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"Oh hello Mr Horne! How Bona to vada your dolly old eke!"

The above quote was taken from an extremely popular radio comedy programme in the 1960s called Round the Horne, which featured a pair of camp characters called Julian and Sandy (played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams). They used a secret gay form of language called Polari. "Bona to vada your dolly old eke" meant "nice to see your pretty old face". Gay people used this language up until around the 1970s as a way of conducting conversations in public spaces or just to have a camp laugh with each other. For some, it was just a collection of a few slang words. But others used it in a more complex way, making it sound like a proper language.

Polari is a bit of a magpie - borrowing terms from Italian, Cockney Rhyming Slang and Yiddish, as well as incorporating slang words from the gay subculture of the time. Some words were spoken as if they were spelled backwards, like ecafe (face), although to make it more complicated, ecafe was shortened to eke or eek. There are no standardised spellings incidentally, and many of the older speakers knew Polari as Palare, Parlary or Palari. Some of them get quite cross with the "Polari" spelling, which was used by the lexicographer Eric Partridge back in the 1950s and seems to have stuck.

Polari was popular in theatres around the UK and many actors still know a few words. An older form of it called Parlyaree was used in the 19th century by travelling entertainers and fairground people, and from there it found its way into the music halls and then the theatres. Backstage, dancers were called wallopers and singers were voches. Another popular place to have heard it would be in the cabins of the crew of glamorous cruise liners (latties on water). In the '50s and '60s more than a few gay men joined the Merchant Navy to serve as waiters or stewards and there was a strong sense of community among them. The Merch' was a place of freedom for these men, who were able to escape the oppressive atmosphere back home. They camped it up, put on drag shows and generally had a whale of a time, often making lifelong friends and forming relationships. They called themselves queens or girls and "christened" one another with Camp Names like The Black Widow, Scotch Flo or Lana Turner. Sometimes these names could contain a little sting in them, to stop someone from getting too uppity. And it was not unknown for these men to get into relationships with the butch straight men onboard.

Once women and people from countries like Goa and Mexico started to get employed in the '70s and '80s, the gay subculture onboard declined quite a bit and Polari itself was starting to be seen as superfluous. The Round the Horne sketches in the late 1960s had introduced Polari to the mainstream public and homosexuality was partially decriminalised in 1967 so speaking in a secret code was starting to be seen as a bit naff (itself a Polari word). Times were changing and many younger gay people wanted to be out and were concerned with political rights. Polari was starting to be seen as an old man's thing and not very politically correct.

But by the 1990s views started to change again. A group of male nuns called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence adopted Polari in their ceremonies. The Sisters are a political organisation providing help to gay communities in various ways. They canonised the gay film director Derek Jarman, months before he died from an AIDS related illness. Jarman said it was one of the happiest moments of his life. And gradually, interest in this secret and almost forgotten language grew, with academics like me getting in on the act - I made Polari the subject of my PhD in the late 1990s, interviewing some of the original speakers and charting its history. It was a result of that research that I wrote Hello Sailor with Jo Stanley which focussed on the untold story of gay seafarers in the Merchant Navy, which also led to the exhibition at Merseyside Maritime Museum.

These days, thanks to the internet, there's a lot more information about Polari out there, and it's being discovered by newer generations. It's even gotten a little bit cool again, with artists using it in a range of artwork. It is sometimes used as a kind of brand name to label gay bars and cafes, and there's a clothing range named after it. It even has an Iphone app!

However, it's not welcome everywhere. In February 2017 an Evensong in Polari was performed at Westcott House in Cambridge as a way of sending an inclusive message to LGBT people. Part of the translated version reads "Fabeness be to the Auntie and to the Homie Chavvie, and to the Fantabulosa Fairy". Some members of the audience were upset by this and complained, resulting in a bit of a media storm and apologies having to be made. There were divided opinions about whether Polari had a place in a religious ceremony and whether the reaction was over the top. Whatever you think about it, Polari still has the capacity to shock and surprise - and that's what it's always done. Eric Partridge called Polari a Cinderella among languages. But I like to think of it as the Ugly Sisters - brash, funny and with all the best lines in the show.

My book, Fabulosa: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language came out in 2019. You can also have a vada at the companion website.

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Polari and the Hidden History of Gay Seafarers

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"Oh hello Mr Horne! How Bona to vada your dolly old eke!"

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The History Behind Why We Say a Person 'Came Out of the Closet'

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Why do we say people "come out of the closet" when they let others know about their sexualities? The reason dates to the early 20th century.

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Mae West of the Late 1920s was a Diva and Gay Icon 

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Mae West of the Late 1920s was a Diva and Gay Icon 

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As a marginalized group, it is no surprise that gays are often characterized by stereotypes. Prior to the 2000s, gay men’s portrayal on…

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While watching a screening of Paris is Burning hosted by the Smithsonian Latino Center, I was entranced by the dazzling participants as they competed, fiercely owning the floor in their glamorous gowns. Twenty-five years ago, this famous cult documentary captured the lives and culture of African American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in New York City drag balls. The film captured a slice of the 1980s unknown to many, with roots in a fascinating culture.

In 1869, within Harlem's Hamilton Lodge, drag balls began. As the secret of the balls spread within the gay community, they became a safe place for gay men to congregate. Despite their growing popularity, drag balls were deemed illegal and immoral by mainstream society. A moral reform organization known as the Committee of Fourteen periodically investigated the balls. In 1916, the committee released a report detailing the scandalous behavior they witnessed. The report described a scene filled with "phenomenal" "male perverts" in expensive frocks and wigs, looking like women. The committee later released 130 reports describing its visits, demanding that such perversion must desist.

By the 1920s, the balls had gained more public visibility. What were once known as Masquerade and Civic Balls were dubbed "Faggots Balls" by the general public after it became well known that these spectacles were frequented by gay, lesbian, and transgender people. The balls did not attract just queer patrons, though straight artists, writers, and ball appreciators outside the LGBTQ community frequented these spectacles for their renowned reputation. Among them were Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, two writers who found themselves attracted to the exotic nature of the balls. The writers, in their co-authored The Young And Evil, detailed their extraordinary experience on the floor as "a scene whose celestial flavor and cerulean coloring no angelic painter or nectarish poet has ever conceived . . . lit up like high mass." Though drag balls were created for fun and as a place to connect with other gay men, the association of the notorious balls to LGBTQ people helped pave a way for the establishment of queer culture.

The balls were crucial in the creation and maintenance of LGBTQ culture. Historian George Chauncey has pointed out that Harlem "enhanced the solidarity of the gay world and symbolized the continuing centrality of gender inversion to gay culture." Powering through harassment and arrests, Harlem became a "homosexual mecca." Police, politicians, and mainstream society found themselves simply unable to suspend the famous ball scene. Rather than abandoning the scene, the participants fought for change and opportunity. From the early days of the balls, remarkable persistence of patrons and ball organizers in the face of adversity made the drag ball scene unstoppable. It is this fighting spirit that allowed balls to thrive, and that spirit lives on through today within the LGBTQ community.

For more information about the early drag ball scene, the author recommends George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940.
Oliver Stabbe is a former intern in the Division of Medicine and Science and an undergraduate student at the University of Rochester.

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Queens and queers: The rise of drag ball culture in the 1920s

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While watching a screening of Paris is Burning hosted by the Smithsonian Latino Center, I was entranced by the dazzling participants as they competed, fiercely owning the floor in their glamorous gowns. Twenty-five years ago, this famous cult documentary captured the lives and culture of African American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in New York City drag balls.

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William Dorsey Swann: The First Self-Proclaimed Drag Queen

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William Dorsey Swann: The First Self-Proclaimed Drag Queen

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In the late 1880s, a formerly enslaved man named William Dorsey Swann started hosting private balls known as drags, a name possibly derived from " grand rag," an antiquated term for masquerade balls. Held in secret in Washington, D.C., these parties soon caught authorities' attention.

As the Washington Criticreported in January 1887, police officers who raided one such gathering were surprised to encounter six Black men "dressed in elegant female attire," including "corsets, bustles, long hose and slippers." The following April, the Evening Starreported on a raid that targeted men in "female attire of many colors," as well as "gaudy costumes of silk and satin." On both occasions, authorities arrested the party guests and charged them with "being suspicious characters."

Journalist and historian Channing Gerard Joseph first learned about Swann's parties in 2005, when he was a graduate student browsing an online newspaper database. The article he came across, a Washington Post story from April 1888, spotlighted Swann, "who was arrayed in a gorgeous dress of cream-colored satin." He "rushed toward the officers and tried to prevent their entering."

Joseph's chance find marked the beginning of a yearslong quest to uncover Swann's story-and, with it, the history of drag in the United States. He chronicles the results of this research in an upcoming book titled House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens-and Changed the World. Drawing on extensive archival research, Joseph presents a compelling portrait of the nation's first self-proclaimed drag queen. The historian proudly positions Swann as the "first queer American hero."

The identification of Swann as the first reported drag queen in the U.S. is a "major event," says Jen Manion, a historian at Amherst College. "LGTBQ history is hampered by the lack of diaries and personal letters and family papers, because you just don't put [those feelings] in writing." For much of recorded history, Manion adds, being gay or bisexual was considered "a sin; it's illegal."

Joseph says his research resurfaces the "experiences of queer people, ... historical experiences, not fictionalized experiences, documenting them rather than speculating." These findings, in turn, helped him pinpoint the birth of "the drag queen."

The definition of drag is subject to debate. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, the term refers to "a type of entertainment where people dress up and perform, often in highly stylized ways." Encyclopedia Britannica notes that drag often seeks to undo "gender norms through doing (or dressing) the part of the opposite sex."

The concept of drag "existed for some period of time unknown," says Joseph. But the term only came into use in 19th-century Great Britain, where Joseph says it referred to "a gathering of people, particularly men, who were dressing as women." In 1871, two members of the British aristocracy were put on trial after they were caught dressing as women in public. Authorities charged Ernest "Stella" Boulton and Frederick "Fanny" Park with "conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offense." A jury found the defendants not guilty but handed down a minor indictment to the men for wearing women's clothing.

Cross-dressing, which is often a component of drag, has a lengthy history on both the stage and the screen, from Elizabethan-era performances in which men played women to Japanese Kabuki theater. In the early 20th century, performers like Julian Eltinge became stars by impersonating women during the vaudeville craze. In the 1950s, Milton Berle dressed as a woman on his variety TV show, as did comedian Flip Wilson in the early 1970s. In the early 1980s, the sitcom " Bosom Buddies " starred Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari as two young men who disguise themselves as women so they can live in an inexpensive, women-only apartment building.

While some historians would consider all of these cross-dressing performances drag, Joseph takes a narrower approach, believing that drag requires two key elements: an intentional celebration of gender expression and a competition. He points out that Shakespearean actors didn't dress up as women as a form of self-expression but rather because women were barred from appearing on stage during Tudor times. (The "grand rag" theory put forth by Joseph is one explanation for the origins of the word "drag"; another theory suggests the term originally referred to how long dresses worn by male actors "dragged" across the stage.)

Historian Kathleen Casey, author of The Prettiest Girl on Stage Is a Man: Race and Gender Benders in American Vaudeville, takes a much wider view of drag. While she includes all manner of cross-dressing performances in her definition, she doesn't think there will ever be "a stable meaning of the term 'drag.'" Casey adds, "Drag is about race, class and sexuality as much as it is about gender. If we focus exclusively on only one of these intersections, we fail to see how drag performances are layered across time and space and can have multiple meanings for different audiences." Drag, she says, is really about a performer's own perspective of their work, as well as audiences' understanding of this work.

Many of the "contemporary categories and terms that we use in modern life to describe LGBTQ people or sexual and gender minorities" date to the late 19th century, says Manion. "Lesbian," for instance, was first used in a medical journal in 1883. The historian adds, "We debate amongst ourselves as scholars when it seems appropriate to use contemporary terms to describe things [in] the past, but in this case, these were terms used by ... the people at the time as well."

Swann's story is tightly woven with the celebration of Black Americans' emancipation from slavery. Months before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862 ended slavery in the nation's capital. The April 1862 act freed more than 3,000 enslaved people and drew thousands of Black Americans to Washington, which quickly became a center of Black political, intellectual and cultural life. Between 1860 and 1870, the city's Black population tripled in size, from 14,136 to 43,404.

Swann was born into slavery in Washington County, Maryland, around 1858. According to a 2021 entry by Joseph in the African American National Biography, Swann was the fifth of 13 children born to enslaved housekeeper Mary Jane Younker and enslaved wheat farmer and musician Andrew Jackson "Jack" Swann. (His biological father may have been a white man, but Joseph hasn't found definitive evidence confirming this theory.) After the Civil War ended in 1865, Swann's parents bought a plot of land and started a farm. Encouraged to work as soon as he was old enough, the young Swann found employment as a hotel waiter. In 1880, he relocated to Washington, where he worked as a janitor and sent money back home to his family.

Like Washington more broadly, the capital's underground queer networks were divided into white and Black communities that rarely intersected. As a 2019 report prepared for the city's Historic Preservation Office notes, "It was a hushed fact that Lafayette Square in D.C., which is adjacent to the White House, was a known cruising spot for gay men, both Black and white," but the majority of these individuals were only interested in liaisons with partners of the same race. An exception to this trend was Washington's drag scene, which often attracted mixed-race audiences.

Forging a place for himself in the city's queer Black community, Swann held parties that Joseph deems the first documented "drag balls" in American history. Held in secret, they provided a safe space for gender expression but were risky to attend. "A large but undetermined number managed to flee during the police raids, but the names of those arrested and jailed were printed in the papers, where the men became targets of public scorn," wrote Joseph for the in 2020. "In post-Civil War America, there was very little patience for men who subverted gender norms." Sentences for those charged with attending drag balls ranged from around three to ten months.

At Swann's gatherings, guests donned women's clothing or men's suits and danced to folk music. The balls included a competitive element, a "resistance dance" that hearkened back to the antebellum era, says Joseph. Known as a cakewalk, the contest was originally held by enslaved people on Southern plantations. Coupled dancers "executed walking steps and figures in precise formations as if in mimicry of the white man's attitudes and manners," writes Richard Kislan in The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theater. Enslavers, seemingly unaware they were being mocked, judged the contest and gave the winning couple a cake as a prize.

Around this same time, Swann became enthralled by the " queens of freedom" crowned at Washington's Emancipation Day parades-annual celebrations first held in April 1866. Historically, each neighborhood was represented by a woman who "personified freedom for Black people," according to Joseph. Inspired by these queens, Swann started crowning the winners of his dance competitions the "queen of the ball," says Joseph.

Swann also adopted the title for himself. As the Washington Critic noted on April 13, 1888, "William Dorsey, who, by the way, was the 'queen,'" was one of 13 people arrested during a raid on a "drag party" the previous night.

"There's this concept of drag, which is separate, and there's the concept of queens of freedom, and in D.C. in this particular time, post-slavery, post-Reconstruction, these two concepts collide," says Joseph. "To identify as a drag queen, which is what William Dorsey Swann did, is combining these two strains, these two cultural traditions."

The 1880s saw a " wave of laws passed in cities all across the country explicitly banning cross-dressing," says Manion, who adds that the rules were "applied very selectively" and were riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. The arrests of Swann and his friends were "even more sensationalized in the press and probably drew the attention of authorities because most of the participants were Black," Manion explains. "And this is in Jim Crow America. For queer ... Black Americans to just see so much joy and freedom in their gender expression at this time was definitely seen as a threat."

In late 1895, authorities arrested Swann for "keeping a disorderly house"-a euphemism for a brothel. As the Evening Star reported on January 13, 1896, "a number of men, white and colored, were found in this place, which Judge Miller characterized as a 'hell of iniquity.'"

The court sentenced Swann to 300 days in prison. After serving three months of his sentence, Swann, who had pled not guilty, filed a petition for a pardon from President Grover Cleveland, says Netisha Currie, an archives specialist at the National Archives, which houses a copy of the petition. In a show of support, 30 of Swann's friends signed the document. But U.S. Attorney A.A. Birney argued vehemently against the pardon, stating,"The prisoner was in fact convicted of the most horrible and disgusting offenses known to the law; an offense so disgusting that it is unnamed. ... His evil example in the community must have been most corrupting."

Ultimately, Cleveland denied the petition. Still, wrote Joseph for the Nation, Swann's unsuccessful attempt to clear his name represents the earliest documented example of an American activist taking "specific legal and political steps to defend the queer community's right to gather without the threat of criminalization, suppression or police violence."

As Manion says, "What's unique about [Joseph's] work is that it captures a collective community. When we have been able to identify queer and trans figures in this era and earlier, we find them in isolation. And we can seldom connect the dots to say, 'Oh, these two couples were friends. They always hung out.' ... We have very little evidence of collective socializing."

Writing in the African American National Biography, Joseph noted that Swann, "feeling defeated and likely unable to find work given his growing infamy ... had retired from Washington's queer underground by 1900 and returned home to Hancock," where he died in December 1925. But drag balls continued in D.C., even expanding to other cities and becoming public events in the early 20th century. One of Swann's younger brothers, a tailor named Daniel J. Swann, continued in his sibling's footsteps by costuming the Washington drag community until his own death in 1954.

No known pictures of Swann survive. But his contributions to queer activism in Washington will soon be recognized with the redesignation of a stretch of Swann Street Northwest in his honor. The street was originally named for Thomas Swann, a former Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor who bore no relation to the drag queen.

"We have seen so much anti-trans and anti-drag legislation and rhetoric around the country in a very problematic way," says Brooke Pinto, a D.C. Council member who introduced the bill. "In Washington, D.C., where we are proud to have so many trans residents, we [need to] speak up and recognize, sometimes through symbolism, sometimes through legislation, how important these issues are."

The bill also calls for a historic plaque to be posted in Dupont Circle, a Washington neighborhood with a rich LGBTQ history. The plaque will sit at the corner of New Hampshire Avenue, Swann Street Northwest and 17th Street Northwest.

"One of the things that's so exciting about this case is that it is an African American man who was formerly enslaved," says Manion. Such individuals "just don't get ... recognition in our histories of LGBTQ people, in part because we usually can't find them in the archives. But ... Swann was hiding in plain sight."

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The First Self-Proclaimed Drag Queen Was a Formerly Enslaved Man

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In the late 19th century, William Dorsey Swann's private parties attracted unwelcome attention from authorities and the press

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As RuPaul's Drag Race invades the United Kingdom, drag's moment is definitely ascendent. But this isn't the first time queer performers have captured the mainstream spotlight. In the 1920s and '30s, drag exploded into popular culture in the United States, with female impersonators packing houses, attracting legions of (straight) fans, and breaking into motion pictures, popular music, and the Broadway stage.

The catalyst? Believe it or not, it was Prohibition that fueled drag's first big moment in the U.S. Exactly a century ago (October 28, 1919), Congress passed the Volstead Act, prohibiting the production and sale of alcohol in America. Underground clubs proliferated immediately. It's estimated that by the 1920s, there were more than 20,000 speakeasies in New York City alone.

"Before the Volstead Act, you'd go to the bar in your neighborhood where you were comfortable and everyone knew you," drag historian Joe E. Jeffreys tells NewNowNext. "Suddenly alcohol goes underground, and you have to go out of your neighborhood and socialize with people you would have never socialized with before. So now gay people and straight people are put together in the same place, all clumped together. The atmosphere was more risqué-and the entertainment became more sensational."

At this point, Julian Eltinge was already the most acclaimed female impersonator-and one of the top-earning entertainers of his day, with his own Broadway theater. "People flocked to his act," says Jeffreys, who teaches a course at the New School in NYC about Drag Race 's cultural impact. "He'd come out and tell a little story and maybe sing."
A poster for one of Eltinge's shows in 1911.
Like RuPaul, Eltinge had a large straight female fanbase. Also like Ru, he was a canny merchandiser, producing his own magazine and makeup line. "One of the reasons he appealed to women so much is he'd come out and talk about the latest fashions, you know, and demonstrate some of the looks," Jeffreys adds. "Some historians talk about his act in terms of 'whiteness,' how he was portraying the ideal white woman of the period."

But Eltinge went to great lengths to defend his heterosexuality, staging fights and posing for pictures wearing overalls and feeding chickens at his farm. "I'm not gay," he once told reporters, "I just like pearls."

By the 1920s, though, a new kind of female impersonator was gaining traction-one that, if not openly gay, was more winkingly ambiguous about their sexuality. The drag balls of Harlem were drawing thousands of spectators, of all races and genders. Billed as "the Creole Fashion Plate," Karyl Norman made his debut the same year Prohibition was passed. Wearing gowns sewn by his mother, Norman was celebrated onstage in NYC for his octave range and skill at quick-change. (Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly used her clout to get morals charges filed against Norman dropped in Detroit.)

Then in 1930 came the "Pansy Craze," a surge in popularity for drag acts in NYC, Los Angeles, and other major cities in the U.S. There was Barbette, a trapeze and high-wire acrobat who performed in full drag until the finale, when he would rip off his wig and strike a masculine pose. Sent to tour Europe in the 1920s by the William Morris Agency, Barbette captured the attention of Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, and other cultural luminaries. (He was banned from performing in England in 1922 after being caught having sex with another man.)

In the early 1920s, Bert Savoy became one of the first female impersonators to be open about their sexuality.

"He was basically like, 'I'm a gay person and I'm up here in this dress and we all know it,'" Jeffreys says. "It was the opposite of Eltinge, trying to distance himself from that connotation." Like many queens of today, Savoy was renowned for his catchphrases-including "You don't know the half of it, dearie!" and "You slay me!" Mae West admitted she incorporated some of Savoy's saucinesses into her stage persona.

Another drag performer pushing the envelope with outrageously raunchy material was Rae Bourbon, who played Carnegie Hall with his one-man show Don't Call Me Madam. (One of his original songs was "Mr. Wong Has Got The Biggest Tong In China.") Bourbon befriended West, who cast him in two plays, as well as other celebrities like Bob Hope and Jean Harlow. In 1931, Bourbon even modeled women's dresses in a California department store.

But it wasn't just female impersonators garnering attention nationwide. This was the era of the pansy: Rather than wear women's clothing, a pansy would pantomime the stereotype of an effeminate man. He might be gay or straight, but the pansy made audiences laugh with his swishy gait and lispy voice. "This period is really when gender presentation was starting to cement itself in the public imagination with sexuality," Jeffreys says. "Before this, there wasn't a lot of talk about homosexuality or heterosexuality in general. It was buried in academia, in the scientific realms."

That was changing, though, and cross-dressing and female impersonation started to be linked to homosexuality around this point in history. According to Jeffreys, certain pockets of the U.S. began to pass legislation regulating how many items of women's clothing a man could wear. "Some places where you could not have a female impersonator," Jeffreys adds, "you could still have a pansy act."

One of the top pansy performers of the era was Jean Malin, who headlined NYC's swanky Club Abbey in 1930. Clad in a tuxedo, he was described as "a six-foot-tall, 200-pound bruiser who also had an attitude and a lisp." Singing songs like "I'd Rather Be Spanish Than Mannish," the openly gay Malin would walk through the room and work the crowd, flirting with men and women alike. He also appeared in numerous Broadway shows and several films.

"Malin was a tremendous success and other club owners followed the lead," wrote the Syracuse Journal. "Before the mainstream knew what happened, there was a hand on a hip for every light on Broadway." There were other pansy stars, like Bruz Fletcher, who headlined Club Bali in Los Angeles, and Harry Rose, who flitted his wrists as he sang "Frankfurter Sandwiches."
A Julian Eltinge poster from 1913.
"To some extent, the pansy was a very dandy figure," Jeffreys explains. "A really well-dressed guy, more than likely with some makeup on. So it was a kind of quasi-drag but not really female impersonation. It was 'gay' drag."

It was the end of Prohibition in 1933 that extinguished the Pansy Craze. The speakeasies shuttered, and authorities began paying attention again to what was going on in bars. And the growing popularity of movies and radio put the final nails in vaudeville. Broadway's Palace Theater, where many pansy acts performed, was converted into a movie theater in 1932.

