from
1903's Babes In Toyland to 2000's The Full Monty, the authors
offer up data, photos, synopses, song lists, opinions and tantalizing
tidbits about the most successful, most influential or most memorable shows
of the century.Each entry provides
four to ten photos that convey not only the look of the show being discussed
but the careers of many of the creators involved. For example, in the spread
for the 1930 Gershwin musical Girl Crazy, there are three shots from
the show itself and four from other shows that starred the unique Ethel
Merman who made her debut in this show. The selection of photos is
particularly commendable because those of the shows being discussed often
deliver some feel for what the show actually looked like. Rather than
concentrating on headshots of stars, the authors go for ensemble collections
or scene shots that reveal something of the set, the costumes, the color and
style of the show. There are some shots that you'll find in many other
volumes, like the historic publicity shot of the creators of Annie Get Your
Gun on the set of the show, but who could have resisted using that single
photo of Joshua Logan, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II,
Dorothy Fields and Herbert Fields all together? Still, most of the photos
will be new to most eyes - and fascinating.
The text is filled with digressions. That's not
a negative, its a decided positive! The format forces the authors to stay
pretty much on-topic with the credits, the cast list, the song list. When it
comes to the synopsis for each show, they avoid dry boilerplate and take
delightful liberties at times, creating an interestingly written and
occasionally flippant paragraph. Then, in the main text entry for each show,
they talk about what interests them about the show and its place in
Broadway's history. As a result, not all of the write-ups are actually about
the show at issue. For example, the article on 1962's Little Me
spends three of its five paragraphs on the topic of how few musical comedies
over the years have actually been "truly hilarious book shows." This, like
all their digressions, are insightful, interesting, well informed.
The authors are a well known compiler of
reference works on the American song and a musical actor who has been
working with him and others as a photo researcher and editor. Ken Bloom 's
massive American Song, Hollywood Song and Tin Pan Alley have been standard
reference works for years. Here he gets the chance to unleash his
fascination for his subject, joined by Frank Vlastnik who not only knows his
way around the source material, he has a performers perspective. He
made his Broadway debut in Big, appeared in Sweet Smell of Success and
created the roles of Bird, Lizard, Father Frog, Mole and, most memorably,
Snail who "put the 'go' in escargot" in A Year With Frog and Toad.
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