A year later, Malin died in a car accident. He was just 25.

Many other stars of the Pansy Craze also met tragic ends: Bert Savoy was struck and killed by lightning in 1923. Unable to find work as an out performer, Bruz Fletcher died by suicide at age 34. And, in 1967, Rae Bourbon was convicted of being an accomplice to murder, eventually dying in prison.

Drag went back into the closet and would remain there until after Stonewall. "In the '50s and '60s it was illegal in New York to even sell alcohol to a known homosexual," Jeffreys notes. "The last thing you want to do is have something like a drag show going on to attract more attention."

It would take decades before drag regained the spotlight, bigger and bolder than ever. But the legacy of the Pansy Craze can be seen in many performers of today: Earlier this month-almost 80 years after Rae Bourbon played Carnegie Hall-the equally ribald Bianca del Rio brought her show to the legendary venue.

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How Prohibition Helped Launch America's First Great Drag Explosion

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This Monday, October 28, marks the 100th anniversary of Prohibition.

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"Another genre of performance gained prominence during this time period: drag. 'Rather than uplifting the general populace’s morality, Prohibition drove middle class and other ‘respectable’ people into the underground,' Dr. Lady J (Jeremiah Davenport), the official drag historian to the Austin International Drag Festival, says, 'where they stood alongside queer folks and drag performers who already operated outside the law.' Soon, the art of gender bending ruled New York City. 'Suddenly the average man was exposed to the ‘Pansy Craze’ already on the rise with New York’s hipper crowds.'”

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Inside the underground spaces that brought dating, drag queens, and craft cocktails to the mainstream.

Though the Prohibition era is often defined by what people couldn't do, the speakeasy opened American culture to possibilities that were unthinkable at the time. On the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of Prohibition, we look back at the ways this time period changed American culture forever. Before speakeasies, women weren't allowed to go to bars, casual dating wasn't a thing, no one was ordering craft cocktails, and drag queens weren't considered a typical form of weekend entertainment. While the National Prohibition Act (aka the Volstead Act)-banning the production, importation, and distribution of alcoholic beverages-intended to stifle people's desire to get together and have a good time, it ended up increasing it tenfold.

Lasting from 1920 to 1933, Prohibition occurred in lockstep with major cultural movements of the time, like women's suffrage, the industrial boom, mass immigration, and The Great Depression. For many people, breaking one law (the Volstead Act) gave them an unspoken license to break the Victorian norms of their parents' generation, ushering in what F. Scott Fitzgerald described as "a whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure."

The epicenter of this cultural transformation was New York City, the so-called "City on a Still" (as in "distiller"), where as many as 300,000 speakeasies are said to have operated over the thirteen years that Prohibition lasted. Despite the law, it seemed everybody in the country, from former President Warren G. Harding to the local clergy, continued to imbibe, and the resilience of the speakeasy proved the nation's resolve to do just that, while bringing people from all different backgrounds together in the process. In a time of rampant segregation, black and white patrons danced and drank together for the first time at Harlem jazz joints like Connie's Inn, the Hotcha, and the Spider's Web. While women weren't typically allowed in men-only saloons, speakeasies were among the first spaces outside of church where men and women could gather and socialize together. Traditional courtship evolved from a family-supervised affair to a personal choice. And the younger generation coined a new term for this romantically liberated practice, "dating."

"I think the introduction of letting men and women socialize in the same room, it opened up a new experience," Brendan Bartley, manager of two popular NYC speakeasies, says. At the time, not only could women date, but society's expectations of who and what a woman should be fell completely by the wayside once inside speakeasies. "People like Texas Guinan (known as the queen of the speakeasies), especially in New York City, set the standard of what social drinking was in speakeasy bars and that kind of exclusive atmosphere, that was the big picture for them. And people like her put a foothold for women in the 1920s in bartending and being a part of that culture." Flapper girls, with their bobbed hairdos and short skirts, epitomized this cultural shift. They were known for bucking conventions of "acceptable" feminine behavior and pushing their way into traditionally male spaces. For perhaps the first time in the nation's history, women were not only allowed to cuss, drink, and smoke like a man in public, they were encouraged to.

Another genre of performance gained prominence during this time period: drag. "Rather than uplifting the general populace's morality, Prohibition drove middle class and other 'respectable' people into the underground," Dr. Lady J (Jeremiah Davenport), the official drag historian to the Austin International Drag Festival, says, "where they stood alongside queer folks and drag performers who already operated outside the law." Soon, the art of gender bending ruled New York City. "Suddenly the average man was exposed to the 'Pansy Craze' already on the rise with New York's hipper crowds."

The Harlem drag balls drew thousands of spectators, and the Pansy Craze gave rise to openly gay performers like Gene Malin, the " six-foot-tall, 200-pound bruiser...[with] an attitude and a lisp," whose headline show at the ritzy Club Abbey made him one of the highest paid nightclub entertainers of 1930. Legendary female impersonator Julian Eltinge ran a magazine widely read by women for its pro makeup tips. Paving the way for future queens a century later, Eltinge even launched his own line of cosmetics, corsets, and shoes.

Also at this time, gossip columns gained popularity, launching a number of speakeasy trends into the mainstream, including fashion. As images of bobs, boas, sequins, cloche hats, loose fabrics, and high hemlines proliferated on newsstands nationwide, women dressed, dyed their hair, did their makeup, and used the slang of the day like the It Girls they read about. Though the 1920s are best known for women's fashion, they impacted men's as well, with the vested three-piece suit-the iconic style of Al Capone and other tabloid mobsters of the era-being the sartorial standard for a night on the town. Craft cocktails might be the epitome of glamour today, but their origin story is slightly less so. In order to disguise the often offensive taste of bathtub moonshine (which was sourced from industrial-grade alcohols), clubs began devising cocktail recipes. They would add notes of citrus, grenadine, honey, mint, pineapple, and other potent flavors that could successfully mask the liquor's foul taste. The trend spawned some of the first modern-day craft cocktails, like the honey-and-lemon-infused gin cocktail, the Bee's Knees, and the Last Word, a mix of gin, green chartreuse, and maraschino.

While Prohibition is now a century behind us-and we're no longer drinking bathtub hooch-in recent years, there's been a resurgence of the speakeasy, with upscale, covert bars popping up in major cities all over the country. Hidden behind coffee shops and laundromats, these modern-day speakeasies replicate their Prohibition-era counterparts by offering patrons something that's hard to find in today's culture: privacy. "I think the appeal is that old-world mentality of being in an environment where you're tucked away from anything going on in the outside world," Bartley says. "Especially in New York City, where there's a lot of hustle and bustle. In a speakeasy, there's no windows, there's no clocks, you're hidden." There's also an exclusivity factor that people enjoy, Barley says. "Some places have secret passages. It's like belonging to a small fraternity of people. Those who know, know."

Prohibition marked a major turning point in American culture. It was a decade of unprecedented progress and unspeakable despair that challenged the national spirit and necessitated an outlet for people to escape and be themselves. It proved that bars and saloons were an integral part of the community, one people weren't willing to give up. If it was the bootleg liquor that made the '20s roar, it was the first loves and lasting traditions born in speakeasies all over the country that changed the culture forever.

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How New York City Speakeasies Changed American Culture Forever

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Inside the underground spaces that brought dating, drag queens, and craft cocktails to the mainstream.

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this man swore up and down he was straight

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We like to imagine ourselves on a straight line moving forever forward, embracing different identities as the years go by and society becomes incrementally more progressive. But we actually go around and around in circles, sometimes taking steps forward alongside giant leaps back. And while many conservatives would like to paint drag queens as a thoroughly modern phenomenon of a so-called degenerate society, the truth is that they've been a thriving part of the entertainment community from the very beginning. Julian Eltinge was one of the most famous female impersonators of the early 20th century, charming audiences both on the New York stage and on film screens across the country during the nascent silent era. His contributions helped define an art form that today allows for self-expression beyond the constraints of traditional gender norms.

Julian Eltinge's career as a female impersonator began early: He participated in the Boston Cadets Revue dressed as a girl at the age of 10, and while living in Butte, Montana as a teenager, he performed in women's clothing to entertain ranchers and cowboys. When his father learned of this, he was punished soundly and shipped back to Boston, where he lived with his aunt and continued to study dance. As a young man, he performed as part of the Boston Bank Officers' Association, which occasionally put on drag shows as part of a fundraising drive. From there, his reputation began to grow.

Throughout the first decade of the 1900s, Eltinge dipped his toe into vaudeville, performing simply as "Eltinge" and creating an illusion of femininity so convincing that he would end his shows by taking off his wig, shocking audiences who were apparently unaware that they were actually watching a man in drag. A 1904 review in the Boston Globe summarized his unique talents, writing, "Eltinge has the grace and self-poise which a well-bred young woman naturally possesses and he never makes any of those ridiculous mistakes which give the man in woman's clothes almost invariably 'away'." In 1906, he even performed in front of King Edward VII at Windsor Castle, after which the impressed monarch allegedly gifted him with an English bulldog. He had a wildly successful career in New York City, where he appeared in a string of popular musical comedies on Broadway, all written expressly to showcase his talents. By the mid-1910s, Eltinge was one of the highest paid actors in New York. Then he set his eye - as so many do - on Hollywood.

Eltinge had a brief but significant career in the early days of film, ultimately appearing in 14 different movies. In 1914, he made a splash with The Crinoline Girl and Cousin Lucy, both of which were adaptations of productions he had done on Broadway, capitalizing on the fame that followed him to the big screen. Three years later, he starred opposite Florence Vidor in the unfortunately lost film The Countess Charming, in which he plays a man who, desperate to rejoin his social circle after insulting the wrong family, poses as a wealthy countess. Interestingly enough, although the film was subject to edits from local censorship boards, it seems that elements of the plot dealing with petty crime and thievery drew more ire than anything to do with crossdressing.

His most fascinating film performance came in 1920, when he starred in An Adventuress. Eltinge plays a man who, in trying to overthrow the despotic leader of an island community, dresses up as a female participant in the coup. Although he is the star of the show, and much of the plot is built around his famous drag performance, An Adventuress is far better known now because of its two supporting actors: Rudolph Valentino and Virginia Rappe. Within a few years of Valentino's appearance in this film, he became one of the most popular on-screen lotharios in Hollywood, his dark good looks and exotic charms casting a spell over audiences until his untimely death from sepsis following an operation at the age of 31. Rappe's future was even more tragic: just a year after An Adventuress was released, she died under mysterious circumstances after attending a party with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. He was charged with murder, and though he was ultimately acquitted of any crime, questions remain as to his actual involvement in Rappe's death.

Throughout the 1920s, Eltinge continued to split his time between live theater and Hollywood, making a few more movies (most capitalizing on his stage persona - if he had reservations about being typecast, they didn't surface until later in his career). But by the end of the decade, his star began to fall for a variety of reasons. Ironically, the fact that his career suffered as he aged is mostly due to ; as a younger man, he was able to captivate audiences by presenting them with a vision of a beautiful woman in the bloom of her youth. As he reached his 40s, however, he experienced the same painful transition that his female colleagues of the same age were going through, fostered by the belief that middle-aged women are less compelling to audiences. And because he was a little older and heavier, his physique was no longer a match for the female body type that was in vogue in the 1920s, the thin and boyish flapper.

Throughout his career, he had been an object of fascination for curious audiences, more akin (in their minds, at least) to a magician than anything sexual in nature. This was likely aided by the fact that he maintained a hypermasculine public persona in his everyday life, successfully decoupling his performances of femininity from what viewers might be inclined to view as perversion. Because of this, he maintained a popular stage and screen act for decades without causing too much of a fuss for audiences who might otherwise object on moral grounds. The Los Angeles Times summed it up neatly in 1912, writing, "The Eltinge performance is different from all others in that it cannot possibly arouse distaste."

But by the time the Great Depression and the austere 1930s rolled around, his style of crossdressing (and vaudeville in general) were on a rapid decline. Although homosexual activity was not nationally decriminalized in the United States until 2003, the country has gone through specific periods where the LGBTQ community was more strictly policed than at other times in history - and the 1930s definitely represented an uptick in persecution, perhaps as a reaction against the more sexually liberated 1920s. Female impersonation became more stigmatized, seen as a perversion rather than a performance.

His last on-screen drag performance was in a 1931 Poverty Row production called Maid to Order, which didn't make much of a splash with audiences. From there, Julian Eltinge struggled to maintain a foothold in a Hollywood that clearly didn't know what to do with him. He was known exclusively for drag, but drag didn't sell anymore - to say nothing of the fact that Eltinge himself was vocal about wanting to try his hand at roles that didn't hinge on female impersonation. He got his wish in 1940 with his final film appearance in If I Had My Way, an otherwise forgettable Bing Crosby musical comedy in which Eltinge plays himself without any elements of drag.

Although Julian Eltinge's career tapered off as female impersonation became less popular, he has nonetheless cemented his legacy within the art form. At one point, he was one of the highest paid actors in the entire world. He went on global tours performing to mesmerized audiences. He even had a theater named after him in New York City, honoring his artistic achievements. But more than anything, he represents the vibrancy and long history of drag as a unique brand of performance art both on stage and in film - one that has never been given the respect it deserves.

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Julian Eltinge and the Early Days of Drag

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A look at the groundbreaking performer, who became a sensation on stage and screen in the early 20th century.

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The danger and segregation of bars in the 1920s paved the way for drag balls. The first drag ball goes as far back as 1867, when both males and females at the Hamilton Lodge in Harlem dressed up and competed for awards for the best gown or feminine figure. The drag ball tradition goes back to the '20s - minus the voguing we see today. They were often house parties where Black queer people would congregate together.

By 1932, the term was headline-worthy. An article from The Afro-American newspaper titled "Queer Sex Busy Planning Drags" detailed a "drag" attended by 300 people - some with a "keenness for blond wigs" - and plans for upcoming drags. The participants were called "members of the third sex," a term that described same-sex attracted masculine women or feminine men.

During this time period, there was a division among queer white men: You were either a masculine guy who blended in, or you were a fairy - feminine and dressed in drag.

In bars, half the crowd would wear drag to get around laws that forbade members of the same-sex from dancing together. (Of course, there were also laws that criminalized wearing clothing articles from the opposite sex.)

In the 1950s, drag queens began performing in bars and spaces that specifically catered to gay people, like the Black Cat in San Francisco.

And, as more gay bars began to pop up, drag solidified itself as a gay art form - not just straight men impersonating women for the sake of comedy.

The rise of masculinity in 1970s gay culture diminished the popularity of drag queens, but drag found its way into pop culture. In John Waters' 1972 film Pink Flamingos, Divine scandalized audiences with her filthy character and became an icon along the way. Meanwhile, the disco singer Sylvester sung hits like "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" in drag to international acclaim.

Into the 1980s, "drag" meant trying to look as much like a woman as possible. It was a peak time for balls with categories, like "butch queen first time in drag at a ball" and "high fashion evening wear" that we see in Paris Is Burning. It poured out of balls and onto the streets of New York City, with the annual Wigstock festival kicking off in 1984. While drag had entered pop culture, the 1990 documentary shocked audiences - and made drag more visible.

Not long after, The Washington Post wrote about the honorific: " America's favorite drag queen." In 1993, RuPaul went from New York's gritty East Village scene to the stage of the March on Washington to perform his hit song "Supermodel."

"People ask me all the time where I see myself in 10 years. I see myself in the White House, baby."

The word only continued to get more popular from there.

There was the hit movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in 1994 and the moment wasn't just for the queens.

Drag kings achieved notoriety in the 1990s, with performers like Murray Hill, books devoted to performing masculinity, and even the first International Drag King Extravaganza in 1999.

As the visibility grew, the 90s made way for more distinctions between drag and other identities in the LGBTQ+ spectrum. In particular, a distinction between drag queens and the trans community emerged. The public started to become aware of the difference between being trans, gay, and doing drag.

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Trixie Mattel Breaks Down the History of "Drag"

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The danger and segregation of bars in the 1920s paved the way for drag balls. The first drag ball goes as far back as 1867, when both males and females at the Hamilton Lodge in Harlem dressed up and competed for awards for the best gown or feminine figure.

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Mamma Mia and the Rise of the Jukebox Musical

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Mamma Mia and the Rise of the Jukebox Musical

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Mamma Mia! and the Rise of the Jukebox Musical - Cheap Theatre Tickets

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How Mamma Mia! launched an entirely new genre of jukebox musicals

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Notice how local/county funding is far greater than other levels in the USA. Local theatre is directly tied to tourism and economic stimulation.

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Production Costs in the USA are 3x the Amount of Those on the West End

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Production Costs in the USA are 3x the Amount of Those on the West End

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Public Investment in Arts and Culture in England (2014/15)

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Public Investment in Arts and Culture in England (2014/15)

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The Mega-Musical is a Capitalistic and Consumeristic Bitch and I Hate Her!!

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The Mega-Musical is a Capitalistic and Consumeristic Bitch and I Hate Her!!

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Mega musicals can be defined as high quality, extravagant theatre productions that provide the same quality globally while bringing in large profits. They typically have a very specific iconography that appeals to the consumeristic nature of modern society.

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Does the mega-musical boom mean theatre’s bust? | Dan Rebellato

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Dan Rebellato: The takings of Wicked and co may delight West End producers, but they also confirm the rise of McTheatre: shows that turn the ephemeral event into a soulless repetition

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Cameron Mackintosh: West End Robber Baron

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Cameron Mackintosh: West End Robber Baron

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Meet British producer Cameron Mackintosh, the man behind the international hits Special Features A Life in the Theatre: Cameron Mackintosh Mary Poppins, Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. His Betty Blue Eyes just opened in London.

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In 1954, when British producer Cameron Mackintosh was eight, his family took him to a hit London musical, Salad Days. "I fell in love," Mackintosh remembers. "I insisted on going back, and after the show I introduced myself to its composer, Julian Slade. He took me onstage. He played the piano. I remember thinking, 'Yes, this is what I'm going to do when I grow up.'"

Mackintosh, the North London-born son of a Scottish timber merchant, has entered the pantheon of musical-theatre giants. Now 64, he produced the three longest-running shows in Broadway history: The Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Les Misérables. His Miss Saigon is No. 10. His and Disney's Mary Poppins has been on Broadway for four years. In London's West End, Les Miz and Phantom are the first- and second-longest-running musicals - the London Les Miz is in its 26th year, with over 10,000 performances. In the States, Les Miz is currently touring, and a film version is in development. Mackintosh's latest musical, Betty Blue Eyes, is playing in London. Knighted in 1996, he has four Tony Awards and owns seven London theatres.

In his teens, Mackintosh attended the Central School of Drama. Bored with "lectures about Euripides," he got a stagehand job at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

He started producing "unbelievably quickly. I had set a goal of being a producer by 25. By June 1967 I was involved setting up a repertory season in Henley-on-Thames. I said I was doing as much work as the producers, and to shut me up they put my name on the poster. I was 20."

For a decade, he produced many shows, but not many hits. "My first West End show, in 1969, a revival of Anything Goes, was a disaster." But he also produced a tour of Godspell that ran five years. "I produced six or eight shows a year, and I was still in debt for my disasters."

His first international success, in 1976, was Side by Side by Sondheim. The Arts Council of London asked him to produce touring revivals of Oklahoma! and My Fair Lady. Then came an invitation to lunch from a successful composer.

"We chatted for hours about musical theatre. At the end he told me about T. S. Eliot poems he thought might make a show."

The composer, of course, was Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the musical idea became Cats.

"Cats paid off all my bills for the previous 25 years. It gave me enough money to do what I want."

After Cats, Mackintosh heard the French album of a show by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg: Les Miz. "I fell in love with the music immediately - not all of it, but enough to know it was something I wanted to do." He never thought, he says, that the London version would still be playing in 2011, the longest run of any original production anywhere that's still on the boards.

While he was working on Les Miz, Lloyd Webber came to him with another idea - Phantom. "I said, 'That sounds like fun - why don't we do it?'"

Betty Blue Eyes is based on a 1984 movie, "A Private Function," co-written by Alan Bennett and set in 1947 on the eve of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The composing team is George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, of Mary Poppins.

The future? "I'm 64, and I'm working harder than I have for 20 years. Over the next three years I'm going to put on or supervise 25 productions. I've been in this business a long time, and I'm still here."
Playbill.com shares photos from Mackintosh's personal collection:

A Life in the Theatre: Cameron Mackintosh

British power producer Cameron Mackintosh is the man behind some of the most successful shows in history, including Mary Poppins, Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. Playbill.com shares a collection of rare Mackintosh photos from his personal collection.

Mackintosh takes the stage at the 1998 "Hey, Mr. Producer!" concert in his honor.

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A Life in the Theatre: Cameron Mackintosh

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Meet British producer Cameron Mackintosh, the man behind the international hits Mary Poppins, Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. His Betty Blue Eyes just opened in London.

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THE MUSIC OF TIM RICE AND ELTON JOHN DEFINED MY CHILDHOOD

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THE MUSIC OF TIM RICE AND ELTON JOHN DEFINED MY CHILDHOOD

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All of West End is Monopolized by Four Men

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All of West End is Monopolized by Four Men

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There are four main groups who own the West End (see below for a breakdown of their venues): Delfont Macktintosh Theatres, controlled by producer impresario Cameron Mackintosh; LW Theatres, controlled by musicals composer Andrew Lloyd Webber; ATG, or Ambassador Theatre Group, which is the largest theatre owner by number of venues; Nimax Theatres, which is controlled by Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer; and The Nederlander Organization, an American entertainment company which also has a part share of the Adelphi Theatre.

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West End Theatre | London theatre tickets and West End shows | West End Theatre

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Who owns the West End?

It's a good question, and the reality is that a number of large groups own the majority of the key West End theatres, plus there's non-commercial venues, which are usually registered charities and some of which are subsidised, and a few West End Theatres that are individually owned.

There are four main groups who own the West End (see below for a breakdown of their venues): Delfont Macktintosh Theatres, controlled by producer impresario Cameron Mackintosh; LW Theatres, controlled by musicals composer Andrew Lloyd Webber; ATG, or Ambassador Theatre Group, which is the largest theatre owner by number of venues; Nimax Theatres, which is controlled by Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer; and The Nederlander Organization, an American entertainment company which also has a part share of the Adelphi Theatre.

The outliers are the independently run venues, including the Shaftesbury Theatre, which is owned by DLT Entertainment; the Theatre Royal Haymarket, which is owned by Access Entertainment; St Martin's Theatre, which is still owned by the same family who built it, Lord Willoughby de Broke and his family; the Trafalgar Theatre, owned by Trafalgar Entertainment which owns other theatres in the UK and worldwide, but currently only one main West End venue; The Other Palace owned by producer Bill Kenwright; and the Bridge Theatre, run by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr.

In terms of theatres run as non-profit charities but that do not get a subsidy, these include The Old Vic and Shakespeare's Globe.

Subsidised venues include the National Theatre, the Royal Court, Sadler's Wells and the Peacock Theatre, the Barbican Centre, South Bank Centre, the London Coliseum (via English National Opera), and the Royal Opera House.
View all London Theatres >

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Theatre Owners - West End Theatres | West End Theatre

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A guide to who owns London's West End Theatres, looking at the theatre organisations and companies who manage and own London Theatres

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On May Bank Holiday this year, it was announced that Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical Cinderella would be closing. This was a complete shock to theatre audiences, fans of the show and most of all the actors and company of the show who weren't even notified beforehand when this news broke. Not even their agents were made aware until the news was plastered all over social media!

Now, there's a lot to say about Andrew Lloyd Webber as a person. Some hail him as a revolutionary in musical theatre, paving the way for young contemporary theatre composers. Others see him as a monster who flew all the way from New York to London in a private jet to vote with the House of Lords' Tory whip to cut tax credits in 2015. But even if we take the individual out of the situation, we're still left with an even bigger issue relating to the arts industry in the UK and how it abuses its workers with little to no consequence.

Summer Strallen, an actress who was set to feature in the new cast, stated in an article for The Guardian: "Theatre is a vocational profession, which can mean many of us simply feel grateful to even earn a living, and everyone is, to a certain degree, made to feel disposable."

There can be no denying the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic had on everyone, but especially the performing arts sector. None of the furlough packages given out by the government barely touched those in the gig economy, which includes actors and other performers unable to work due to the pandemic. And it certainly didn't help when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak suggested that performers should "retrain". What the former Chancellor failed to realise was that many actors were working throughout the pandemic, be it doing what they love in scheduling Zoom workshops with fans and performance students to working in the retail industry for some form of stability in a very unstable time.

The performing arts is an incredibly volatile sector to be part of, even prior to Covid. Auditions and applications for roles in productions, talking with agencies, networking with casting directors and ultimately paying to travel for an audition is costly and requires a lot of hard work for many people, not least for young actors who don't have the necessary connections (usually through circumstances involving some form of either nepotism or luck) or never went to a prestigious drama school such as RADA.

It's estimated that only 5% of performers and creatives are in work in the industry at any one time, meaning the chances of getting any work is slim enough. As such, bank accounts and mental health go into a downward spiral and the only thing people say that sums up the entire situation is the old adage "That's Showbiz". A phrase that punctuates ignorance for not just an actor's ambition, but also their basic need. Actors should not have to feel like they should have to choose between their career or their bills. Their career should provide for them, even if they can't work or have work taken from them.

But how does this relate the events that occurred regarding Cinderella? Well, for starters, it was one of the first new shows to come onto the West End, providing many jobs to those who were previously unable to work for the past couple of years. And just as things were on the up, with a brand-new cast about to be announced, the decision to shut the show prior the changeover is perhaps the biggest slap in the face any performer could receive. Especially with a show that would've allowed actors to pay their rent and bills very comfortably for a while. What makes this situation even worse is that the contractual clauses the actors and company signed into are in fact 100% legal.

So, what can the next Labour government do to support theatre actors and prevent further exploitation? Trade union Equity UK, the largest union representing performers and creatives in the UK, has suggested that the government must improve Universal Credit support for creatives and invest in the arts as part of the Levelling Up scheme. And as necessary as these steps are, Labour must do more when in government to ensure that performers and creatives in the UK theatre industry are protected from exploitative contractual clauses and measures that make the performing arts more volatile than they should be. A good suggestion would be to propose legislation that would firmly prohibit the contractual clauses that production companies use to exploit their performers and creatives and still allows them to call off productions without advanced notice to their employees. Clauses like these are an effective "Get Out of Jail Free" card for producers wanting to keep more money than they earn rather than pay their actors a fair wage. As Strallen further emphasises in her article:

"Like any industry with a big power imbalance, it is the workers who suffer - all too often we accept low wages and poor conditions because it has always been this way - and I would like to see more theatre workers joining their unions. Theatre cannot be an industry where only the wealthy can work. I'd also like those with the power to treat the workers who create the product that they're selling with humanity."

Therefore, it is imperative that Labour must focus on ensuring that those working in the arts are not being exploited to the point the cast of Cinderella were by their production company. Cinderella is just one example of this happening, but it just so happens to be the most public occurrence. The government must be able to put measures in place that would protect workers from exploitation in the arts and also provide creatives and performers with the necessary support when they are not in work. Performing is a vocation and a viable career path, and performers and creatives should not have to feel less than adequate purely for choosing to follow their passion.
Marcus Cameron is an actor, singer and activist based in Warrington, Cheshire. He is studying Law at University of Law, Manchester. He tweets at @MCLabActivist

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The Exploitation Of Theatre Actors In The UK: The Need For Radical Change In The Arts

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On May Bank Holiday this year, it was announced that Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical Cinderella would be closing. This was a complete shock to theatre audiences, fans of the show and most of all the actors and company of the show who weren't even notified beforehand when this news broke.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber has branded theatre on Broadway as a "vanity project". Speaking at the Global Investment Summit at Hampton Court Palace yesterday (27 November), the composer called on investors to "think of Britain first" when putting money into theatre.

According to Click Here, Lloyd Webber stated: "A statistic I got last week for London is that for every pound that it generates in the theatre, it generates £1.40 in the local economy,"

"Theatre is, in my view, in the UK, an incredibly exciting and good investment."

"Broadway is now almost a vanity project and the only shows that can survive on Broadway are shows like The Lion King or Hamilton, which are so huge that they can more than break even.

"To put a musical on Broadway now would cost roughly $20 million."

Lloyd Webber continued: "I passionately ask for two things: that theatre is supported by government a little more than perhaps it is at the moment, and I passionately ask you, if you are thinking of investing, to think of Britain first and think of our theatre."

Claire Walker, co-CEO of SOLT & UK Theatre said: "It is great to see our valued member Andrew Lloyd Webber make such a powerful case for investment in our industry. Theatre audiences boost local economies up and down the country when visiting a performance. For every £1 spent on a theatre ticket, an additional spend of £1.40 is generated in local economies, adding up to £1.94bn per annum of extra value added to local economies by theatre audiences."

"SOLT & UK Theatre are calling on the UK Government to invest in productions by maintaining the higher rate of Theatre Tax Relief. It is highly effective at generating growth up and down the country. We estimate, for example, that at least £163 million was invested into theatrical productions in 2021-22 as a result of £38 million of tax relief, a return of over 4 to 1 for the public purse."
Photo Credit: Michael Becker / FOX

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Andrew Lloyd Webber: 'Broadway is Now Almost a Vanity Project'.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber has branded theatre on Broadway as a "vanity project". Speaking at the Global Investment Summit at Hampton Court Palace yesterday (27 November), the composer called on investors to "think of Britain first" when putting money into theatre.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber: King of the West End

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Andrew Lloyd Webber: King of the West End

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Lionel Bart: The Overindulgent Writer of Oliver!

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Lionel Bart: The Overindulgent Writer of Oliver!

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The life of Lionel Bart, who has died aged 68, was a morality tale about a poor cockney lad who had prodigal talent as a composer and lyricist but too little of everything else.

Artistic judgment, shrewdness about people, money sense and self-discipline were all beyond the small, generous and unpredictable man who in 1960 wrote the extremely successful West End musical, Oliver!, signed away his rights in it as well as in his other works, and estimated years later, when he was skint, that he would have been £100 million better off if he hadn't. He was not ill-natured and had few if any enemies, but he was quite capable of destroying himself without any help.

Bart was for a time one of the most swinging figures of the Swinging Sixties; a composer who couldn't read or write down music; a breaker of moulds who wrote Livin' Doll for Cliff Richard in 10 minutes flat; the owner of four homes, each of them decorated in appalling taste complete to lilac loos, and full of sponging hangers-on; the driver of four cars with telephones in the days when car telephones were as rare as space ships. He served popular music and Fleet Street better than he served himself.

He was the youngest of seven surviving children of Jewish East Enders who had escaped pogroms in Galicia, then part of the Austrian empire. He was his 46-year-old mother's eleventh child and attributed his desire for fame to what he felt had been a lack of love and attention from his overworked, and older than average, parents. His father was a tailor, working in an London E1 garden shed. Lionel thought of himself as the runt of the litter and ingratiated himself with his contemporaries, but incensed his elders, by making up rude words to popular tunes.

When Bart was six, a teacher told his father that the boy was a musical genius. Lionel was given an old violin and lessons, but did not apply himself. The lessons stopped. It was the first evidence of limited sticking power. There was another at St Martin's School of Art, where he gave up his ambition to be a painter after being expelled for 'mischievousness'. He explained that painting was a lonely craft and, 'I like a good mob working around me.' He was to achieve the mob, if not always the work.

After National Service in the RAF, he borrowed £50 and with John Gorman- they had met in the RAF - started a printing business in Hackney. With Gorman, he joined the Communist Party, and for the left-leaning International Youth Centre he arranged a cabaret. In 1952, with John Gold, he wrote the annual IYC revue, including the story of Robin Hood as it might have been treated by Dostoevesky and Noel Coward. For the equally leftist Unity Theatre near Kings Cross, he did the lyrics for an agit-prop Cinderella.

HIS first musical was Wally Pone, King of the Underworld, a Ben Jonson take-off about a con-man unmasked, which ran for eight weeks. Around this time he passed St Bartholomew's Hospital on a bus and his surname, previously Begleiter, became the anglicised Bart. He began to write songs for stars, explaining that he always wrote with a performer in mind. It was an honest admission, which forecast the difficulties he often had with structure when tackling stage musicals.

Such was this difficulty that his first major stage success, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, came together only after the idiosyncratic and autocratic Joan Littlewood had taken it, and him, under her wing for her Theatre Royal, Stratford East. Similarly, theatre boss Bernard Miles, wanting to do a modern version of Henry Fielding's Rape Upon Rape, exerted pressure and even had other writers up his sleeve in case Bart couldn't deliver. But Bart, who also had a second play running, later turned down £100,000 for the film rights of the resultant Lock Up Your Daughters.

In 1960, when virtually every London management had turned down Oliver! because they thought Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist was too morbid as a subject, the impresario Donald Albery took an option after hearing a tape of Bart's friends playing the parts. Michael Caine unsuccessfully auditioned for Bill Sikes and Ron Moody impressed as Fagin. The director was the young Peter Coe, recently departed from Ipswich Rep.

Putting the show together was prolonged torture. The actors had to contend with daily changes to the words and music, and when the curtain first went up on June 30, 1960, the show the public saw had been in place only three days. The Guardian's critic Philip Hope-Wallace found it a disappointing 'starveling musical' and some other critics were no kinder - a fact that later made Bart disastrously dismissive of the views of critics. But in this case, Bart was right - the public loved the play's blunt East End atmosphere and raw vital music. Soon the show was being described as the answer to American musicals and the best British musical of the postwar years.

Bart, who had won three Ivor Novello Awards in 1957, four in 1959 and two in 1960, was given the Variety Club Silver Heart for Show Business Personality of the Year. He could now do no wrong. He was admired, and sponged on by many in his huge social circle. Champagne flowed. A bowl containing £1,000 in notes rested on a mantelpiece in his Fulham palace, from which anyone in need could help themselves. Many obliged.

All night parties would leave Bart wondering next morning who the 50 people still in the house were. He also had a beach house in Malibu, an apartment in New York and a castle in Tangier. The only signs that perhaps his spirit was not to be that of a survivor was an expensive nose job and the wearing of a stetson hat indoors to conceal the fact he was going bald.

Two years later, his musical about London in the second world war, Blitz!, which his unlikely mentor Noel Coward pronounced to be twice as long and twice as loud as the real thing, was called a misfire on a grand scale by one critic but enjoyed by the public. The profligate times continued until 1965, when two exclamation marks instead of one after the title could not persuade the critics or the public that Twang!!, a camped-up version of Robin Hood, with Barbara Windsor as a nymphomaniac Maid Marian, was anything but a limp mess.

Bart could easily have survived this reverse if he had had Coward's incisive mind and written the play off to experience. But he refused to see the show was a flop; used his own money to plug the huge hole in the takings, some £80,000; sold the rights to his past and future works, including the Oliver! goldmine, to keep himself solvent; then declared himself bankrupt. It was the longest suicide note in theatre history. True, Bart was still physically if not professionally alive, though with a liver badly damaged by three bottles of vodka a day.

For a decade the fallen idol of the Swinging Sixties did little but drink himself silly, living in a flat in unfashionable Acton which was full of memorabilia of happier times. 'I rarely cry, but when I do I cry for days,' he said. It was his old RAF friend John Gorman who reappeared to help sort out his life. Bart joined Alcoholics Anonymous and kicked the habit after being given two weeks to live. He took his diabetes more firmly in hand. Later in the 1980s, there were also signs of new professional life. A reissue of Livin' Doll with satirical words inadvertently drew attention to the song and its composer. Bart received, in 1986, a special Ivor Novello Award for his life's achievement.

In the 1990s, there were frequent revivals of his work. The impresario Cameron Mackintosh, who owned half the rights to Oliver!, revived the play in a version rewritten by Bart. Feeling it wrong that Bart had been getting nothing from the profitable revivals of his work, Mackintosh also gave the composer a share of the production royalties.

Now 'out,' as he expressed it (the proposal of marriage on television by the deep-voiced singer Alma Cogan was thought a bizarre cosmetic publicity stunt), Bart got some saner enjoyment from his later years, a beloved figure among the nephews and nieces of his extended family and his many godchildren.

The nastiest thing that anyone could say was that he was his own worst enemy. His vertiginous life contained many silly actions but no mean ones.

Iltyd Harrington writes: Bart would acknowledge that he regained his confidence after agreeing to the re-staging of his work by the National Youth Theatre. Against all odds we staged Blitz! at the Playhouse and Maggie May at the old Royalty. Egged on by director and choreographer David Toguri, John Reid (then Elton John's manager), and Ed Wilson, the head of the NYT, Bart found an enthusiastic generation of actors and technicians who had not been born when Oliver! first was seen.

In the summer seasons of the NYT he spent long hours at their rehearsals. The young took him on board, they neither flattered nor ignored him. Here was a genuine cockney with all that urban Stepney Wit. Out of this came a warmth which heralded Bart's re-discovery. Thereafter no one was more generous than Cameron Mackintosh who brought back an enormously successful revival of Oliver! The East End songsmith had found his way back home, but, as he enjoyed renewed recognition, he never forgot his welcome to the rehearsal rooms of the NYT in greyest Islington.

* Lionel Bart, composer and lyricist, born August 1, 1930; died April 3, 1999

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The life of Lionel Bart, who has died aged 68, was a morality tale about a poor cockney lad who had prodigal talent as a composer and lyricist but too little of everything else.

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Early in 1964, Life magazine put it like this: "In [1776] England lost her American colonies. Last week the Beatles took them back."

It was a sweet surrender, as millions of kids (and not a few adults) succumbed to the sound of guitar-wielding, mop-topped redcoats playing rock & roll that was fresh, exotically foreign and full of the vitality of a new age in the making.

This was the British Invasion, and the Beatles were its undisputed leaders. In 1963, the Fab Four released their first U.S. single, "Please Please Me." That same year, the term Beatlemania was coined to describe the phenomenal outburst of enthusiasm in England. But 1964 was the year of the Beatles' American conquest, and it began with the January 25th appearance of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on Billboard's Top Forty chart and the February 7th arrival of the band in the States for a two-week promotional blitz.

Overnight, Beatlemania swept the nation. Before you could say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" we had a new game, and part of the fun was that there were no discernible rules. Reporters found themselves trading quips with the surprisingly quick-witted Liverpudlians. Young girls abandoned themselves to hysteria. And schoolboys started dreaming of long hair and electric guitars.

Britannia Ruled the airwaves in 1964. In the front ranks, marching in formation behind the Beatles, were the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, the Searchers, the Hollies, the Animals, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Freddie and the Dreamers, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Peter and Gordon and Chad and Jeremy. Then there were the one-hit wonders - and what hits! "Have I the Right?" by the Honeycombs, "Hippy Hippy Shake," by the Swinging Blue Jeans, and "Concrete and Clay," by Unit 4 + 2, all made the charts during the rave years.

Rock & roll, seemingly so moribund at the start of the decade, set off a fever that defied all attempts to contain it or rationalize it as a fad. And Beatlemania precipitated a strange collision of generational currents. At the time, there was no youth-oriented alternative press to report on and interpret the British Invasion, so the job fell to the establishment media. Opinions ranged from effete condescension to a bemused thumbs up from more enlightened commentators. Many guardians of young morals saw the Beatles not as lovable mop tops but as the (Fab) Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The first question posed to Harvard sociologist David Riesman in a U.S. News and World Report interview was "Is the furor over the singers who call themselves the Beatles a sign that American youngsters are going crazy?" Riesman answered, "No crazier than hitherto."

In other words, the generation gap opened in 1964 with a crack that was more like a friendly grin than a roar of disapproval. American youngsters hadn't gone crazy. They just woke up, looked around and decided they all felt the same way about something that was important to them - and this newfound solidarity was an exciting thing.

There is no lack of theories as to why the States embraced the Beatles with such zeal. A popular one holds that the country, in the aftershock of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, transferred to the Beatles all the youthful idealism that had begun cresting under JFK. It's also plausible that the Beatles stood so far above the musical status quo of the early Sixties that they gave kids the first credible excuse for mania since Presley. Finally, of course, the Beatles' campaign was a shrewdly plotted one, involving considerable promotional money and a lot of advance work by managers, press agents and their record company.

This accounts for the band's fanatical reception in the States but doesn't explain how Great Britain, not previously known as a hotbed of rock & roll, produced the Beatles and their colleagues in the first place. In the Fifties the U.K. had little more to offer than pallid imitations of American rock & roll singers. British pop was "pure farce," according to writer Nik Cohn. "Nobody could sing and nobody could write," he said, "and in any case, nobody gave a damn."

The British music industry was rigidly controlled by the BBC and London's Denmark Street music publishers. A handful of powerful managers groomed a stable of homegrown singers in the mold of Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. This clean-cut, nonthreatening lot included Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and Billy Fury - hardly household names stateside. On another front, however, a movement of musical purists, enamored of black American music, began replicating New Orleans-style jazz (a.k.a. "trad jazz") and acoustic folk blues. This route would indirectly lead to the Beatles and an indigenous British rock & roll sound.

One of the more promising offshoots of the trad-jazz movement was a simplified jug-band style of music known as skiffle. Britain's premier skiffler was Lonnie Donegan. Singing in a nasal American twang, he enjoyed a run of hits in the late Fifties; he mostly covered songs by Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. In fact, Donegan charted sizable hits over here in 1956 and 1961 with "Rock Island Line" and "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (on the Bedpost Over Night)" - an early warning sign that England could successfully sell America reconstituted versions of its own music. Young Britons - like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey, the future lineup of the Beatles - took note of this. Prior to skiffle, the only significant blip on the British pop-culture time line had been a brief flurry of juvenile delinquency occasioned by the arrival of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" (the record and the film) in the U.K. in 1955.

In the seaport town of Liverpool, Lennon, Harrison and McCartney first teamed up to form the Quarrymen. A few name changes later, following stints as the Moondogs and the Silver Beatles, they crossed the threshold into the Sixties as simply the Beatles. It is a measure of the talent found by the Mersey that the Beatles did not immediately become kingpins on the Liverpool scene. Until they cemented their reputation with a stint at a club called the Cavern, they stood in the shadow of such home-town favorites as the Big Three and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, whose drummer was none other than Richard Starkey, a.k.a. Ringo Starr. These Mersey bands played a souped-up form of beat music - essentially amplified skiffle with a heavy R&B influence, a style inspired by the records imported from the States by Liverpool's merchant seamen.

Beginning in 1961, the Beatles commuted between Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, where, dressed in black leather, they played dives like the Kaiserkeller and the Star Club. By 1963, they had an act, an image, a repertoire, a following and a manager - Brian Epstein, a local record-store manager. They also lost a bass player (Stuart Sutcliffe), fired a drummer (Pete Best), jelled as a quartet with the addition of Ringo and spruced themselves up, ditching the black leather and the bad-boy antics. The Beatles performed their 282nd and final show at the Cavern on August 3rd, 1963. They'd already scored two Number One hits in Britain with "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You." Only one month after their Cavern farewell, they saw their fourth single, "She Loves You," turn gold on its way to becoming the biggest-selling single ever issued in Britain. An October 13th television performance, on Sunday Night at the London Palladium, was viewed by some 15 million of their countrymen. Mob scenes followed them wherever they played.

"This is Beatlemania," the Daily Mail reported. "Where will it all lead?" To the lost colonies, of course - and the world's biggest market for rock & roll.

Nineteen sixty-four belonged to the Beatles. From the moment "I want to Hold Your Hand" was first played on an American radio station - WWDC, in Washington, D.C., in December of 1963 - the country fell under their spell. Preceded by a promotional campaign that included bumper stickers (The Beatles Are Coming! and Ringo For President), buttons (Be A Beatle Booster) and Beatle wigs - as well as tantalizing glimpses of their performances on Walter Cronkite's newscast and The Jack Parr Show - the Beatles' February 7th landing at New York's Kennedy Airport generated an unprecedented fanfare. Sounding what would become a recurrent theme, one of the first questions shouted at the Beatles' airport press conference was "Are you in favor of lunacy?" Paul McCartney, not missing a beat, replied, "Yes, it's healthy."

The group's February 9th appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show drew a TV audience estimated at 70 million, the largest in the history of the medium. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" topped the singles charts for seven consecutive weeks, and by March, Meet the Beatles - their first album for Capitol Records - had shipped 3.6 million copies, making it the largest-selling LP in history. Several record companies owned the rights to early Beatles tracks, and these also began turning up in the Top Forty. When the group issued "Can't Buy Me Love" in mid-March, it caused a veritable Beatles logjam on the pop charts. As records were sold, records were broken. Rising to Number One in its second week, "Can't Buy Me Love" was the third consecutive Beatles single to top the charts, breaking Elvis Presley's previous record. During the first week of April the Beatles occupied twelve positions on the Top 100 - and every position in the Top Five. The hits in this quintuple hegemony were, in order, "Can't Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout," "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me."

The Beatles' dominion was carried to new heights by the July release of their first movie, A Hard Day's Night - the Village Voice called it "the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals" - and the August kickoff of their first American tour. The merchandising of the Beatles, whose names and likenesses adorned everything from lunch boxes to inflatable dolls, accounted for an estimated $50 million in retail business in 1964 alone. The Beatles had become Britain's leading cultural export, and the trail they blazed to the colonies quickly became a well-trampled one.

Scads of would-be contenders were tapping their toes on the far side of the Atlantic, just waiting for a chance to show the Yanks a thing or two. The group that initially gave the Beatles the best run for their money was the Dave Clark Five, who hailed from London's northern suburb of Tottenham. Although they placed a poor second to the Beatles, the DC5 racked up seventeen Top Forty hits between 1964 and 1967 - more than the Rolling Stones or any other British act during that span of years. By the time the Sixties rolled to a close, the DC5 had sold 70 million records worldwide.

Because the band's single "Glad All Over" unseated "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from its lengthy perch atop the British charts in January 1964, it was assumed for a while that the DC5 were neck and neck with the Beatles in the superstar sweepstakes. But they didn't "progress," in the sense of graduating from pop stars to poets, as the Beatles did. Nonetheless, the Dave Clark Five were what they were: a singles band, a dance band and one of the best.

Meanwhile, Liverpool was teeming with an estimated 300 bands, and several performers under the aegis of Beatles manager Brian Epstein were having a field day. Gerry and the Pacemakers weren't a very convincing rock band, but they had a solid way with ballads like "Ferry Cross the Mersey" and "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying." Gerry's star shone only dimly after 1965, but his hits are pleasant memories, and he's notable for being the second act out of Liverpool (behind the Beatles) to crack the British charts.

Another Epstein protégé was Billy J. Kramer. Kramer and his band, the Dakotas, made their mark with some unreleased tunes from the Lennon-McCartney song bag; "Bad to Me" was a Number Nine hit stateside in mid-1964. The only other Mersey groups that saw any significant American chart action in 1964 were the Swinging Blue Jeans ("Hippy Hippy Shake," a song that was part of the Beatles' early repertoire) and the Searchers. This group was Liverpool's second most talented export. With their ringing harmonies and melodic, twelve-string-guitar hooks, the Searchers recast borrowed American tunes, like "Love Potion Number Nine" and "Needles and Pins," in fresh new arrangements. All in all, a handful of Liverpool bands did hit the big time, but legions more got lost in the shuffle, including such talented entities as the Merseybeats, the Mojos, the Escorts, the Fourmost, the Big Three and the Undertakers.

Like Billy J. Kramer, a London duo called Peter (Asher) and Gordon (Waller) turned Beatle leftovers into gold. Their access to unreleased Beatles songs came through Peter's sister, Jane, who was dating Paul McCartney at the time. This cute, strait-laced pair were the first British act to follow the Beatles to the top of the U.S. charts. Their ticket to ride was the McCartney-penned "A World Without Love." More singles followed from the same cask - "Nobody I Know," "I Don't Want to See You Again" and "Woman" - and all made the Top Twenty. But even without McCartney's help, Peter and Gordon reaped hits, with Del Shannon's "I Go to Pieces" and a music-hall novelty titled "Lady Godiva." After the duo split in 1968, Peter became a producer at the Beatles' Apple Records label. He produced James Taylor's first album at Apple, but his most famous client is Linda Ronstadt, whose classic sound he helped tailor in the Seventies.

Some of the loudest, rawest and toughest music of the British Invasion came out of London. A rhythm & blues scene was thriving at a handful of venues under the tutelage of elder statesmen and bandleaders Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, whose ensembles included such stars-to-be as Mick Jagger, Brian Jones and Charlie Watts (of the Rolling Stones), Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker (of Cream) and Paul Jones (of Manfred Mann). An extended family of electric blues aficionados jammed and gigged at such haunts as the Marquee, the Flamingo, the Crawdaddy and the Ealing Rhythm and Blues Club. Out of the mass of players, a number of important groups took shape, including the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and the Pretty Things. The last of these never made it in America, though they were influential in their homeland and endured into the Eighties.

After twenty-five years, even with their current status open to conjecture, the Rolling Stones remain the most tangible link to the British Invasion era. They put the raunch back in rock & roll. Unlike the Beatles, the Stones came on unsmiling and without manners - the kind of group parents had every right to feel uneasy about. Whereas Brian Epstein transformed his charges from Teddy boys to teddy bears, manager Andrew Loog Oldham encouraged the Stones' delinquent tendencies.

The Stones got a delayed start in the U.S. They didn't enter the fray in a major way until 1965. After warming up the Top Ten with "Time Is on My Side" and "The Last Time," they delivered a knockout punch with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Its central riff and basic lyrical thrust were created by guitarist Keith Richards one restless night in a Florida motel room. Recorded in Los Angeles, with Richards' fuzz-cranked guitar blasting like the Stax-Volt horn section, "Satisfaction" remains one of the bedrock songs of the age. From here the Stones turned up the heat with numbers like "Get Off of My Cloud," "19th Nervous Breakdown" and "Paint It Black." The music of the Rolling Stones was an ice-and-fire contrast to the Beatles. Simmering, blunt edged and angry, it set off the Liverpudlians' sunnier pop visions in a way that perfectly caught the spirit of the times.

The Yardbirds, who inherited the Stones' regular spot at London's Crawdaddy Club, used their blues background as a launching pad for a series of experiments in futurist rock. They were the first British Invasion group to be recognized for the instrumental prowess of their guitarists - who were, in order of succession, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. They stretched the boundaries of pop, adding a harpsichord in "For Your Love" and a droning, sitar-style lead in "Heart Full of Soul." But most Yardbirds fans climbed aboard for the "raveups" - extended instrumental breaks that served as showcases for Clapton, Beck and Page.

Whereas the Yardbirds were known for instrumental virtuosity, a couple of other rising London bands - the Kinks and the Who - established themselves through the force of their songwriting. Ray Davies of the Kinks was arguably the most versatile composer to emerge from the Invasion. He was equally capable of driving hard rock ("You Really Got Me") and wry social commentary ("A Well Respected Man"). The Kinks, with Ray's brother, Dave Davies, on frenzied lead guitar, were a familiar sight to viewers of Shindig! and Hullabaloo, two TV variety shows that spread the gospel of British rock in the States.

The Who burst on the scene with an anarchic stage show, which featured the smashing of guitars, drums and amps and an arsenal of angry polemics on modern youth's state of mind. Such classics as "My Generation" and "I Can't Explain" sprang from the pen of Pete Townshend, the group's guitarist and spokesman. Although the Who was enormously influential in swinging London, the band's impact on America was not largely felt until the tail end of the Invasion, with "I Can See for Miles" rising to Number Nine in late 1967. Of course, this was just the beginning for the band, which went on to create such musical landmarks as Tommy and Who's Next.

Manfred Mann (whose "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" was another 1964 chart topper), Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames ("Yeh, Yeh"), the Nashville Teens ("Tobacco Road") and the Paramounts (a hot R&B act that later changed its style and became Procol Harum) kept London jumping to a bluesy beat. From the suburbs came a band called the Zombies, who scored with some artful pop singles ("She's Not There," "Tell Her No") despite their gruesome name. From out of town - all the way from Belfast, Ireland - another ugly-monikered group, Them, made the charts with "Here Comes the Night" and "Mystic Eyes." Them's singer was none other than Van Morrison, whose hit streak continued when he went solo in 1967 with "Brown Eyed Girl." And all the way from the West Coast of the United States came the Walker Brothers, a trio that settled in London and recorded two of the biggest ballads of the British Invasion, "Make It Easy on Yourself' and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine (Anymore)."

While the Invasion was generally a band-oriented phenomenon, the female artists stood alone and did quite well for themselves. Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithfull and Lulu are four of the more recognizable names to dent the charts. Pert, cheerful Pet Clark enjoyed a fifteen-hit reign, crowned by a pair of Number Ones ("Downtown" and "My Love"). Dusty Springfield's cool, soulful voice was familiar to transistor-radio owners via such mid-Sixties mega-hits as "Wishin' and Hopin' " and "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me." Lulu had one of the biggest singles of the decade, "To Sir with Love," which held down the Number One spot for five weeks in 1967. Faithfull, who was Mick Jagger 's girlfriend, did well with her torchy recording of the Stones weeper "As Tears Go By"; she was also one of the more celebrated blond presences in swinging London.

Solo males were scarcer in combo-happy Britain. But they had several hits worth noting: the campy "You Turn Me On," by Ian Whitcomb; "Niki Hoeky," by P.J. Proby; and the dreamy space-race ballad "Everyone's Gone to the Moon," by Jonathan King. Then there was Donovan, the Dylanesque folk singer turned psychedelic minstrel, whose "Sunshine Superman" soared to Number One in 1966.

The provinces beyond London stoked the R&B furnace with such powerhouse acts as the Animals (from Newcastle-upon-Tyne), the Spencer Davis Group and the Moody Blues (both from Birmingham). Yes, the Moody Blues. Back in 1965, they could pound it out with the best of them. Exhibit A is the piano-thumping beat ballad "Go Now," with its beseeching vocal from Denny Laine (later of Paul McCartney's band Wings). The key talent in the Spencer Davis Group was sixteen-year-old lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Steve Winwood. His soulful pipes carried "I'm a Man" and "Gimme Some Lovin' " into the Top Ten in early 1967 and set the stage for his tenure as leader of Traffic and, eventually, as a solo superstar.

Gruff and earthy, Eric Burdon of the Animals sang about hard times in a powerful growl that made him sound decades wiser than his age. On the back of the Animals' first American LP, he listed his favorite color as "brown-black" - a claim that's obvious in his stylistic debt to a host of American rhythm & blues artists. With organist Alan Price supplying jazzy counterpoint, the Animals vaulted to Number One in September 1964 with "House of the Rising Sun," a four-minute-plus ode to a New Orleans brothel. Closer in spirit to the Stones than to the Beatles, the Animals issued some of the more desperate pleas of the day in "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" and "It's My Life."

The city of Manchester contributed a disproportionate share of pop hitmakers to the British cause. Herman's Hermits, the Hollies, Freddie and the Dreamers and Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders all claimed a piece of the U.S. charts. Fronted by doe-eyed Peter Noone, a former child actor, the Hermits recorded an impressive string of pop and music-hall-flavored tunes set to a Mersey beat. "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter" was their best-known song, but they cracked the Top Ten nine times in a row between 1965 and 1966 - a feat that even the Beatles couldn't claim.

The Hollies served up the best vocal harmonies of the era and outlasted many of their U.K. colleagues; they earned their biggest hit in 1972 with "Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)." Freddie and the Dreamers were the clowns of the British Invasion. Horn-rimmed beatnik Freddie Garrity and his bumptious, balding band mates devised the most ludicrous novelty dance of all: a flapping free-for-all called the Freddie. It did not catch on. They did, however, leave behind one big hit, "I'm Telling You Now." As for Wayne Fontana, his biggest hit was the catchy pop rocker "Game of Love." It was part 2 of what the Billboard Book of Number One Hits called the "Mancunian hat trick" - three chart toppers in a row from Manchester. This unusual alignment occurred in late April and early May of 1965, with "I'm Telling You Now," "Game of Love" and "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter."

The statistical high-water mark of the British Invasion fell only a month later, on June 18th, 1965. On that date, no fewer than fourteen records of British origin occupied the U.S. Top Forty. It was a record that stood until July 16th, 1983, when the second British Invasion - led by Duran Duran, Culture Club and the Police - landed eighteen hits on the chart. Ironically, during that historic week in the summer of 1965, the top seven positions all belonged to American acts. Herman's Hermits ("Wonderful World") and the Beatles ("Ticket to Ride") nailed down Number Nine and Number Ten, respectively, while the rest of the British entries were scattered among the middle and lower reaches of the chart.

The Beatles continued to reign supreme in the second half of the Sixties, although the British Invasion, in the sense the term is commonly understood, had pretty much run its course by 1967. It was still the Beatles everyone tried to emulate or top, though the music, the audience and the rules of the game had changed markedly. The simmering down of Beatlemania after 1965 reflected the group's loss of appetite for celebrity more than any waning of interest on the part of the public. With the release of Rubber Soul (December 1965) and Revolver (August 1966) and their decision to stop touring (they performed their last concert in San Francisco on August 29th, 1966), the Beatles moved into another phase. They were turning inward, and their music was greeted not with screams but with a more mature appreciation of the new places the Beatles were taking their audience.

"It sort of turned out all right," George Harrison said of the Beatles' decade, with monumental understatement, at the 1988 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame awards ceremony. "And still a lot bigger than we expected."
This is a story from the July 14, 1988 issue of Rolling Stone.

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The British Invasion: From the Beatles to the Stones, The Sixties Belonged to Britain

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Early in 1964, Life magazine put it like this: "In [1776] England lost her American colonies. Last week the Beatles took them back." It was a sweet surrender, as millions of kids (and not a few adults) succumbed to the sound of guitar-wielding, mop-topped redcoats playing rock & roll that was fresh, exotically foreign and full of the vitality of a new age in the making.

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Anthony has worked with composer George Stiles for more than 30 years. Their multi-award-winning work has been performed around the world in dozens of languages. Together, their writing credits include Honk! (National Theatre, UK Tour and Worldwide), Mary Poppins (West End, Broadway, International and currently on UK Tour), Cameron Mackintosh's new version of Half A Sixpence (Chichester Festival Theatre and West End), Travels With My Aunt (Minerva Theatre, Chichester), The Wind in the Willows (UK Tour), Betty Blue Eyes (West End and UK Tour), Just So (Tricycle Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre and International)), Peter Pan - A Musical Adventure (West Yorkshire Playhouse, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Royal Festival Hall and International), Soho Cinders (Soho Theatre and in concert at the Queen's Theatre), The Three Little Pigs (West End, UK Tour and International Tour), Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Singapore Repertory Theatre), and The Three Billy Goats Gruff (Singapore Repertory Theatre).

Current projects include Becoming Nancy with director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell.

Future projects include a stage version of Robert Harling's film Soapdish and, and an adaptation of one of the most popular family movies of the 1990's set for a regional tryout in 2020 and the West End for 2021.

Independently as a lyricist, Anthony's credits include The Card (Watermill Theatre, Regents Park Theatre) and A Twist of Fate (Singapore Repertory Theatre).

Other projects include: song contributions for Dame Edna Everage's Look at Me When I'm Talking to You, The Shakespeare Revue (RSC) as well as a variety of material for TV and radio.

As a director Anthony's work includes Snoopy (Watermill Theatre), Honk! (South Africa, Chicago, Tokyo and Singapore), Just So (North Shore Music Theatre, Massachusetts and Chichester Festival Theatre), The Thing About Men (London's King's Head Theatre), You're A Good Man Charlie Brown (Tabard Theatre) and The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Billy Goats Gruff (Singapore Repertory Theatre)

Awards include the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical for Honk!, three of the top prizes at the Musical of the Year Awards for Peter Pan ,The Straits Times Award for Best Musical (A Twist of Fate) and the first ever Vivian Ellis Prize (Just So). Mary Poppins has won 45 major theatre awards around the globe including Tony, Olivier, Helpmann and London Evening Standard Awards. Laurence Olivier nominations include Mary Poppins and Betty Blue Eyes.

Along with George, Anthony's passion for new musical theatre writing is recognised via the annual Stiles and Drewe Prize for Best New Song, and their Mentorship Award supported by Music Theatre International (Europe). They are founding board members of Mercury Musical Developments (MMD), Associate Artists at The Watermill Theatre and patrons of the London Musical Theatre Orchestra and the Music Theatre Academy (MTA).

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Anthony has worked with composer George Stiles for more than 30 years. Their multi-award-winning work has been performed around the world in dozens of languages. Together, their writing credits include Honk!

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About Noël Coward

Noël Peirce Coward was born in 1899 and made his professional stage debut as Prince Mussel in The Goldfish at the age of 12, leading to many child actor appearances over the next few years. His breakthrough in playwriting was the controversial The Vortex (1924) which featured themes of drugs and adultery and made his name as both actor and playwright in the West End and on Broadway. During the frenzied 1920s and the more sedate 1930s, Coward wrote a string of successful plays, musicals and intimate revues including Fallen Angels (1925), Hay Fever (1925), Easy Virtue (1926), This Year of Grace (1928), and Bitter Sweet (1929). His professional partnership with childhood friend Gertrude Lawrence, started with Private Lives (1931), and continued with Tonight at 8.30 (1936).

During World War II, he remained a successful playwright, screenwriter and director, as well as entertaining the troops and even acting as an unofficial spy for the Foreign Office. His plays during these years included Blithe Spirit which ran for 1997 performances, outlasting the War (a West End record until The Mousetrap overtook it), This Happy Breed and Present Laughter (both 1943). His two wartime screenplays, In Which We Serve, which he co-directed with the young David Lean, and Brief Encounter quickly became classics of British cinema.

However, the post-war years were more difficult. Austerity Britain - the London critics determined - was out of tune with the brittle Coward wit. In response, Coward re-invented himself as a cabaret and TV star, particularly in America, and in 1955 he played a sell-out season in Las Vegas featuring many of his most famous songs, including Mad About the Boy, I'll See You Again and Mad Dogs and Englishmen. In the mid-1950s he settled in Jamaica and Switzerland, and enjoyed a renaissance in the early 1960s becoming the first living playwright to be performed by the National Theatre, when he directed Hay Fever there. Late in his career he was lauded for his roles in a number of films including Our Man In Havana (1959) and his role as the iconic Mr. Bridger alongside Michael Caine in The Italian Job (1968).

Writer, actor, director, film producer, painter, songwriter, cabaret artist as well as an author of a novel, verse, essays and autobiographies, he was called by close friends 'The Master'. His final West End appearance was Song at Twilight in 1966, which he wrote and starred in. He was knighted in 1970 and died peacefully in 1973 in his beloved Jamaica.

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Noël Peirce Coward was born in 1899 and made his professional stage debut as Prince Mussel in The Goldfish at the age of 12, leading to many child actor appearances over the next few years.

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The Great British Music Hall: Low-Brow, American, Parody Burlesque

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The Great British Music Hall: Low-Brow, American, Parody Burlesque

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The Great British Music Hall - Historic UK

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The Great British Music Hall was a cultural phenomenon that thrived in the early Victorian era. As the alcohol flowed, the lower classes were able to kick back and relax as they enjoyed the music and acts that were on offer...

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Listen to Giants in the Sky on Spotify. This is an unparalleled look behind the scenes and between the lines of the landmark musical Into the Woods. Ben Rimalower produces and hosts candid conversations with the original stars and creatives of Into the Woods offering their unique perspectives on the development process of its iconic original production.

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Sunday in the Park with George Slime Tutorial

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Sunday in the Park with George Slime Tutorial

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 The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened

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 The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened

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How the Music Spoils Sweeney Todd (and why that's a good thing!)

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During her seven decades as an actor and singer, Elaine Stritch, who has died aged 89, became indelibly associated with three songs written by her favourite collaborator, Stephen Sondheim. These numbers all featured in the Tony award-winning autobiographical one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty (2001), which she performed to great acclaim in the US and the UK. Each lyric captured key aspects of her career and personality.

I'm Still Here, from Sondheim's 1971 musical Follies, was the defiant anthem of a showbiz trouper who had survived professional failures, private crises and changing fashions to remain in demand into old age. Although originally written for a character whom Stritch never played in a full theatrical version, Sondheim's lines about the progress of an acting career - "First, you're another / sloe-eyed vamp / Then someone's mother / Then you're camp / Then you career from career to career" - came increasingly to embody Stritch's extraordinary durability and perseverance.

"It's a song about hanging in there and being strong and not letting the world get the better of you," she said when I interviewed her in 2007 for BBC Radio 4's Front Row. Having first performed the lyric in middle age, she believed that only as an octogenarian did she mine all of the meaning in the words.

Stritch was prolifically employed in films and TV - including four seasons in Britain of the hit ITV sitcom Two's Company (1975-79), with Donald Sinden, and an Emmy-winning role as the ancient but still dangerous mother of a central character in the comedy 30 Rock (2007-12). However, at her core she was always a creature of New York theatre in its mid-20th-century golden age; another song from Follies became the soundtrack for that slice of her life.

In Broadway Baby, a young woman dreams of theatrical fame: "Someday maybe / All my dreams will be repaid / Heck, I'd even play the maid / To be in a show." Hearing her deliver this plea for a chance to become a star, the audience was movingly aware that Stritch had fulfilled her own dreams to such an extent that she was commonly known as the "first lady of Broadway".

Elaine Stritch and Donald Sinden in Two's Company in 1975. Photograph: John Curtis/Rex Features

If so, she was perhaps a first lady from the Nancy Reagan mould: there could be a certain hauteur, edge and brittleness to Stritch that led some former colleagues to invoke the rhyme that her distinctive surname temptingly invited. Perhaps conscious of this strain in her make-up, she always said that her own favourite among Sondheim's songs was The Ladies Who Lunch, from Company (1970). Stritch gained a Tony nomination for creating the role of Joanne, a waspish, snobbish, alcoholic socialite, whose big number in the show skewers the rich socialite wives and ex-wives of Manhattan meeting to bitch over lunch: "Another chance to disapprove / Another brilliant zinger / Another reason not to move / Another vodka stinger."

The final line of that quatrain had special resonance for Stritch because, for the first 40 years or so of her career, she was an alcoholic. Sondheim, in his theatrical memoir Finishing the Hat (2010), revealed that The Ladies Who Lunch was not only written for Stritch but inspired by her "acerbic delivery of self-assessment".

George Furth, who wrote the story and spoken dialogue for Company, had witnessed an inebriated Stritch asking a bartender, "Just give me a bottle of vodka and a floorplan," and this anecdote inspired the lyric. In later years, after she had become sober through rehab, she performed the song in cabaret with a wrenching emotional identification that seemed clearly to come from autobiographical flashbacks to the waste she had nearly made of her life.

Stritch was born in Detroit, Michigan, into a Roman Catholic family of Irish and Welsh descent; her uncle, Cardinal Samuel Stritch, was a leading American Catholic churchman. The family was wealthy, through her father's position as an executive with the tyre company BF Goodrich. At one point in Elaine Stritch at Liberty, she said to the audience, during a childhood anecdote: "My parents - let's not go there." Theatregoers in the era of misery memoirs assumed this to be an allusion to estrangement or even abuse but, questioned on this, Stritch insisted that the omission had the opposite motivation. She "so loved" George and Mildred Stritch - and had such gratitude for their financial and motivational support of her acting ambitions - that she "would find it impossible to talk about them on stage" without breaking down.

Her apprentice years in New York theatre included the feat of once being employed simultaneously in shows on Broadway and in Connecticut, her exit in the former allowing time to catch a train to make the later curtain for the latter.

Elaine Stritch at the Carlyle hotel, Manhattan. Photograph: Andrew Testa/Rex

Although that double booking suggests a cool head, Stritch suffered seriously from stage fright, believing that performers must feel fear: "If I see someone saying the rosary in the wings, I know they've got talent." Stritch, however, turned not to prayer but booze. From her earliest successes - winning her first Tony nomination in 1956 for William Inge's play Bus Stop - until the late 1980s, she would down a big drink before curtain, another in the interval and a third before delivering the climactic song (the so-called "11 o'clock number") in a musical.

She believed that theatregoers would be unaware of her habit, although word got round among producers. When she was appearing in Los Angeles in the 1960s, a guard was placed outside her dressing room, charged to listen for the tell-tale pop of corks. This precaution was thwarted by Stritch striking a deal with a local liquor store to deliver gift-wrapped bottles of champagne with fake messages of encouragement from celebrities ("Have a great show! from Judy Garland. xx"). The alcohol cop at the theatre let through these presents, unaware that they were trick bottles fitted with a special soundless cork.

Despite this questionable preparation for going on stage, Stritch otherwise remained an impeccable professional, boasting of having only missed two shows through indisposition over seven decades. She carried on performing live, because, she said: "I love audiences. My God, the best friends in the world!" It was her fierce creed that, even in long runs, each performance must be as good as possible - "the audience out there are seeing the show for the first time" - and, ideally, different from its predecessors: "I work constantly on the lyric of a song. Every time, I'm trying to find something else in it." Unlike many performers, she made a point of reading all her reviews, even hostile ones: "You can learn from what these cleverer people say about you."

Her stage acclaim led to screen roles including the CBS sitcom My Sister Eileen (1960-61) and the movie A Farewell to Arms (1957), but her acting success for a long time ran ahead of personal fulfilment. Catholic morality had left its mark and Stritch recalled turning down a fling with Marlon Brando as a young woman because she "wouldn't have known how to sleep with him". Her love life was also slowed down by a long pursuit of the actor Rock Hudson, who was at the time successfully concealing his homosexuality. She admitted to remaining a virgin until 30 and turning down opportunities to marry because the men, against Catholic doctrine, were divorcees.

As a result, she was 50 before making the major relationship of her life. After going to London in 1972 for the West End production of Company, she met and married John Bay, an American actor and playwright whose family had founded a company popularising English muffins in the US. Stritch and Bay married - a section of her solo show dealt with the happiness of this union - and lived in London at the Savoy hotel. Spotting the opportunities of this sojourn, LWT, whose headquarters was within walking distance of the Savoy, cannily came up with Two's Company.

Elaine Stritch with Noël Coward, at the Broadhurst theatre, New York, in 1961. Photograph: John Lent/AP

As Sondheim had done with The Ladies Who Lunch, the writer Bill MacIlwraith sensibly created a role close to Stritch's own persona: Dorothy McNab, a sharp-tongued and sassy American writer exiled in London. He maximised the potential culture clash by pairing the American big-mouth with Sinden's stereotypically correct English butler.

Bay's diagnosis with brain cancer and then his death in 1982 - and Stritch's resultant comfort drinking - caused the first significant dip in her career when she returned to her home country as a widow. But, after dealing with her alcoholism and a subsequent diagnosis as a diabetic, she was increasingly recognised as comedy and musical royalty. Woody Allen cast her in September (1987) and Small Time Crooks (2000), while she served Sondheim again in concert stagings of Company (in 1993) and a revival of A Little Night Music (in 2010). In 1996, she gave a memorable portrayal of Claire, an unhappy and malicious alcoholic, in a production of Edward Albee's family tragedy A Delicate Balance.

Her status as a Broadway great was confirmed by Elaine Stritch at Liberty. The script credit for this monologue with songs was "constructed by John Lahr and reconstructed by Elaine Stritch." Lahr, a biographer and theatre critic, admitted in the liner notes for the CD recording of the show that there had been a lot of shouting matches during the creation of the show. He referred to "that ozone of anger and anxiety that is finally the Stritch climate". Stritch, when I put this weather report to her, quibbled: "I think I have more humour in me than anger. But those two things are great bed-fellows, performance-wise."

This feisty attitude on stage perhaps compensated for what she freely admitted was a technically imperfect singing voice: a documentary shot during rehearsals of Company catches her self-deprecatingly saying: "I'm just shouting." But, like Sondheim, one of whose finest interpreters she certainly was, she understood that a song is a one-act play in musical form. "There were a lot of lyrics that I sang but didn't understand," she told me. "But I had this facade in performance of looking like I wrote the book."

Elaine Stritch, actor and singer, born 2 February 1925; died 17 July 2014

From Sondheim to 30 Rock: Stritch's career in clips
Stritch interview: 'I'm a do-it-myself kind of broad'
In pictures: an incorrigible scene-stealer

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Feisty, quick-witted actor and singer acclaimed as the 'first lady of Broadway'

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The work of orchestrator, musical director, composer, and arranger Jonathan Tunick ( b. New York City, April 19, 1938) defines the modern sound of Broadway, making extended use of eclectic textures, advanced harmonies, and electronic instruments. Juilliard-educated Tunick is the first orchestrator to have won a Tony Award®; indeed he is one of very few persons to have won all four major American awards in entertainment: the Grammy® ("No One Is Alone" 1988), Emmy® ( Night of 100 Stars 1982), Tony® ( Titanic 1997), and Oscar® ( A Little Night Music 1977).

Besides his outright wins (the Tony® for Titanic and Drama Desk Awards for Passion 1994, Titanic 1997, and Lovemusik 2007), Tunick has been showered with nominations: seven times for the Tony® for Best Orchestration ( Marie Christine 2000, Follies 2001, Nine 2003, Pacific Overtures 2005, Lovemusik 2007, 110 in the Shade 2007, A Catered Affair 2008) and eight times for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestration ( Baby 1984, Into the Woods 1988, Captains Courageous 1999, Saturday Night 2000, Follies 2001, Elaine Stritch At Liberty 2002, The Apple Tree 2007, A Catered Affair 2008). In 1982 he was given a Special Award by the Drama Desk.

Although Tunick has been associated most closely with Stephen Sondheim ( Promises, Promises 1968, Company 1970, Follies 1971, A Little Night Music 1973, Pacific Overtures 1976, Sweeney Todd 1979, Merrily We Roll Along 1981, Into the Woods 1987, Passion 1994, Putting It Together 1999, The Frogs 2004), he has also worked with composers Charles Strouse ( Dance a Little Closer 1983, Nick & Nora 1991), Maury Yeston ( Nine 1982, Titanic 1997), Marvin Hamlisch ( A Chorus Line 1975), Michael John LaChiusa ( Marie Christine 1999), and many others.

Altogether, Tunick has orchestrated, re-orchestrated, or composed for nearly sixty musical stage shows, from Take Five in 1957 to the revival of Promises, Promises in 2010, thirteen films, from The Twelve Chairs in 1970 to Sweeney Todd in 2007 (including Blazing Saddles 1974, Young Frankenstein 1974, A Little Night Music 1977, Fort Apache the Bronx 1981, Endless Love 1981, and Reds 1981), and two dozen scores for television ( Columbo: Murder Under Glass 1978, Three by Cheever 1979, Night of 100 Stars 1982, Murder, She Wrote 1984, Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories 1985, Into the Woods 1991). For most of his television scores he also served as conductor. In short, Tunick is the go-to guy for arrangements.

He is married to actress Leigh Beery.
- LEC

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Jonathan Tunick - The Official Masterworks Broadway Site

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The work of orchestrator, musical director, composer, and arranger Jonathan Tunick (b. New York City, April 19, 1938) defines the modern sound of Broadway, making extended use of eclectic textures, advanced harmonies, and electronic instruments. Juilliard-educated Tunick is the first orchestrator to have won a Tony Award®; indeed he is one of very few persons [...]

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The Muppet Show - 103: Joel Grey - “Comedy Tonight” (1976)

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Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)

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Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)

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This is a podcast about Stephen Sondheim's entire body of work show by show and song by song. Each week Kyle Marshall invites an expert to discuss a Sondheim song in-depth. Together they discover the humour, how the songs inform character, and any hidden meanings. Most importantly they try to understand the man behind the music, the Shakespeare of our time, as best they can.

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Listen to Putting It Together on Spotify. This is a podcast about Stephen Sondheim's entire body of work show by show and song by song. Each week Kyle Marshall invites an expert to discuss a Sondheim song in-depth. Together they discover the humour, how the songs inform character, and any hidden meanings.

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A Strange Loop: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

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Milton Babbitt Influenced Sondheim's Style

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Milton Babbitt Influenced Sondheim's Style

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Milton Babbitt-demonstration on electronic music (1966) part I

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"There are only three principles necessary for a lyric writer, all of them familiar truisms. They were not immediately apparent to me when I started writing, but have come into focus via Oscar Hammerstein’s tutoring, Strunk and White’s huge little book The Elements of Style and my own sixty-some years of practicing the craft. I have not always been skilled or diligent enough to follow them as faithfully as I would like, but they underlie everything I’ve ever written. In no particular order, and to be inscribed in stone:

Content Dictates Form

Less Is More

God Is in the Details

all in the service of

Clarity

without which nothing else matters."

—Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat

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an example of sondheim's motivic development

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an example of sondheim's motivic development

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INTO THE WOODS Conversation Piece - Stephen Sondheim on the "Bean Theme"

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Sondheim teaches 'My Friends' from Sweeney Todd

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i absolutely adore these videos of sondheim coaching performers

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i absolutely adore these videos of sondheim coaching performers

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Sondheim teaches 'Not Getting Married' from Company

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Sondheim: A Mentee of Hammerstein, A Mentor of Many

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Sondheim: A Mentee of Hammerstein, A Mentor of Many

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There's a newly resonant Easter egg near the end of the movie Tick, Tick . . . Boom! The semi-autobiographical musical, adapted from a show by Rent composer Jonathan Larson and released on Netflix in November, follows Larson as the up-and-coming composer and lyricist attempts to bring a production to Broadway. In the movie, as was the case in real life, his idol is Stephen Sondheim, who is convincingly played by Bradley Whitford.

Early in the film, Larson, played by Andrew Garfield, talks about how Sondheim's praise inspired him to keep working on the musical for years. Near the end, in a moment of despair, the giant of musical theater once again provides Larson with that sustenance, this time in the form of a voicemail. But if you listen closely, it's not Whitford speaking as Sondheim; it's Sondheim himself. The end credits even confirm this subtle cameo. As director Lin-Manuel Miranda has since explained, Sondheim wasn't satisfied when presented with the original scene and wanted to write and record a version himself to get his advice to the budding composer right.

On November 26, two weeks after Tick, Tick ... Boom! was released, Sondheim passed away at the age of 91. In the loving obituaries that followed, worthy of the most important musical theater artist of our time, who began as the lyricist of West Side Story and went on to compose the music and lyrics for such influential shows as Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park With George, writers extolled Sondheim as a "titan," a "singular" talent and "an artistic genius on the level of Shakespeare." He was certainly these things, but he was not born that way. By his own admission, Sondheim was the result of a deliberate and intense mentorship at the hands of Oscar Hammerstein II, an experience he promised to pass on to the next generation, as his nitpicking of Tick, Tick ... Boom! makes clear.

"[Oscar Hammerstein] helped Stephen Sondheim to unleash his own creative soul," Bruce Pomahac, who served as director of music at the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization for over 20 years, tells InsideHook, "and Steve just went where no one had gone before, because that's what fascinated him."

Human beings, and Americans especially, love the narrative of the organic genius, especially ones like Sondheim who we feel were underappreciated in their prime. But Sondheim's story is not one of a brilliant boy who toiled away alone in his room and became a legend, nor is it one of nepotism, where his association with Hammerstein, who along with Richard Rodgers created the Golden Age of musical theater with classics like Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I and The Sound of Music, gave him an unfair advantage. No, what we have here is one of the greatest examples of a thoroughly underappreciated part of life in the 21st century: mentorship.

The Mentorship of Stephen Sondheim

The story of Oscar Hammerstein taking young Stephen Sondheim under his wing has been told many a time: Sondheim's parents divorced, his mother bought a home near the Hammerstein farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the young boy took on Oscar as a surrogate father and the family accepted him in turn. There are a few scraps of lore that are always attached, including, as Pomahac recounts, Sondheim's insistence that if Hammerstein had been a geologist, he too would have been a geologist. That's a nice tidbit, but not quite the truth, as children are impressionable beings whose dreams are seemingly cemented, blown up and reformed over and over again when confronted with reality.

If Sondheim didn't have it in him to follow in Hammerstein's footsteps as a lyricist, he would certainly have changed course as a teenager. Yes, he caught the theater bug when Oscar took him to such momentous performances as the first out-of-town tryout for the musical Carousel around his 15th birthday; Sondheim has said that he wept so hard into Dorothy Hammerstein's fur coat at the end of the first act that he permanently stained it.

But in the process of Hammerstein teaching him how to write a musical, he was also on the receiving end of feedback that would induce a different sort of weeping in any normal, emotionally vulnerable teenager. Later that year, he gave Hammerstein By George, his first attempt at a musical, and asked his mentor to give him feedback as if they didn't know each other. (Inside, he hoped Rodgers and Hammerstein would want to produce it.)

"'In that case, I have to say it's the worst thing that's ever crossed my desk. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. It's the most unproducible. It makes no sense,'" Hammerstein said, as Sondheim recounted to Diane Sawyer in 1988. While Sondheim admitted that "worst" sounds cruel, he added, "He was not cruel that way, but he made it very clear that if I were going to ask for professional standards, he was going to treat me like a professional."

That cold bucket of water didn't deter Sondheim. In fact, it may not have been in sharing Hammerstein's Broadway smashes like Oklahoma! and Carousel where the young lyricist and composer got the most out of his mentorship.

"He was around after Carousel for Rodgers and Hammerstein's next show, Allegro, which was not a success," Pomahac explains, noting that Sondheim was intimately involved in that production as a gofer, an errand boy who got coffee and typed scripts and whatever else needed doing. "That taught him probably more than any of the successes taught him because he saw the authors struggling to get something to work that wasn't working, and also they were struggling under the pressure of a New York deadline."

Crucially, Hammerstein's own failure to create a hit out of his most experimental show ever did not bleed into his advice for Sondheim. He pushed his student to find his own voice rather than emulate him or anyone else. As Pomahac illustrates, "Whereas Oscar Hammerstein was sentimental, Stephen Sondheim was ironic. When Oscar Hammerstein wrote 'I love you,' it meant 'I love you.' When Stephen Sondheim wrote 'I love you,' it could mean 'I hate you.'" There are certain rules when it comes to constructing a top-notch musical - as Sondheim writes in his book Look, I Made a Hat, some of Oscar's rules were "imprinted in my DNA" - but when it came to finding one's own style, Hammerstein recommended killing your idols, even if that meant himself.

Unfortunately, while Hammerstein helped kickstart Sondheim's professional career - convincing him to write lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy even though Sondheim initially wanted a project where he could write music and lyrics both - he passed away before he could see his student truly come into his own. Hammerstein died in 1960 on his farm in Doylestown. Two years later, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened on Broadway, for which Sondheim wrote both the music and lyrics. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical.

Sondheim Pays It Forward

"Sondheim made it very clear that one of his priorities in life was being a teacher and passing on knowledge and encouragement and doing what Oscar Hammerstein did for him," theater historian and producer Jennifer Ashley Tepper tells InsideHook. "It's so remarkable to think that Oscar Hammerstein mentored Sondheim, and certainly helped other people, but the breadth of people that Sondheim mentored was just so huge."

After getting his footing in the theater, debuting as a composer-lyricist with Forum and then working with Richard Rodgers on Do I Hear a Waltz?, and then hitting his stride in the '70s and '80s, his most productive period, which started with Company in 1970 and ended with Assassins in 1990, Sondheim gained a reputation as an artist with something of an open mailbox policy. If you wrote to him, chances are he would write back, offering advice, answering questions and being generous with his time and expertise.

However, his goal as a mentor wasn't simply one of volume. As Tepper explains, he had a "hefty" mentorship with Lin-Manuel Miranda (of Hamilton and In the Heights) and Jason Robert Brown ( Parade, The Bridges of Madison County, The Last Five Years), as well as the late Jonathan Larson.

"I remember reading one letter that Jonathan wrote to Sondheim where he was like, 'I'm starting on a new rock opera and I'm working on it passionately' ... and that was the beginning of Rent," says Tepper, who was the historian consultant on Tick, Tick ... Boom! and creator of The Jonathan Larson Project. Sondheim was likely one of the first people in the world to know about Rent, the '90s rock musical that changed the landscape of Broadway, which to Tepper shows "the depth of their correspondence and the depth of Sondheim's mentorship toward Jonathan."

Here again the Broadway lore creeps in. The movie Tick, Tick ... Boom! depicts Sondheim as an encouraging but not quite hands-on figure in Larson's life. As Tepper fact checks, his helping hand cannot be understated: Sondheim responded to Larson's letters offering advice, he wrote letters of recommendation, helped him get awards that kept him afloat, helped him get a big-time agent (which isn't the case in the film). He even let Larson sit in on rehearsals for the original production of Into the Woods in the '80s. What up-and-coming composer wouldn't want to be in that room?

"Unexpected significant moments, moments which happen entirely by chance, keep life surprising and sometimes change its direction permanently - not events, mere moments," Sondheim wrote in Look, I Made a Hat. "My parents' divorce, for example, was an event: it led to my meeting Oscar Hammerstein II and finding a channel into the work I was meant to do."

There it is: Sondheim admits the whole notion of being a geologist, or whatever Hammerstein happened to be, was bogus. He was meant to create theater. And yet, would we have had the Sondheim we cherish today, with a catalog of shows and songs that continue to surprise audiences time and time again, without a mentor who cared as much as Hammerstein?

Sondheim's devotion to mentoring the next generation, even at the expense of his own work later in life, seems to answer that question quite clearly.

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If Stephen Sondheim Taught Us Anything, It's That Mentors Matter

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Stephen Sondheim, who died on November 26, was a giant of musical theater. His life is also the best argument for mentorship we have.

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Stephen Sondheim's Relationship with Mother

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Stephen Sondheim's Relationship with Mother

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Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

There is nothing particularly notable, Stephen Sondheim claimed, about being the child of divorced parents. "Children of broken homes? There are 5 million per square inch," he told The Guardian. "I have not lived a very bizarre life. ... The world is full of mothers and fathers like mine." However, even Sondheim admits that there was nothing normal about his subsequent relationship with his mother, whom he described as an "extreme case."

Sondheim claimed that after his father, Herbert, abandoned his mother, Janet, for a younger woman, Janet became "creepy," and turned her rage for Herbert against her son, manifesting it in disturbing ways. "She took it out on me because she had no one else to take it out on ... I went to a show with her and she not only held my hand, but looked at me during the entire play. And she would sit across from me with her legs aspread. She would lower her blouse and that sort of stuff. But I was surprised rather than shocked" (per The Guardian).

Sondheim was estranged from his mother throughout his adult life, though he continued to support her financially. In another shocking incident from their relationship, The Guardian describes how Janet contacted her son by note shortly before a hospital visit that she thought might kill her. Her note read: "The night before I undergo open-heart surgery ... the only regret I have in life is giving you birth." Janet died in 1992, but Sondheim did not attend her funeral.

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The Untold Truth Of Stephen Sondheim - Grunge

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Stephen Sondheim, the giant of Broadway musicals, died November 26 at his home in Connecticut at the age of 91. His childhood might well have informed his art.

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Stephen Sondheim Society | Official biography

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The official, approved biography of Stephen Sondheim

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Anyone Can Whistle (1964)

A Little Night Music (1973)

Pacific Overtures (1976)

Merrily We Roll Along (1981)

Sunday In The Park With George (1984)

Bounce (2003) which later became Road Show (2008)

He has also written lyrics for:

Candide (1973, additional lyrics)

Anthologies of his work as composer and lyricist include:

Side By Side By Sondheim (1976)

You're Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983)

Putting It Together (1993/99)

Sondheim on Sondheim (2010)

Just Another Love Story (2012)

Sondheim's Old Friends (2022/23)

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Sondheim Society | The shows of Stephen Sondheim

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A chronological list of Stephen Sondheim's complete output, from 1954's Saturday Night to 2010's Sondheim on Sondheim

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“We have to write and document our history right now. It's really not about black and white, it's about the story. [If] we gonna tell the story, let's tell the story right, that's why we as black people have to tell our own story. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history, the history becomes twisted and we get written out.” –Erykah Badu

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The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is a 2011 Swedish documentary film directed by Göran Olsson, that examines the evolution of the Black Power movement in American society from 1967 to 1975 as viewed through Swedish journalists and filmmakers. It features footage of the movement shot by Swedish journalists in the United States at that time, with appearances by Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and other activists, artists, and leaders central to the movement.

The documentary features the found footage shot by a group of Swedish journalists (discovered some 30 years later in the cellar of Swedish Television) overlaid with commentaries and interviews from leading contemporary African-American artists, activists, musicians, and scholars. Divided into 9 sections based chronologically on each successive year between 1967 and 1975, the film focuses on several topics and subjects relevant to the Black Power Movement including Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, the Black Panther Party, COINTELPRO, and the War on Drugs. The film documents these events with footage of individuals who were highly important to the movement including but not limited to Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey P. Newton. David Fear of Time Out New York referred to the film as "a time capsule of a turbulent era, essential viewing for anyone concerned with our nation's history-and its present".

Political activist, academic scholar, and author Angela Davis is featured in the film through both footage and contemporary voice commentary.

The footage includes appearances by Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Louis Farrakhan, Emile de Antonio, Richard Nixon, Ingrid Dahlberg and Angela Davis who also provides contemporary voice commentary.

Additional contemporary voice commentaries are provided by Erykah Badu, Ahmir Questlove Thompson, who is also credited with scoring the music for the film along with Om'Mas Keith, Talib Kweli, Harry Belafonte, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, John Forté, Sonia Sanchez, Bobby Seale, Robin Kelley, Abiodun Oyewole and Melvin Van Peebles. Mark Jenkins of NPR has commented that the prominence of music artists rather than political activists who provide commentary throughout the film is "a sign of how African-American culture has shifted".

The conception of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is unique in that the 16 mm film footage used was originally shot by Swedish journalists in the 1960s and 1970s for Swedish Television, but the editing and release of the film did not take place for more than 3 decades after the era when it was discovered by director Göran Olsson. The setting of the footage featured in the documentary spans across the US and Europe and includes shots in Harlem, Oakland, and Brooklyn. Although Swedish journalists conducted the interviews, the film was co-produced by Americans Joslyn Barnes and actor Danny Glover through their independent film production company, Louverture Films. The production company is geared toward producing "independent films of historical relevance, social purpose, commercial value and artistic integrity". The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 was screened at both the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. The rights of the documentary were later acquired by Sundance Selects, a sister label to IFC Films. The documentary was also featured on a February 2012 episode of PBS's Independent Lens.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 53 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

The documentary was nominated for and won and number of awards throughout 2011-2012.

Questlove did voice commentary for the film and won the Guldbagge Award for Best Music with Om'Mas Keith.

Some of the criticism that the documentary has received has been directed toward its limited coverage of everything that the Black Power movement encapsulated. Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch opined that the "'Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975' is a potent time capsule, but without a skeleton of facts and figures, it's a deficient history lesson". NPR acknowledged that the film "includes plenty of interest, but it would be stronger if the filmmakers had dug a little deeper into the footage from 1967 to 1972 and skipped the final years altogether". In its review for the film, The New York Times commented, "As its title suggests, 'The Black Power Mixtape' is not a comprehensive history". However, this outlook on the subject matter of the film is not universal. Diane Archer of Film Comment wrote that The Black Power Mixtape is "a chronological, musically structured collage tracing the arc of the Black Power movement from its inception during the civil rights era through its dissolution as drugs began to erode black communities in the Seventies, created with rarely seen footage culled from the archives of Swedish Television". Given this commentary, it is apparent that two of the historical events that the film does a particularly fine job of covering is that of the Civil Rights Movement and the effects of the War on Drugs. Olsson frames these themes to be highly relevant to the Black Power movement throughout the documentary.

The most telling aspect of the film which reveals the strong thematic presence of the Civil Rights Movement from the beginning is its early depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. The film begins its documentation in 1967 which is at the heels of the Civil Rights Movement and rise of the Black Power movement. Featured in the 1967 recap within the film, Stokely Carmichael is seen offering his thoughts on Dr. King in a vintage interview. In reflecting, Carmichael claims that King is "A great man full of compassion. He is full of mercy and he is very patient. He is a man who can accept the uncivilized behavior of white Americans and their unceasing taunts and still have in his heart forgiveness. Unfortunately, I am from a younger generation. I'm not as patient as Dr. King, nor am I as merciful as Dr. King". In documenting both the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement, Olsson portrays the tension present as the two movement attempted to coexist despite the differing goals and tactics of the movements.

In documenting the rift between King and Carmichael, the film portrays the tension between the two distinct movements. Carmichael, who popularized the term " Black Power", used the Black Power movement to promote Black nationalism and Self-determination. King, as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, promoted political cooperation and nonviolence, and the 1967 and 1968 recaps within the film offer a display, explanation, and illustration of why these movements were at odds with each other. In the 1968 section of the film specifically, the film documents the intersections of the two movements when Dr. King is shown speaking out against the Vietnam War and Income inequality, political movements more closely associated with the Black Power movement. The film goes as far to suggest that his assassination was heeded by an ideological movement towards Black Power, a movement he initially condemned.

While the Black Power movement is often characterized as violent, the film challenges conventions in its effort to portray the movement in a more positive light. This is accomplished in the way in which the film humanizes the leaders of the Black Power movement. In his review of the film, A.O. Scott of The New York Times commented on the film's portrayal of Stokely Carmichael, writing "Carmichael, who later moved to Guinea and took the name Kwame Ture, is remembered for the militancy of his views and his confrontational, often slashingly witty speeches, but the Swedish cameras captured another side of him. In the most touching and arresting scene in 'Mixtape,' he interviews his mother, Mable, gently prodding her to talk about the effects of poverty and discrimination on her family". The film does the same with Black Power leaders and icons including Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver, and thus the Black Power movement is portrayed in a more positive light that is usually reserved for the Civil Rights Movement when analyzing United States History. The film also includes a scene in which the head of , an American publication, claims that Swedish coverage of American news stories, specifically the ones sympathetic to the Black Panther Party, are overly negative and "Anti-American".

The 1973-1975 recap documented within the film focuses heavily on the detrimental effects of the War on Drugs in African-American communities including its contribution to the heroin epidemic, while also documenting the rise of Nation of Islam. In the Film Juice review of the film, editor Alex Moss claims,

Sadly, once the Black Power Mixtape shifts its emphasis from the Black Panthers to the Nation of Islam and the War on Drugs, the documentary begins to lose both its precision and its power. An interview with Louis Farrakhan is eerie in its fantastical delusions and the documentary's uncritical attitude towards the idea that the Nation of Islam offers a disciplined lifestyle heralds the arrival of a number of bizarre conspiracy theories including the somewhat inconsistent view that the authorities both turned a blind-eye to the drug trade in Black areas and cracked down on the drug trade in Black areas in a way that damaged the community and undermined the pursuit of civil rights.

Craig Detweiler of offers similar sentiments in his review of the film, suggesting that drugs are portrayed in the documentary as a way that Black communities were placated in the midst of all the anger from the movement. "The '70s are portrayed as a lost decade, where heroin floods the streets of Harlem. Vietnam veterans return home as addicts. Leaders' focus gets fuzzy. And the war on drugs becomes a war against a particular community".

This confusion between the actual detriments of the War on Drugs give way to an ending of the film that several critics have express does not seem quite complete. In the 1973 section of the documentary, one of the film's more memorable scenes includes a bus full of Swedes who are taking a tour through Harlem and are warned not to visit the neighborhood for "personal studies" because it is "only for black people" adding that it is a "black man's ghetto where everyone is trying to get high." Though the scene may call into question the intent of the Swedes depicted on the bus during a trying time for the African-American community, Olsson has acknowledged that the purpose of the scene was to portray "passive racism" on behalf of the Swedish tourists. The film also includes a scene in the 1974 section that depicts a young woman explaining her fight with heroin addiction and its prominence in the community. In documenting these interviews in the film, Olsson vividly displays the detriments of a community ravaged by drugs.

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The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 - Wikipedia

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The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is a 2011 Swedish documentary film directed by Göran Olsson, that examines the evolution of the Black Power movement in American society from 1967 to 1975 as viewed through Swedish journalists and filmmakers.

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Passing Strange: The First Authentic Black Musical?

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Passing Strange: The First Authentic Black Musical?

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Passing Strange is a comedy-drama rock musical about a young African American's artistic journey of self-discovery in Europe, with strong elements of philosophical existentialism, metafiction (especially self-referential humor), and the artistic journey. The musical's lyrics and book are by Stew with music and orchestrations by Heidi Rodewald and Stew. It was created in collaboration with director Annie Dorsen.

The musical was developed at the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in 2004 and 2005, one of the few works to be invited back for a second round of development. It had productions in Berkeley, California and Off-Broadway before opening on Broadway in 2008, garnering strong reviews and several awards. Spike Lee filmed the musical on Broadway in July 2008, premiering the film in 2009.

Stew had never written a play before Passing Strange. In an interview with Berkeley Rep, where the play premiered, he said he was initially inspired by reading about the Old Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare productions were originally performed in front of rowdy audiences. A longtime rock musician and performer, he wanted to combine the energy of a rock show with the lively potential of a theater setting. Stew stated that the title "Passing Strange" comes from Shakespeare's 1603 play Othello, the Moor of Venice. In the play, the title character utters the following lines:

My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;

She swore, in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;

'Twas pitiful. 'twas wondrous pitiful,

She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd

That heaven had made her such a man.
-Othello, the Moor of Venice, act 1, scene 3, lines 158-163

Stew commented that the quote reminds him of a rock musician who tries to attract a girl with his on-the-road stories. "Passing" also refers to the history of African Americans passing as white, as well as the passage of time.

The plot itself involves an anonymous protagonist, called the Youth, who travels on a picaresque journey to find "the real", complicated by his need to rebel against his mother and society, "passing" through place to place and from lover to lover. His experiences are shaped by his black, American, and middle-class identity. As a musician, he attempts to express his true self through a number of musical genres, including gospel, punk, blues, jazz, and rock; however, the musical itself is most prominently grounded in rock music.

Stew summarized the story and the music: "It's ... about the costs of being a young artist. It's a 46-year-old guy looking back at the things that he did and the values he had in his 20s, sort of when you're making that decision to really be an artist ... We knew we were going to invent something 'cause we kind of knew this hadn't been done before, the goal being to bring the actual music that one hears in a club to the stage - not through some kind of theatrical musical-theater filter".

The musical was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning one, for best book. It won three Drama Desk Awards, however, for outstanding musical, music and lyrics (out of seven nominations), among a number of other awards and nominations. The musical was also awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical; the Audelco Award for Best Musical, as well as Best Director (Annie Dorsen), Best Musical Director (Rodewald), and Best Performance (Daniel Breaker); and an Obie Award for Best New Theatre Piece, as well as Outstanding Ensemble.

Passing Strange premiered on October 19, 2006, at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California. It was then produced off-Broadway at The Public Theater in New York City, running from May 14, 2007, through June 3, 2007. The musical began previews at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway on February 8, 2008, and officially opened on February 28, 2008, with the same cast that starred at the Public Theater. After 165 performances, it closed on July 20, 2008. Directed by Annie Dorsen, the musical was choreographed by Karole Armitage, with scenic design by David Korins, costume design by Elizabeth Hope Clancy and lighting design by Kevin Adams.

The first regional production opened at The Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. on July 18, 2010 with a revised script and ran through August. It did not include co-creator Stew as the Narrator, and the cast was expanded from seven to fourteen players. "Passing Strange" played at ACT Theatre in Seattle, WA in June and July, 2014 with LeRoy Bell of "The Voice" in the lead role.

The first production in a high school opened at The Beacon School in New York on May 8, 2014, completely uncensored. It was directed by Jo Ann M. Cimato, starring Dazay Burnett as the Narrator. Stew would work with The Beacon School in the future; members of the cast performed numbers from Passing Strange with him at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and plans were made for collaboration on future projects.

The Narrator introduces himself as Stew ("Prologue"), openly referring to himself, Heidi, and the rest of the band, and occasionally interrupting the plot and interacting directly with the characters throughout the play. The Narrator introduces the African-American male protagonist as "the Youth"-whom the Narrator also refers to as the "hero" or "pilgrim". In a late 1970s South Central Los Angeles middle-class neighborhood, the Youth begins searching for "the real" during his teenaged years, having just briefly turned to Zen Buddhism in defiance of his single mother's conservative Christian faith ("Baptist Fashion Show"). Regardless, he is reluctantly dragged to her church and feels surprisingly moved by the church's gospel band, joyfully equating gospel to rock & roll ("Blues Revelation / Freight Train") and, deciding to explore the spiritual power of music, he joins the church choir ("Edwina Williams"). Here, he meets the pastor's son and choir director, Franklin Jones, who as a marijuana-smoking closeted gay man, exposes the Youth to drugs, New Negro culture, and European philosophy ("Arlington Hill"). The Youth eventually begins playing guitar, deserts Franklin's choir, and forms a punk rock band ("Sole Brother"), which quickly dissolves during a bad LSD trip ("Must've Been High").

The Youth saves money to travel to Europe where he hopes to truly develop as a musical artist, despite his mother and community's disapproval ("Mom Song / Philistines"), culminating in an argument that satirizes the overly dramatic styles of European experimental cinema and which soon merges onstage into the actual journey to Europe ("Merci Beaucoup, M. Godard"). Now in promiscuous Amsterdam, with its easy access to drugs and sex ("Amsterdam"), the Youth experiences his first sense of acceptance when a local squatter, Marianna, unquestioningly accepts him into her apartment ("Keys"). After happily living among Marianna and other free-spirited artists ("We Just Had Sex"), he finds he cannot write songs when he has nothing to complain about. He heads to Berlin, leaving behind an upset Marianna, who tells him not to return ("Paradise").

The Youth arrives in West Berlin during a May Day riot ("May Day"), joining some of the performance-artist protesters ("Surface"). His integrity falters when he misrepresents himself as poor to be accepted by the revolutionary artists whom he now lives with, collectively called Nowhaus. Desi, his new girlfriend and the Nowhaus leader, tells him that only love is real ("Damage").

The Youth can never bring himself to be honest about his background ("Identity"), though he basks in a romanticized African-American stereotype amidst his German friends ("The Black One"). Desi finally expresses her feelings that the Youth is concealing his true identity ("Come Down Now"). Meanwhile, he is irritated by his heartsick mother's phone calls and delays visiting her, even with Christmas approaching, when the other Nowhaus members abruptly return home to their families. The Youth pleads with Desi to stay with him during the holidays, but they fight over their differing views on love and she leaves him ("Youth's Unfinished Song").

The Narrator's self-reflections promptly enter into the Youth's story ("Work the Wound"), concluding with the unexpected scene of the Youth at his mother's funeral. With this surprisingly dramatic turns of events, the tone of the play shifts from largely comedic to suddenly heavy-hearted. The Narrator and the Youth confront each other directly and in a serious moment for the first time as the Youth copes with his grief; dealing with the loss of the same mother, it is clear now that the Narrator and Youth represent the same person at two different times in his life ("Passing Phase"). The Youth, after declaring that only art can correct the mistake known as life, resurrects his mother's spirit through his art ("Is It Alright?"). Ultimately, however, only the more mature Narrator remains onstage, professing the need for something beyond "the real" and that this is love ("Love Like That").

"Prologue: We Might Play All Night" - Narrator and the Band

"Baptist Fashion Show" - Narrator, Band and Ensemble

"Blues Revelation; Freight Train":

"Listening is Waiting" † - Heidi (from the Band) and Narrator

"Church Blues Revelation" - Reverend Jones, Narrator and Ensemble

"Music is the Freight Train in which God Travels" - Narrator and Ensemble

"Edwina Williams" - Edwina and Narrator

"Arlington Hill" †; "Everything's Alright" - Narrator; Narrator and Ensemble

"Sole Brother" - Youth, Terry and Sherry

"Must've Been High" † - Narrator

"Mom Song"; "Philistines" - Narrator, Mother and Ensemble; Youth and Ensemble

"Merci Beaucoup, M. Godard" - Narrator and Stewardesses

"Amsterdam" - Band and Ensemble

"Keys":

"Keys #1" - Marianna and Youth

"Keys #2" - Narrator

"It's Alright" - Narrator and Ensemble

"We Just Had Sex" - Youth, Marianna and Renata

"Paradise":

"Paradise/Stoned" ‡ - Youth, Marianna and Ensemble

"Keys (Reprise)" † - Youth and Narrator

"Paradise (Reprise)/Starting to Feel Real" ‡ - Youth, Marianna, Band and Ensemble

"May Day":

"Berlin: A Black Hole with Taxis" - Narrator

"May Day (There's a Riot Goin' Down)" † - Narrator, Heidi, Youth, Nowhaus and Ensemble

"Desi" † - Narrator, Youth, Desi and Ensemble

"Are You Ready to Explode?" - Narrator and Ensemble

"Surface":

"What's Inside is Just a Lie" - Mr. Venus

"Are You Ready to Explode? (Reprise)" - Mr. Venus, Youth and Ensemble

"The System Does All Kinds of Damage" † - Narrator, Desi and Youth

"Identity" - Youth

"The Black One" - Narrator and Ensemble

"Come Down Now":

"Listening is Waiting (Reprise)" † - Heidi

"Come Down Now" - Desi and Heidi

"Starting to Feel Real (Reprise)" - Narrator, Desi, Heidi and Ensemble

"Youth's Unfinished Song" - Youth

"Work the Wound" - Narrator

"Passing Phase" - Youth and Narrator

"Cue Music (Is It Alright?)" † - Narrator and Mother

"Epilogue: Love Like That" - Narrator and Heidi

Encore: "It's Alright" - All

† In the staged performance, this song is heavily interspersed with or broken up by dialogue and/or spoken narration.
‡ The two titles here enclosed within a single pair of quotation marks and separated by a slash refer to two songs that play in counterpoint.

All actors except those playing the Narrator, Youth, and Mother also play miscellaneous, nameless roles such as church-goers, family members, airplane stewardesses, etc. Major roles are emphasized in boldface.

Passing Strange: The Movie

Director Spike Lee made a permanent record of the Broadway production "for generations and generations to see" by filming the last three performances at the Belasco Theatre. His feature film had its world premiere on January 16 at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and opened at the IFC Center in New York City's West Village on August 21, 2009. It aired on PBS as part of Great Performances.

Reviews on and off Broadway were positive. Charles Isherwood wrote in The New York Times: "Although it is far richer in wit, feeling and sheer personality than most of what is classified as musical theater in the neighborhood around Times Square these days, its big heart throbs to the sound of electric guitars, searing synthesizer chords, driving drums and lyrics delivered not in a clean croon but a throaty yelp... Passing Strange is bursting at the seams with melodic songs, and it features a handful of theatrical performances to treasure... Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens... I'll just call it wonderful, and a welcome anomaly on Broadway". Hilton Als praised the storyline of the musical in The New Yorker: " Passing Strange is a brilliant work about migration - a geographical migration but also its hero's migration beyond the tenets of "blackness" and toward selfhood. ...Stew, who created Passing Strange, which is an autobiography of sorts, doesn't distract us with exoticism or nostalgia; his story centers on a young black man who discovers his own Americanness while growing up, first, in Los Angeles and, later, in Europe. The Youth (Daniel Breaker) is a rock-and-roll Candide - a wanderer whose innocence is never entirely corrupted".

Spike Lee's documentary of the play also received a positive review by A. O. Scott in The New York Times: "Here's the strange thing. When I saw Spike Lee's film adaptation, 'Passing Strange: The Movie,' in effect a video recording of a performance identical to the one I'd witnessed at the Belasco Theater in 2008, I was blown away. Loose ends ceased to dangle; soft spots were smoothed away and slow passages tightened up". Laremy Legel of Film.com called the film "vibrant and compelling" noting that Lee's decision to shoot it as a play was the right one: "Spike Lee, to his credit, realized the beauty of the musical was right there on stage - no further tinkering was needed. Spike used 14 cameras at once to capture the action like it's never been done before. Amazingly, you never see a camera you weren't meant to see. Intimate shots were gathered in gorgeous high-definition over the course of three shows and seamlessly edited together. It's a technological triumph as well as an artistic one".

Original Broadway production

Passing Strange: The Movie

Official web site

Passing Strange at the Internet Broadway Database

Passing Strange at the Internet Off-Broadway Database

"Drama Desk Nominees Announced; Catered Affair Garners 12 Noms", Playbill, April 28, 2008, Retrieved 5-2-2008

"Young Frankenstein Tops Outer Critics Circle Awards Nominations", Playbill, April 21, 2008, Retrieved 5-2-2008

"74th Annual Drama League Award Nominees Announced", Playbill, April 22, 2008, Retrieved 5-2-2008

"Adding Machine Gets Six Lucille Lortel Noms; Opus, Passing Strange Recognized", Playbill, March 31, 2008, Retrieved 5-2-2008

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Passing Strange is a comedy-drama rock musical about a young African American's artistic journey of self-discovery in Europe, with strong elements of philosophical existentialism, metafiction (especially self-referential humor), and the artistic journey. The musical's lyrics and book are by Stew with music and orchestrations by Heidi Rodewald and Stew.

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Once On This Island perform "We Dance / Mama Will Provide" at The 2018 Tony Awards

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Jennifer Holliday "And I Am Telling You"

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Forty years after its original release, no film has uniquely defined black culture and shaped the framework of a musical genre quite like "The Wiz."

An adaptation of the groundbreaking Broadway musical - itself a retelling of L. Frank Baum's classic 1900 children's fantasy "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" that became the beloved Judy Garland movie - the Sidney Lumet-directed film had a rapturous soundtrack produced by Quincy Jones, a cast that included Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena Horne, Nipsey Russell, Mabel King and Richard Pryor and an aesthetic firmly rooted in black culture.

For a generation of black Americans, this was the first time they saw people who spoke, sung and moved the way they did in a Broadway production and, later, a big-screen musical, and it has become a kind of rite of passage for the black community.

Everyone remembers their first time experiencing "The Wiz." If it's the stage production, that likely came from performing it in high school or seeing a touring troupe tackle it, but the film is the most accessible entry into the all-black retelling of "The Wizard of Oz." Many of us recall watching it with family during the holidays, huddled around the TV and singing the tunes.

What was revolutionary about "The Wiz," first in the original Broadway production and then amplified by Jones' work on the splashy film version, was its songbook.

"Grease" had arrived to big screens months earlier, as did "Thank God It's Friday" (which, like "The Wiz," was a Motown production), but those musicals pulled heavily from the world of disco and were tailored toward white audiences.

"The Wiz," however, weaved together gospel, blues, soul and R&B - genres that are unequivocally black creations - and were narratives of the black experience, an especially bold move given Hollywood's monochromatic palette.

It bombed upon its release on Oct. 24, 1978 (it cost more than it earned and critics dismissed it as a saccharine, poor imitation of its Broadway predecessor), but that didn't matter to audience members who were seeing themselves reflected on screen in ways they hadn't before.

To understand it's power, let's rewind to 1972. It was then that New York disc jockey Ken Harper, inspired by the dominance of the Motown sound, imagined a take of Baum's epic fantasy that distilled the tale through a black lens.

He got the backing of Fox - in exchange for first option for film rights, publishing rights and album rights - and in 1974 "The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical 'Wonderful Wizard of Oz"' opened in Baltimore, before hitting Broadway the following year.

"The Wiz" weathered a ballooning budget, mixed reviews, technical hiccups, sluggish ticket sales and the constant threat of closure to become a sensation that earned seven Tony Awards, including best musical, and a multimillion-dollar adaptation from Motown and Universal, who grabbed the rights from Fox.

Both the stage and film productions of "The Wiz" have a common theme: the perseverance of the black American dream despite mighty odds. But where the original stage production uses Dorothy's journey home from the Land of Oz to explore slavery, emancipation, the great migration and faith, the film updates it to a post-Civil Rights era.

Rural, turn-of-the-century Kansas in Baum's version became contemporary Harlem. Now our heroine is an introverted Harlem schoolteacher that has never been south of 125th Street. Emerald City is a slick urban core brimming with temptations and the Winkies are, in effect, the poor working class stuck under the thumb of a slave-driving tyrant.

"The Wiz" is foremost a story of racial liberation, and an early piece of Afrofuturism - the combination of science fiction, fantasy, magic realism and ancient African tradition that critiques historical events or envisions a black future, inspiring such recent groundbreaking films as "Get Out" and "Black Panther" - but what has cemented its cult status is the music and movement seen onscreen.

Its dance numbers incorporated traditional movement from the African diaspora with ballet, jazz and modern movement that has defined black dance - the "Emerald City Sequence" alone has informed everything from the black queer ballroom scene to Beyoncé and the music has shaped R&B for decades.

The original production launched the formidable Stephanie Mills (the original Dorothy, she lost the film role after Ross pulled a power play with the studio) to R&B stardom. It was the first time Jones collaborated with Jackson, then a 19-year-old looking to break away from the Motown sound. "Off the Wall" was released 10 months after "The Wiz," the album inspired by Jackson's time in New York frequenting Studio 54 and getting exposed to percolating hip-hop scene during downtime from filming.

When Whitney Houston made her television debut in 1983 on "The Merv Griffin Show," she sang the musical's soaring number "Home" - her mother, gospel legend Cissy Houston, has an uncredited role in the film - and the internet is rife with a litany of talents covering the song when they were young, most notably Jazmine Sullivan and Beyoncé, who kicked off her provocative Coachella performance with a wink to "The Wiz" (those opening horns are lifted right from the "Emerald City Sequence," a definitive performance in the film).

Beyoncé and Sullivan - like this writer - are part of a generation not yet alive when "The Wiz" originally debuted. It was a cornerstone of our parents' teenage years in which they were seeing expressions of themselves through a wave of blaxploitation films, and has been a definitive experience for black theater kids for decades now.

It made sense, then, that NBC decided to mark the original production's 40th anniversary in 2015 by mounting a live TV event that doubled down on the show's affirmation of black life at a moment when antiblack rhetoric and violence against black bodies fill news cycles.

While "Home" is the tune that has undoubtedly cemented the lasting legacy of "The Wiz," a more potent flourish of the musical's greatness comes through the jubilant "Everybody Rejoice."

The Luther Vandross-penned song comes after our heroine has killed the tyrannical Wicked Witch of the West, freed the Winkies and saved her new pals Tinman, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow.

It's a spirited celebration of freedom, but "The Wiz" has always meant something else for us and "Everybody Rejoice," like "You Can't Win," "Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News" and the film's other centerpiece, "Ease on Down the Road," feels more like a rallying cry culled from the tradition of Negro spirituals.

Listen closely and you can hear Nipsey Russell proudly shouts "Free at last!" - a literal call back to the mighty words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The lyrics of "Everybody Rejoice," feel as vital today as it did then.

"We always knew that we'd be free somehow, In harmony / And show the world that we've got liberty ... Freedom, you see, has got our hearts singing so joyfully ...Can't you feel a brand new day?"
gerrick.kennedy@latimes.com For more music news follow me on Twitter:@GerrickKennedy

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Commentary: On its 40th anniversary, a look at how 'The Wiz' forever changed black culture

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Forty years after its original release, no film has uniquely defined black culture and shaped the framework of a musical genre quite like "The Wiz."

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When people ask me to name the greatest production I've ever seen of a musical, I don't have to fish for an answer. It was Harold Prince's original production of Cabaret in the fall of 1966. I saw it during the first week of its life, when it was trying out at the Shubert Theater in Boston on its way to Broadway. That I ended up in the Shubert was completely by chance. I was a theater-geek high-school senior in town for a college interview; that was the show that was running downtown the one night I had to myself; seats were available in the very back of the house. I knew nothing about the production. There was only one nominal star in the cast - the legendary Weimar-era performer Lotte Lenya, the widow and collaborator of the composer Kurt Weill. There had not yet been any reviews to tell an audience what was in store.

When you walked into the theater, the curtain was up, an anomaly then, and you were immediately confronted by a huge trapezoidal mirror reflecting the arriving audience. Then the lights went down, and out trotted this garishly rouged, terrifying human marionette, an "emcee" played by Joel Grey, an actor then little known except (by obsessives like me, anyway) for inheriting Broadway roles originated by stars like Anthony Newley in bus-and-truck tours. " Wilkommen ... " he sang. I couldn't quite catch the rest and turned to my friend Sara in panic: "Is this show in German?" That happily proved not to be the case, but other shocks were to come. A sudden blast of white lights along the stage apron to temporarily blind the audience at the end of an act. A moment when Grey appeared on a catwalk high above the proscenium, letting loose with a hideous laugh and flicking cigar ash on some young Nazi hooligans frozen in hushed silence on the garishly lit stage below. A creepy shadowplay sequence with the actors casting their distorted images on white front curtains, like a George Grosz painting come to life.

That last effect would be discarded by the time Cabaret opened at the Broadhurst in New York a few weeks later. So would an entire act of what had started as a three-act piece. The show was the better for these changes, but my initial impression of the hit-in-embryo has never receded in memory. In the years to come, there would be terrific revivals of Cabaret (notably Sam Mendes's for the Roundabout in 1998) and dreadful ones (Prince's own tacky Broadway revival of 1987), not to mention Bob Fosse's lauded 1972 film adaptation. Yet none of them were as original or startling as what Prince created at the start. Though it hardly begins to sum up his whole extraordinary career, Cabaret crystallizes what it means to be a great director - and producer - of musicals. Prince, who died earlier today, at 91, was both.

As director, he was responsible for the production's groundbreaking showmanship and stagecraft, for the casting of Grey and Lenya, and for having the sense to hire the iconoclastic set designer Boris Aronson and let him smash all the design conventions that governed the commercial theater of the time. As a producer, he conceived the whole audacious thing: a musical about the rise of the Nazis, adapted from such very un-Broadway material as Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories, that, without ever being remotely explicit about it, also captured the angst of a contemporary American audience that was caught up in the tumult of the civil-rights movement and just about to be torn asunder by the Vietnam War. To say that this was a risky venture two years before Hair is to understate the case; this was the era of Hello, Dolly! and Funny Girl. To add to the risk, Prince hired little-known songwriters, John Kander and Fred Ebb, whose previous collaboration, Flora, the Red Menace, produced by Prince a year earlier, had folded in less than two months despite the accolades that greeted its young star, Liza Minnelli.

Not everything Prince did was this brilliant or daring, and heaven knows he had his disasters, some of which I had to review as a theater critic in the 1980s. But overall his career stands as one of the most significant in the last golden era of the Broadway musical. It's impossible, in fact, to imagine that history without him.

It's only fitting that Prince met his most significant collaborator, the then-19-year-old Stephen Sondheim, at the opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific in 1949, at the dawn of that exciting era they would revolutionize and dominate. As Sondheim was the protégé of Oscar Hammerstein, whose innovative legacy he would build on and make his own, so Prince's tutelage was provided by the director George Abbott, another Broadway lion whose career dated back to the 1920s. Prince's early association with Abbott included working for him as an assistant stage manager on Irving Berlin's last Broadway hit, Call Me Madam, in 1950, and then as stage manager on the original Broadway production of the Leonard Bernstein-Betty Comden-Adolph Green musical Wonderful Town three years later. Forming a partnership with Robert Griffith, a more senior Abbott stage manager, Prince would soon become a full-fledged producer with back-to-back Broadway hits, The Pajama Game (1954) and Damn Yankees (1955), both directed by Abbott and both, like Cabaret later on, with scores by a heretofore-obscure young songwriting team, Richard Adler and Jerry Ross.

If you love vintage Broadway musical comedies, Pajama Game and Damn Yankees hold up just fine and have never been out of circulation. But nothing about them would prefigure the turn Prince's career would take only a couple of years later, when he and Griffith co-produced West Side Story (1957) after the veteran producer Cheryl Crawford got cold feet. Teenage-gang warfare in New York was as unlikely a subject for a Broadway musical as Weimar Germany would be a decade later, and, as with Cabaret, there were no marquee stars as insurance against box-office failure.

Clearly Jerome Robbins, whose innovative direction and choreography were intrinsic to the success of West Side Story, had a huge influence on Prince's subsequent directing career. They would team up again as producer and director on what would prove to be Robbins's last new Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof, in 1964. What many forget about Fiddler now is that it, too, was thought to be a huge commercial risk at the time of its original production ("too Jewish" and with a pogrom, yet) and took an unusually long time to line up investors. The original producer, Fred Coe, dropped out along the way, and again it was Prince who came to the rescue. Like Kander and Ebb and Adler and Ross, the show's songwriters, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, had been little known until Prince, with Griffith, produced their first hit, Fiorello!, in 1959. (Bock and Harnick's previous showhad been a box-office flop, the 1963 musical She Loves Me, which has since aged into a classic - though no production has ever topped Prince's exquisite original staging).

Cabaret followed Fiddler by two years. It would prove Prince's bridge to one of the most sustained runs of artistic achievement in the history of the American theater: his Sondheim collaborations of the 1970s. In keeping with his championing of young songwriters, Prince had produced Sondheim's first Broadway musical as composer and lyricist, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, in 1962. Then, in procession, arrived Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Sweeney Todd (1979) - all of them daring, not all of them commercially or critically successful at the time, but every one now part of the national (and often international) repertory. Prince directed all of them (with Michael Bennett as co-director on Follies) and produced all except Sweeney. By then he had renounced producing as a career, having seen the financial writing on the wall: The ever-more-powerful theater owners and corporate producers, combined with spiraling production costs, were squeezing out independent impresarios like Prince.

The next Sondheim-Prince collaboration was Merrily We Roll Along (1981), in which Sondheim's superb score was squandered in a head-scratching Prince production cast with young actors, many of them novices, who were promptly swallowed up in an ugly and calamitous staging. In years to come, Sondheim and the show's book writer, George Furth, would keep rewriting the show for a series of subsequent revivals, and it has had an afterlife that belies an original Broadway run that sputtered out in two weeks. But after that original debacle, Prince and Sondheim went their separate ways professionally (if not personally) - Sondheim joining forces with James Lapine on Sunday in the Park With George and Into the Woods, and Prince, most notably, with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Prince's crackling original production of Evita (a fascists-on-the-rise musical that would never have been attempted had Cabaret not preceded it)is hands down the most creative staging of any Lloyd Webber musical; his original staging of the operetta Phantom of the Opera as a theme-park ride, now having passed the three-decade mark in the West End and on Broadway, stands as the musical theater's biggest money machine. Interspersed were a number of critical and commercial duds that were sometimes in theory as daring as Cabaret and the Sondheim shows - e.g., a musical sequel to A Doll's House titled A Doll's Life (1982) - but were done in by inferior material, pretense, and the kind of directorial grandiosity and overkill that started to surface in the original Sweeney Todd and ran amok in Merrily.

None of that matters in the final accounting of Prince's long life. Outside the business, no one really knows what a producer or director does, so in years to come no one will remember exactly what Prince did with Cabaret as a director or how, as a producer, he engaged Jerome Robbins to come in at the last minute, unbilled, to stage a new opening number ("Comedy Tonight") for Forum when poor reviews and tiny audiences threatened to close the show after its Washington tryout. But the fact remains that there may be at most a half-dozen directors or producers in the American theater who can match his record - who have been collaborators on so many landmark works and who have been boosters of so many great theatrical artists at the start of their careers. The rewards for theatergoers now and in the future are incalculable. As his Cabaret was the best staging of a Broadway musical I ever saw, so his productions of Damn Yankees and Pajama Game were the first Broadway shows my parents took me to as a child. There are so many of us who never worked with or knew Harold Prince who owe a lifetime's love of the theater to the heart-stopping shows that he made.

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Frank Rich: Hal Prince Directed the Greatest Musical Production I Ever Saw

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Frank Rich's Obituary for the Broadway Director and Producer Hal Prince, About the Greatest Musical-Theater Production He Ever Saw

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‘I have a reservoir that hasn’t been tapped’: uncovering the groundbreaking work of Joyce Brown

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Joyce Brown (1920 – 2015) – is regarded as both the first Black woman to conduct any Broadway show (in 1965) and to open a new show as conductor (1971). Her contribution was phenomenal:…

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Hallelujah Baby - The Guide to Musical Theatre

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Hallelujah Baby - Show synopsis - Shows H

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Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-ds-05267)

The civil rights movement came to national prominence in the United States during the mid-1950s and continued to challenge racial segregation and discrimination through the 1960s. Many organizations, notably the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), headed by Martin Luther King, Jr., the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), arranged nonviolent demonstrations to call attention to specific inequalities experienced by Black people, while individuals also challenged unjust laws independently. The civil rights movement eventually achieved equal rights legislation, but not without challenges. In the late 1960s complications arose as various groups confronted the enduring economic and social consequences of past oppression. These problems persisted in subsequent decades, and the idea of real equality remained elusive well into the 21st century. Nonetheless, the intrepid supporters of the civil rights movement took some of the hardest first steps toward equality.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision effectively overturned the "separate but equal" ruling of (1896), which had allowed Jim Crow laws that mandated separate public facilities for white and Black Americans to prevail throughout the South during the first half of the 20th century. While the Brown ruling applied only to schools, it implied that segregation in other public facilities was unconstitutional as well.

1957: The Little Rock Nine and the Little Rock Central High School Integration

On February 1, 1960, a group of four African American students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now North Carolina A&T State University), a historically Black college, began a sit-in movement in downtown Greensboro. After making purchases at the F.W. Woolworth department store, they sat at the "whites only" lunch counter. They were refused service and eventually asked to leave. The Greensboro Four, as they came to be called, however, remained seated until closing and returned the next day with about 20 other Black students. The sit-in grew in the following weeks with protestors taking every seat in the establishment and spilling out of the store. As protestors were arrested, others would take their places so that the establishment was unceasingly occupied. The protest spread to other cities, including Atlanta and Nashville. After months of protests, facilities began to desegregate throughout the country, and the Greensboro Woolworth's started to serve African American patrons in July.

1960: Ruby Bridges and the New Orleans School Integration

On November 14, 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted to her first day at the previously all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans by four armed federal marshals. They were met with angry mobs shouting their disapproval, and, throughout the day, parents marched in to remove their children from the school as a protest to desegregation. Every subsequent day of that academic year Bridges was escorted to school, enduring insults and threats on her way, and then learning her lessons from her young teacher, Barbara Henry, in an otherwise empty classroom. Her bravery later inspired the Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With (1964).

The Freedom Rides began on May 4, 1961, with a group of seven African Americans and six white people who boarded two buses bound for New Orleans. Testing the Supreme Court's ruling on the case Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which extended an earlier ruling banning segregated interstate bus travel (1946) to include bus terminals and restrooms, the Freedom Riders used facilities for the opposite race as their buses made stops along the way. The group was confronted by violence in South Carolina, and, on May 14, when one bus stopped to change a slashed tire, the vehicle was firebombed and the Freedom Riders were beaten. Unable to travel farther, the original riders were replaced by a second group of 10, partly organized by the SNCC, originating in Nashville. As riders were either arrested or beaten, more groups of Freedom Riders would take their place. On May 29 U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce bans on segregation more strictly, an edict that took effect in September.

1963: Birmingham Demonstrations

In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC launched a campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, with local Pastor Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) to undermine the city's system of racial segregation. The campaign began on April 3, 1963, with sit-ins, economic boycotts, mass protests, and marches on City Hall. The demonstrations faced challenges from many sides, including an indifferent African American community, adversarial white and Black leaders, and a hostile commissioner of public safety, Eugene ("Bull") Connor. On April 12 King was arrested for violating an anti-protest injunction and placed in solitary confinement. The demonstrations continued, but, after a month without any concessions, King was convinced to launch the Children's Crusade. Beginning on May 2, 1963, school-aged volunteers skipped school and began to march. Many submitted politely to arrests, and local jails quickly filled up. On May 3 Connor ordered the police and fire department to set high-pressure water hoses and attack dogs on protesters. The violent tactics against peaceful demonstrators continued in ensuing days, causing outrage in the community, and gaining national attention. The negative media spurred Pres. John F. Kennedy to propose a civil rights bill on June 11. Although the Birmingham campaign eventually negotiated an agreement with local reforms, tensions remained high in the city, and the meeting places of civil rights activists were continually threatened. A bomb on September 15 at 16th Street Baptist Church killed four African American girls and injured 14 others.

The demonstrations of 1963 culminated with the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28 to protest civil rights abuses and employment discrimination. A crowd of about 250,000 individuals gathered peacefully on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to listen to speeches by civil rights leaders, notably Martin Luther King, Jr. He addressed the crowd with an eloquent and uplifting message that famously became known as the " I Have a Dream " speech.

On July 2, 1964, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act into law, a stronger version of what his predecessor, President Kennedy, had proposed the previous summer before his assassination in November 1963. The act authorized the federal government to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. Although controversial, the legislation was a victory for the civil rights movement.

On March 7, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state's capital, Montgomery, to call for a federal voting rights law that would provide legal support for disenfranchised African Americans in the South. State troopers, however, sent marchers back with violence and tear gas, and television cameras recorded the incident. On March 9 King tried again, leading more than 2,000 marchers to the Pettus Bridge, where they encountered a barricade of state troopers. King led his followers to kneel in prayer and then he unexpectedly turned back. The media attention prompted President Johnson to introduce voting rights legislation on March 15, and on March 21 King once again led a group of marchers out of Selma; this time, they were protected by Alabama National Guardsmen, federal marshals, and FBI agents. Marchers arrived in Montgomery on March 25, where King addressed the crowd with what would be called his "How Long, Not Long" speech. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law several months later, on August 6. It suspended literacy tests, provided for federal approval of proposed changes to voting laws or procedures, and directed the attorney general of the United States to challenge the use of poll taxes for state and local elections.

A series of violent confrontations between the city police and residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighborhoods of Los Angeles began on August 11, 1965, after a white police officer arrested a Black man, Marquette Frye, on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Later accounts indicated that Frye resisted arrest but were unclear whether police had used excessive force. Violence, fires, and looting broke out over the next six days. The disturbance resulted in 34 deaths, more than 1,000 injuries, and $40 million in property damage. The McCone Commission later investigated the causes of the riots and concluded that they were not the work of gangs or the Black Muslim movement, as the media had previously suggested. The violence was more directly a reaction to the great economic challenges that African Americans in urban centers faced: poor housing, schools, and job prospects that civil rights legislation had not improved.

In the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X and urban uprisings, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, to protect African American neighborhoods from police brutality. The Black Panthers launched numerous community programs that offered such services as tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, and free shoes to disadvantaged people. The programs confronted the economic problems of African Americans, which the party argued the civil rights reforms did not do enough to address. The Black Panthers' socialist viewpoint, however, made them a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterintelligence program ( COINTELPRO), which accused them of being a communist organization and an enemy of the U.S. government. A campaign to annihilate the group came to a head in December 1969 with a police shoot-out at the group's Southern California headquarters and the killing of Fred Hampton and another Panther during an Illinois state police raid. The Black Panther Party's operations, however, continued into the 1970s, albeit less actively.

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Virginia statutes prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional in the case . The case was decided nine years after Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a woman of mixed African American and Native American ancestry, had pleaded guilty to having violated Virginia state law prohibiting a white person and a "colored" person from leaving the state to be married and returning to live as man and wife. Their one-year prison sentence was suspended on the condition that the couple leave Virginia and not return as husband and wife for 25 years. Once settled in Washington, D.C., the couple filed suit in a Virginia state court in 1963. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which reversed their conviction. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for a unanimous court that the freedom to marry was a basic civil right and that to deny that freedom based on the groundless classifications outlined in Virginia state's law was "to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law." The ruling thus invalidated laws against interracial marriage in Virginia and 15 other states.

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little rock central high school integration

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agricultural and technical college of north carolina

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alabama christian movement for human rights

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national advisory commission on civil disorders

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Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement

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Find out more about the key events that shaped the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington, and the founding of the Black Panther Party.

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Sammy Davis, Jr. - Golden Boy (Broadway), 1964-66

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Sammy Davis, Jr. starred on Broadway in Golden Boy, a musical about an interracial romance, which played in NYC at the height of the civil rights era.

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Look Back at Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley in Photo Features No Strings on Broadway The musical, groundbreaking at the time for its casual depiction of an interracial romance, opened March 15, 1962.

No Strings, the only musical for which Richard Rodgers wrote both music and lyrics, opened on Broadway March 15, 1962. The production, starring Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley, played 1 preview and 580 performances before closing August 3, 1963. It received nine Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, and won for Best Actress in a Musical, Best Composer, and Best Choreography.

In the musical, a successful high-fashion model from Harlem meets and falls in love with an American writer who has made Paris his home. Convinced that their love only needs one another to survive, they embark on a romantic adventure through Europe, clinging to the City of Lights as the harsh reality of America threatens their union.

The show was groundbreaking at the time for its casual depiction of an interracial romance, one that ultimately led to Carroll becoming the first African-American performer to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

Look Back at Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley in No Strings on Broadway

Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley in No Strings

Friedman-Abeles/©NYPL for the Performing Arts

In addition to Carroll as Barbara Woodruff and Kiley as David Jordan, the musical starred Noelle Adam as Jeanette Valmy, Don Chastain as Mike Robinson, Alvin Epstein as Luc Delbert, Mitchell Gregg as Louis dePourtal, Bernice Massi as Comfort O'Donnell, Polly Rowles as Mollie Plummer, and Paul Cambeilh as Marcello Agnolotti.

No Strings featured scenic design and lighting design by David Hayes and costume design by Fred Voelpel and Donald Brooks (with Brooks providing dresses for Carroll, Rowles, and Massi). For the complete cast and creative team, visit PlaybillVault.com/NoStrings.

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Look Back at Diahann Carroll and Richard Kiley in No Strings on Broadway

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The musical, groundbreaking at the time for its casual depiction of an interracial romance, opened March 15, 1962.

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A Musical in Two Acts, 15 Scenes. Book by Robert Alan Arthur. Music and lyrics by Richard Adler. Dances and musical numbers Staged by Agnes de Mille. Settings and lighting designed by Will Steven Armstrong.

54th Street Theatre, New York - 23 October - 18 November 1961 (32 perfs.)

Story
ACT 1
A country in West Africa, soon to win independence from British rule, is torn between its ancient superstitions and its yearning for freedom and democracy. As the curtain rises, a tribal chief, Nana Mwalla lies dying. Though Obitsebi, the fetish man, tries to heal him with magic, it is the white lady doctor, Eve Jordan, who is really responsible for the old man's recovery. The chief now goes ahead with his preparations for the imminent arrival of his son, Kwamina Mwalla, about to return to his home after years of medical study in London. The only ones who are a bit down-cast about this are the lovers, Naii and Ako, since Naii has been betrothed to Kwamina from birth. But Ako, who is the overseer of the local cocoa bean plantation, has work to do and he and his men go off to the fields.

When Kwamina arrives, he is first greeted warmly by Obitsebi, his old friend, though friction soon develops between the fetish man and the medical school doctor. This, however, cannot dampen the enthusiasm of the elaborate homecoming ceremony.

The local clinic where Eve works adheres strictly to the principle of segregation with one entrance marked "Europeans" and the other marked "Natives." When Kwamina arrives to take up his duties, he promptly gets into a fight with Blair, the British Commissioner, who forbids him from using the European entrance. Eve, who was born in Africa, tries to apologize to Kwamina, but he resents her expressions of sympathy and she objects to his stubbornness. When they have calmed down, they again make an attempt to be friends but this is blocked when Eve explains the necessity of compromising with Obitsebi. After another hot-tempered exchange, Eve makes fun of Kwamina's London-acquired manners.

Tribal customs also have their humourous side. In the village Nana Mwalla passes judgment on Akufo, a tribesman suspected of adultery. His punishment: a fine of Seven Sheep, Four Red Shirts, and a Bottle of Gin.
That night Ako and Naii meet in secret near the clinic. Because he sees no hope of their marrying, Ako tells of his decision to go off to the city and they leave together. Blair, escorting Eve to the clinic, expresses his deep feelings for her, but she rebuffs him. Later, she has her first friendly talk with Kwamina in his office, but Blair sees them together and suspects the worst.

Later, everyone is gathered together and, with much excitement, the people sing of their coming freedom. Meanwhile, Eve finally convinces Kwamina that she is really his friend, but they both are aware that it is impossible for them to behave like ordinary people.

At a bazaar in town, Kwamina comes across Ako selling saris and he buys one as a present for Eve. When Ako explains why he has run away, Kwamina offers no objections to his marrying Naii.

Back at the village, Nana Mwalla tries to talk with Kwamina about marrying Naii, but his son refuses to discuss the matter. When they are alone, Obitsebi explains to the weary chief that they cannot escape from their fate.

Eve and Kwamina meet in the woods. Not only does he give her the sari, but he even gives her his tribal bracelet. When he leaves, Eve is quite over-come with her feelings toward Kwamina. At the clinic, the troubled young people, unable to resolve their emotional dilemma, can hide their feelings no longer and rush into each other's arms.
ACT II
Still determined that Naii marry Kwamina, Obitsebi brings her to the compound for her pre-nuptial ceremony. Excited about the forthcoming wedding, the women of the village are discussing marriage with Naii at the clinic. After they leave, Ako enters, and he and Naii escape. But, Obitsebi sees them and is immediately off in pursuit. Left alone with Kwamina, Eve tells him that she must leave because she does not want to spend her life loving in secret.

When Naii and Ako are apprehended, Obitsebi, in spite of Kwamina's protests, decrees that they must die. Suddenly, Nana Mwalla has a seizure and falls dead. Although, according to tribal custom, three tribesmen must be put to death when the chief dies, Kwamina takes his people to the House of Ancestors to hide them from Obitsebi. The men of the tribe, however, perform a frenzied fetish dance to bring about the deaths. Kwamina scoffs at these antics, but the witch doctor informs him that Ako, and Naii, and also Akufo are dead. And, to his horror, Kwamina discovers that it is true.

On Independence Day, Eve comforts the unhappy Kwamina by insisting that this is not the end but the beginning. The natives also pledge their help in building a new country, and on this optimistic note the curtain falls.

Musical Numbers:

1. The Cocoa Bean Song - Ako, soloists & Company

2. Welcome Home - Soloists & Company, Spear Dancers

3. The Sun Is Beginning to Crow - Company

4. Did You Hear That? - Eve, Kwamina

5. You're As English As - Eve

6. Seven Sheep, Four Red Shirts and a Bottle of Gin - Akufo, Soloists & Company

7. Nothing More to Look Forward To - Ako, Naii

8. What's Wrong Wlth Me? - Eve

9. Something Big - Kwamina, Company

10. Ordinary People - Eve, Kwamina

11. Mammy Traders (dance) - Dance Company.

12. A Man Can Have No Choice - Obitsebi

13. What Happened to Me Tonight? - Eve

14. Naii's Nuptial Dance - Naii, Dancer, Company

15. One Wife - Mammy Trader, Alla, Solo Singers & Dancers

16. Nothing More To Look Forward To (reprise) - Naii

17. Something Big (reprise) - Company

18. Another Time, Another Place - Eve

19. Fetish (dance) - Obitsebi & Priests

CAST

(in order of appearance):

Policemen; Drummers; Singers; Dancers

Scenes and Settings

The action takes place in a village in West Africa at the present time.

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A Musical in Two Acts, 15 Scenes. Book by Robert Alan Arthur. Music and lyrics by Richard Adler. Dances and musical numbers Staged by Agnes de Mille. Settings and lighting designed by Will Steven Armstrong. 54th Street Theatre, New York - 23 October - 18 November 1961 (32 perfs.)

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Jamaica - Original Broadway Cast Recording 1957

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Synopsis

On a tropical island paradise called Pigeon's Island off the coast of Jamaica, Koli, a poor, handsome fisherman, loves the beautiful Savannah. But she does nothing but dream of a life in New York City. When an opportunistic hustler named Joe Nashua comes to this quiet place to explore the possibility of establishing a pearl-diving business, Savannah can see her way to an all-expenses-paid trip to "that little island on the Hudson." Nashua persuades the local fishermen to give up their normal pursuits and go diving in the shark-infested waters. A hurricane kicks up, and Koli saves the life of Savannah's little brother. She finally comes face to face with reality, visiting New York only in a dream ballet, and accepts Koli's devotion, as the fishermen return to their nets. Time Magazine, in a review dated November 11, 1957, offered some insight into the reasons for the popularity of Jamaica, despite the inadequacies of its plot: "Its achievement ... is more one of atmosphere than of action, of grace than of speed.... the book ... has an idiot simplicity and an almost insolent lack of purpose; it sort of timidly shuffles about between tunes, seldom even daring to let go with gags. [Lena Horne] is beautiful, and with what elegant sexuality she twists about in tight-curving, fishtail skirts. She is accomplished in a way all her own, seldom raising her voice, never neon-lighting her effects. "Composer [Arlen's] score, here modestly intricate, there suddenly lyrical, has more individual appeal and island charm than routine tropical heat. The entertaining lyrics in Jamaica are never once belted out, nor are the tunes whistled afterwards in the lobby. A show so lightly strummed, so insouciantly strutted, so frilled and beflowered needs to be stylish. Jack Cole's pictorial dances, Oliver Smith's airy sets, Miles White's gorgeous costumes give it style. If it has almost no Broadway snap, it has even less Broadway brassiness. If this is a Jamaica with little ginger and no rum, those, after all, are largely its exports. Lena Horne, gay colors, winning tunes - and even its shiftless lie-in-the-sun libretto - are its tourist attractions."

Credits

Koli: Ricardo Montalban Quico: Augustine Rios Savannah: Lena Horne Grandma Obeah: Adelaide Hall Ginger: Josephine Premice Snodgrass: Roy Thompson Hucklebuck: Hugh Dilworth Island Women: Ethel Ayler, Adelaide Boatner The Governor: Erik Rhodes Cicero: Ossie Davis Lancaster: James E. Wall First Ship's Officer: Tony Martinez Second Ship's Officer: Michael Wright Joe Nashua: Joe Adams Dock Worker: Allen Richards Radio Announcer: Alan Shayne Lead Dancers: Alvin Ailey, Christyne Lawson Ensemble: Ethel Ayler, Adelaide Boatner, Jayne Craddock, Norma Donaldson, Patricia Dunn, Doris Galiber, Lavinia Hamilton, Sandra Hinton, Chailendra Jones, Audrey Mason, Sally Neal, Pearl Reynolds, Christine Spencer, Carolyn Stanford, Jacqueline Wacott, Barbara Wright, George Boreland, Hugh Bryant, Herb Coleman, Hugh Dilworth, Frank Glass, Harold Gordon, Nat Horne, Albert Johnson, Tony Martinez, Jim McMillan, Charles Moore, Allen Richards, Claude Thompson, Roy Thompson, Billy Wilson, Michael Wright, Ben Vargas

About

When MGM ruled the movies, the magical Lena Horne appeared in dozens of screen musicals, but she had never been in a book musical on Broadway when she was approached to star in Jamaica, a frothy concoction with music by Harold Arlen, book by E.Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy, and lyrics by Harburg. Fresh from her great success in her nightclub act at the Waldorf-Astoria, she agreed to star in this story about villagers on a small Caribbean island trying to resist the commercialism of the tourist trade. With a cast that also included Ricardo Montalban, Erik Rhodes, Ossie Davis, Adelaide Hall, Josephine Premice, and a young dancer named Alvin Ailey, the show opened on October 31, 1957, at the Imperial Theatre for a run of 558 performances. First LP release: November 22, 1957 (mono) and May 23, 1958 (stereo)

Photos

Tags
Broadway Cast Album,
Links
News: A Fond Farewell to Lena Horne
Harold Arlen

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Jamaica - Original Broadway Cast Recording 1957 - The Official Masterworks Broadway Site

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When MGM ruled the movies, the magical Lena Horne appeared in dozens of screen musicals, but she had [...]

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by Mark N. Grant

Act One

In Ndotsheni, South Africa in the 1940s ( The Hills of Ixopo), Rev. Stephen Kumalo, a black Anglican priest, has not heard from his son Absalom since he left to look for work in Johannesburg a year earlier. Though untroubled at heart ( Thousands of Miles), he decides to search for Absalom there. At the railroad station ( Train to Johannesburg), he is greeted by Arthur Jarvis, a white lawyer who is a benefactor of his church, though Arthur's father James, a wealthy planter, frowns upon any association between the races.

In Johannesburg, Stephen takes charge of his sister Gertrude's illegitimate son Alex. His brother John, a tobacconist and Zulu community organizer, tells him Absalom is no longer working in the mines. Stephen goes all over Soweto looking for Absalom ( The Search) by day, renting a hovel in Shantytown by night. He learns Absalom has served jail time but is on parole living with his pregnant girlfriend Irina. At night in his rented hut, Stephen promises little Alex that he will soon take him to Ndotsheni where he will live more comfortably ( The Little Gray House).

Absalom, his cousin Matthew (John's son), and their friend Johannes party at a dive in Shantytown with their girlfriends ( Who'll Buy). To raise money to support his expected child, Absalom joins a burglary plot with the other two; there seems to be little risk, because Johannes knows the house well. Still, the other two insist that Absalom bring a gun. Irina tries to dissuade him, to no avail. Later Rev. Kumalo and a parole officer find Irina at her hut in Shantytown but she tells them she doesnít know where Absalom is. Stephen disdains her loose morals but makes an alliance with her to find Absalom and keep him out of further legal jeopardy ( Trouble Man).

Absalom, Matthew, and Johannes, faces concealed, break into the home late at night. But a servant there recognizes Johannes's voice; then the homeowner-Arthur Jarvis, Stephen's patron-unexpectedly appears. Absalom fires his gun in panic and kills him. The three men flee ( Murder in Parkwold). Later, the parole officer visits the home and tells Arthur's grieving father James that the police have arrested Johannes; outside in the street both the black and white communities are in turmoil ( Fear!). The parole officer conducts Stephen to Absalom's jail cell, thus finally reuniting father and son. Stephen doesn't believe Absalom could be guilty of the crime, but Absalom confesses. Back in his Shantytown hut, Stephen struggles to explain all the bad news in a letter to his wife back in Ndotsheni. He prays to Tixo (God) fervently, but finds his bedrock faith shaken ( Lost in the Stars).

Act Two

The Chorus sings of The Wild Justice that seems to thwart the impulses of civility.

John Kumalo tells Stephen a good lawyer can get all three men off, but only if they conform their alibis. However, Absalom wants to "go straight" to make it up to his father. Stephen is anguished by this dilemma ( O Tixo, Tixo, Help Me!). He decides to try to plead for mercy with the dead man's father, James Jarvis. He tells him that Absalom has confessed and that he fired his gun accidentally. Could Jarvis intervene so Absalom would receive a life sentence instead of death? Jarvis sternly refuses.

Meanwhile, in her long absence from Absalom, Irina's affection for him has only deepened, despite the trouble he's brought her ( Stay Well). She tells Stephen that she repents of her ways and will wait for Absalom no matter how long he's in prison.

At the murder trial Johannes and Matthew both lie, offering shaky alibis. Absalom implicates the two of them and admits his own guilt, but says the gun was only meant to frighten the servant of the house. Yet the judge acquits Matthew and Johannes and sentences Absalom to death. As the Chorus keens ( Cry, the Beloved Country), Stephen marries Absalom and Irina in the prison cell.

Stephen returns home to Ndotsheni with Irina and Alex to wait out the judicial appeal. One day little Alex is overheard singing ( Big Mole) by young Edward Jarvis. James Jarvis arrives to pick up his grandson and chides him for talking to Alex. Since the murder James's wife has also died and now he is left to take care of his orphaned grandson alone. But before they leave he overhears Stephen's voice from the pulpit inside his church and he decides to listen. Stephen is telling his congregation he must resign his pastorate, not only because they have lost their benefactor, not only because his own son has killed, but because Stephen has lost his own faith. His parishioners protest but resign themselves to the transience of life ( Bird of Passage).

The appeals have failed and the execution looms. At dawn Stephen, his wife Grace, and Irina await the dreaded hour when Absalom will be hanged far away in Pretoria ( Four O'Clock). Suddenly James Jarvis knocks on the door. He has had a profound conversion. He tells Stephen he will step in for everything his son did to support Stephen's church and beseeches Stephen to stay on. Moreover, "I shall come and worship in your church if I wish to worship . . . Edward will come tomorrow to see Alex. He wants to come and play."

Stephen agrees to stay on. The clock strikes four. Jarvis puts his arm around Stephen. They have become comrades in both grief and hope ("Thousands of Miles" reprise).

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Lost in the Stars - The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music

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In Ndotsheni, South Africa in the 1940s ( The Hills of Ixopo), Rev. Stephen Kumalo, a black Anglican priest, has not heard from his son Absalom since he left to look for work in Johannesburg a year earlier. Though untroubled at heart ( Thousands of Miles), he decides to search for Absalom there.

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A Musical (Satire) in Two Acts, 10 Scenes. Music by Burton Lane, lyrics by E. Y. Harburg, book by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy

46th Street Theatre, Broadway - 10 January, 1947 (725 perfs)
Palace Theatre, London - 21 October, 1947

Synopsis

Having left Ireland, Finian McLonergan and his daughter Sharon arrive in the American state of Missitucky with a magical golden crock which has been stolen from Og, a leprechaun. Finian buries the crock believing that it will grow bigger. Rawkins, a racist Senator, is determined to get his hands on the it but is thwarted when he is magically turned black and gets a helping of his own bigotry. After many plot twists all is resolved and love, wealth and happiness descend on Rainbow Valley.

The Story

Finian McLonergan arrives in Rainbow Valley, Missitucky, with his daughter, Sharon, and a "borrowed" pot of gold. His theory is to plant the gold near Fort Knox. Surely it will multiply just as America's bullion burial has made all Americans rich. They encounter poor sharecroppers who are about to lose their land. Henchmen of Senator Billboard Rawkins are ready to pay back taxes and take over. However, his plan is foiled by Woody, who returns from the big city with the tax money, and by Finian, who covers the hidden charges when Woody cannot. In exchange, Finian gets property rights for enough land to sow his golden dream.

While Sharon and Woody are falling in love, Og, a leprechaun, confronts Finian and demands the return of his pot of gold. But Finian ignores him, as a figment of his imagination. Geologists, working on a secret dam project, detect gold on the sharecroppers' land. Learning this, Rawkins moves in to take the land by force. As he is manhandling a Negro sharecropper, Sharon wishes that Rawkins was black. Unwittingly, she is standing over the magical pot, and her wish is granted. Rawkins dashes into hiding.

A telegram arrives from Shears and Robust granting unlimited credit to the people of the gold-rich valley. Woody persuades them to use the credit to buy tractors and equipment to improve the harvest. Without his gold, Og will become mortal. However, his search for the pot is interrupted by Sharon with whom he immediately falls in love. When Shears and Robust arrive to collect for all the merchandise, Woody satisfies them with proof of future profit. The McLonergan economic theory is working, but Sharon is charged with witchcraft and the mysterious disappearance of Rawkins. Og encounters Billboard in the woods and magically improves his disposition.

Arriving back in the Valley, Og encounters Susan the Silent. Love strikes again, only harder. He also learns Sharon is to be burned as a witch unless a white Rawkins can be found. Og believes Susan can tell him where the gold is hidden and so wishes. She talks. He is sitting above the crock. He unearths the pot and makes the final wish that saves Sharon for Woody, but renders himself completely mortal. But Og has Susan. Finian, having proven his theory without a shadow of doubt, moves on to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to proclaim the miracles of a small rock given him by Nicholas the Nucleus.

Casting:

30 roles, 11 principals Children required (4-8). Total cast, 40-52

Principals: 2 female, 9 male, 1 boy

Susan - dances but does not speak
Finian - comic character man, straight role
Woody and Sharon - romantic singing leads
Og - likeable Leprechaun - sings and dances
Senator Billboard Rawkins - screaming bigot, straight comic role

Sunny, Harmonica Player
Buzz Collins
Sheriff
First Sharecropper
Second Sharecropper
Susan Mahoney
Henry
Finian McLonergan
Sharon McLonergan
Woody Mahoney
Third Sharecropper
Og, a Leprechaun
Howard
Senator Billboard Rawkins
First Geologist
Second Geologist
Diane
Jane
John, the Preacher
Fourth Sharecropper
Mr. Robust
Mr. Shears
First Passion Pilgrim Gospeller
Second Passion Pilgrim Gospeller
Third Passion Pilgrim Gospeller
First Deputy
Second Deputy
Third Deputy

Children: Dancers: Singin Ensemble

large chorus of separate singing and dancing ensembles. Strong choral work. Featured chorus parts

Scenes & Settings

Act I

Scene 1: The Meetin' Place, Rainbow Valley, Missitucky
Scene 2: The same
Scene 3: The Colonial Estate of Senator Billboard Rawkins
Scene 4: The Meetin' Place
Scene 5: A Path in the Woods
Scene 6: The Meetin' Place

Act II

Scene 1: Rainbow Valley
Scene 2: A wooded section of the hill
Scene 3: The Meetin' Place
Scene 4: Just Before Dawn

ACT 1

1. This Time of the Year - Singing Ensemble

2. Dance - Susan, Dance Ensemble

3. How Are Things in Glocca Morra? - Sharon

4. Look to the Rainbow - Sharon, Singing Ensemble

5. Dance - Finian, Susan, Solo Dancer, Dance Ensemble

6. Old Devil Moon - Sharon, Woody

7. How Are Things in Glocca Morra? (reprise) - Sharon

8. Something Sort of Grandish - Sharon, Og

9. If This Isn't Love - Sharon, Woody, Singing Ensemble

10. Dance - Susan. Two Couples, The Uninitiated, The Tenative Two, The Intense Pair, The Exuberant Ones, Solo Dancer, Triangle, Another Couple

11. Something Sort of Grandish (reprise) - Og

12. Necessity - Ensemble

13. (That) Great Come-and-Get-It-Day - Sharon, Woody, Singing Ensemble

14. Dance - Dance Ensemble

ACT 2

1. When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich - Sharon, Singing Ensemble

2. Dance - Dance company

3. Old Devil Moon (reprise) - Sharon, Woody

4. Dance of the Golden Crock - Susan, accompanied by Sunny Harmonica Player

5. Fiddle Faddle - Og

6. The Begat - Senator Rawkins, Pilgrim Gospellers

7. Look to the Rainbow (reprise) - Sharon, Woody, Singing Ensemble

8. When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love - Og, Susan

9. If This Isn't Love (reprise) - Entire Ensemble

10. Finale - Entire Company

Period and Costumes

The fabled area of Missitucky, a state in the USA:

appropriate costumes for sharecroppers, sheriff, Irish immigrants,
Og the leprechaun (with breakaway pants for him to grow out of),

geologists,
Shears and Robust (formal morning coats, etc.),
Preacher and Three Gospellers,
Deputies,
Senator Rawkins (white Kentucky Colonel suit),

and outlandish Hollywood fashions for each sharecropper and their children.

Choreography

Violin, A, B, C, D, viola, cello, bass, flute (pic, clar), oboe (Eng. horn), clar I, clar II (flute, pic), bass clar (clar, bassoon), horns I-II, trumpets I-II, trombone I, II, harp, guitar, percussion, piano, piano/conductor.

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Finian's Rainbow - Show synopsis - Shows F

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When Carmen Miranda performed, audiences remarked on her vivacity and sparkle. Her voice and stage presence captivated people and made her a favorite star, first in Brazil, and later in the United States. Miranda was born in 1909 in northern Portugal, but her family immigrated to Brazil when she was very young. She began her career as a singer for Brazilian radio stations, but she very quickly leapt to stardom, and began acting in movies as well. Her fame and talent caught the attention of a Broadway theater owner and producer, Lee Shubert. He convinced her to join his 1939 production of The Streets of Paris and, with the support of the Brazilian government, Miranda and her band went to New York City as goodwill ambassadors to the United States.

Carmen Miranda was highly successful in the United States, and in addition to major theater appearances, she acted in movies and sang in nightclubs. At the peak of her Hollywood career, she was the highest paid female performer in the United States. However, her success came with drawbacks. Her first major role in a Hollywood film was as an exotic, volatile stereotype of a Latina, and thereafter she was typically typecast in such roles. Her parts often genericized Latin American cultures and played to stereotypes. This was very well received by American audiences, and fed the interests of the United States' Good Neighbor policy in the 1940s, but it angered critics in South and Central America. On a return trip home to Brazil in 1940, she was poorly received, and was actually booed off a stage at a charity event she arranged, a drastic change from the adoration she was given before her departure for America. She did not return to Brazil until shortly before she died in 1955.

Miranda's greatest legacy, perhaps, is the popularization of the samba. The samba was created by Afro-Latin American musicians with roots in the Carnival celebrations that blended European Catholic traditions with African ones. It was created and originally played in poorer Afro-Latin communities but was increasingly picked up by middle class performers. Miranda was sometimes criticized by whites for performing a form of music they considered vulgar because of its origins, while Afro-Latin Americans have criticized her for appropriating their musical traditions without regard for their culture. Nonetheless, her talent was considerable, and her fame brought samba into the spotlight with her. Miranda popularized the samba first in Brazil on the radio and in films, and later in the United States with her performances there, and the samba has had considerable influences on a wide range of musicians and musical forms since.

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Carmen Miranda | Smithsonian Institution

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When Carmen Miranda performed, audiences remarked on her vivacity and sparkle.... Learn more

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A modern American musical with an all-black cast. The 100 person cast was quite an undertaking as it was difficult to find black performers trained in singing styles appropriate for Carmen. John Hammond Jr. (producer) visited over 40 cities seeking out cast members. Some were found in the most unlikely of places--a naval shipyard, a police force, and a railroad stockyard included.

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Cabin in the Sky (1943) has always been a controversial musical.

Because it features an entirely African-American cast, it was banned in several U.S. cities when it was first released. It remains controversial today because of its use of black stereotypes.

Having said that, our goal is to look at individual aspects of this film, as part of the Vincente Minnelli Blogathon. Cabin in the Sky is Minnelli's first full feature film as a director.

Minnelli explained his approach to the film in his autobiography, I Remember it Well. "If there were any reservations about the film," he wrote, "they revolved around the story, which reinforced the naive, childlike stereotype of blacks. But I knew there were such people as [these characters]...If I was going to make a picture about such people, I would approach it with great affection rather than condescension."

Is the film condescending? We think so. Does it portray black stereotypes? Yes. Should it be discounted from Minnelli's (and Hollywood) history? We don't think so, and here's why.

One reason is the cast. The heart of the film is the fabulous Ethel Waters, who has charisma to spare and ought to have been a much bigger movie star. Her husband, played by Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, is a man with perfect comic timing. Plus, there's the glamorous Lena Horne, and our new fave, Rex Ingram, who plays a sharply-dressed, smarty-pants villain.

A second reason is the script. This is a story about God and Lucifer fighting over the soul of a wayward man (Anderson). But Anderson's wife (Waters) is a pious woman who believes the goodness in her husband will prevail. It's the familiar Good vs. Evil scenario, served with great music and witty lines.

In one scene, Anderson decides he's going to Change His Ways and give up gambling. When he goes to church, he tells the pastor, "Reverend, when you call on the sinners to confess, you better give me the rest of the evening."

Alas! Anderson is hauled out of church by his gambling creditors, who want him to recoup his (their) losses in a high-stakes game. Robinson tries to dodge them:

Robinson: "Right now I've got an appointment with Repentance."
Creditor: "You can get saved any day. An opportunity like this comes once."

A third reason is Minnelli's direction. You can tell this film was based on a stage play, but it doesn't feel static or hemmed-in, like some stage-to-film productions. Everything is beautifully filmed, from Cedric Gibbons' set design to Irene 's costumes. This is no low-budget enterprise.

Cabin in the Sky is Minnelli's redemption parable: It's ordinary people who are worth fighting for.

We know this by watching Waters' character, a woman who is poor and black and ignored by Society At Large. However, Waters, who fought to expand her character's role, makes us believe she can the world. She sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and fights to preserve it.

Minnelli doesn't subvert Waters, nor does he mock her character. She is someone to be reckoned with; even Ingram's Lucifer realizes that. Waters' character is the remarkable woman this story needs her to be.

Cabin in the Sky is far from a perfect movie. Yet, because it has an all-black cast, this Vincente Minnelli film remains a rarity in mainstream American cinema history.

Notes:

Read TCM's overview HERE.

Click HERE for a review of a modern production of the original stage play.

Click HERE for BET's list of the greatest black musicals.

Cabin in the Sky: starring Ethel Waters, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Lena Horne. Directed by Vincente Minnelli (and an uncredited Busby Berkeley). Written by Joseph Schrank. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1943, B&W, 98 mins. This is part of The Vincente Minnelli Blogathon hosted by Love Letters to Old Hollywood. Click HERE to see more fab entries!

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The All-Black Musical and Vincente Minnelli

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Cabin in the Sky (1943) has always been a controversial musical. Because it features an entirely African-American cast, it was banned in several U.S. cities when it was first released. It remains controversial today because of its use of black stereotypes. Having said that, our goal is to look at individual aspects of this film, as part...

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Lew Leslie's Blackbirds Orchestra - Bandana Babies 1928

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance

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Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, African Americans produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation’s history—the Harlem Renaissance.

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Redlining in St. Louis (The Birthplace of Redlining)

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Redlining in St. Louis (The Birthplace of Redlining)

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Dr. Robert Nelson and the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, investigates the lasting impacts these policies continue to have on our city.

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The Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s delivered a gut punch to the average American. By 1933, a quarter of Americans were out of work, the national average income had slumped to less than half of what it had been a few years earlier and more than one million Americans faced foreclosure on their homes.

One of the multiple programs a newly-elected Franklin D. Roosevelt established to stimulate the economy offered home-buying aid for Americans-but only white Americans. The Federal Housing Administration operated through the New Deal 's National Housing Act of 1934 and promoted homeownership by providing federal backing of loans-guaranteeing mortgages. But from its inception, the FHA limited assistance to prospective white buyers.

"The FHA had a manual which explicitly said that it was risky to make mortgage loans in predominantly Black areas," explains Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation who has written about housing segregation in the United States. "And so as a result, the federal subsidy for home ownership went almost entirely to white people."

Restrictions in Loans Draw Lines Between Neighborhoods

The assistance program not only limited recipients to white Americans, it established and then reinforced housing segregation in the United States, effectively drawing lines between white and Black neighborhoods that would persist for generations.

For example, in 1940, the FHA denied insurance to a private builder in Detroit because he intended to construct a housing development near a predominantly Black neighborhood. The FHA only wanted to insure houses in white neighborhoods.

The builder responded by constructing a half-mile long, six-foot high concrete wall between the Black neighborhood and where he planned to build, recounts historian Richard Rothstein in The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Assured that this wall would keep the neighborhoods racially segregated, the FHA then agreed to insure the houses.

A 'New Deal'-for White Americans

The FHA not only focused its assistance on prospective white homeowners, its policies actively sought to insure mortgages in white neighborhoods that would remain white.

"If a [Black] family could afford to buy into a white neighborhood without government help, the FHA would refuse to insure future mortgages even to whites in that neighborhood, because it was now threatened with integration," Rothstein writes in The American Prospect.

Many housing deeds stated outright that a house could only be sold to white people, explaining this was in accordance with FHA requirements. William Levitt, who developed the Levittown suburban communities for returning World War II veterans, complied with the FHA by only selling to white veterans and creating deeds that prohibited them from reselling their homes to Black Americans.

Neighborhoods Separated by Walls, Highways

Like the Detroit builder, developers also tried to make their housing projects seem "less risky" by using barriers to separate them from predominantly Back neighborhoods. One common barrier, Kahlenberg says, became highways, which still separate many predominantly white and predominantly Black neighborhoods today.

In addition to the FHA's discriminatory practices, federal housing projects from the 1930s onward helped keep Black Americans in neighborhoods with fewer education and job opportunities than white neighborhoods.

"The existing patterns of segregation were carefully and deliberately engineered-socially engineered-by the government in the first place," says Kahlenberg.

Redlining Becomes a Lasting Legacy

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 sought to end these discriminatory practices but didn't completely end federal redlining-the denial of services like loans based on race-or address the negative effects that decades of discrimination and segregation had already had on Black Americans.

The term "redlining" originates with actual red lines on maps that identified predominantly-Black neighborhoods as "hazardous." Starting in the 1930s, the government-sponsored Home Owners' Loan Corporation and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board used these maps to deny lending and investment services to Black Americans.

This lack of investment had a profound, lasting impact on Black neighborhoods, says Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. "We see the legacy today when you look at maps and housing values and demographic patterns in our cities."

Fact Check

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How a New Deal Housing Program Enforced Segregation | HISTORY

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A New Deal-era federal housing program refused to insure houses for Black families, or even insure houses in white neighborhoods that were too close to Black ones.

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In law and government, de facto describes practices that exist in reality, even though they are not officially recognized by laws.

In law and government, de jure describes practices that are legally recognised, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality.

The difference between De Facto vs De Jure given here can help the UPSC Civil Service exam aspirants to understand the basics better and know their comparisons thoroughly.

Membership to the United Nations is not possible even if there is a de facto recognition by the majority of states.

A state can get United Nations membership if the majority of nations bestows de jure recognition.

These are the main differences between De Facto and De Jure. The differences given in the above table can help the UPSC Civil Service Exam aspirants to answer any related questions easily in the exams.

After learning about the de facto and de jure difference, learn more about Law Optional subject for UPSC Civil Service Exam, and assimilate important tips for International Law Section.

Also, read the Important Indian Polity notes for UPSC Civil Service Exam. To further strengthen the preparation for the civil service exam, learn about the Constitution of India including the important features, amendments and preamble. Visit the below-given links to learn about the Law Optional for Civil Service Exam, Indian Polity Notes, and Constitution of India in detail along with other information.
Difference between De Facto and De Jure - UPSC Notes:- Download PDF Here

What is the meaning of the word De Fact?

De Facto describes practices that exist in reality in the rule of any Government or Law.

What is the difference between de jure and de facto method?

De facto is defined as a state of affairs that is true in fact, but that is not officially sanctioned. In contrast, de jure means a state of affairs that is in accordance with law (i.e. that is officially sanctioned).

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Difference between De Facto and De Jure & Their Comparisons

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Difference between 'De Facto' and 'De Jure' in tabular form is given here. Visit now to check the detailed De Facto vs De Jure difference with their comparisons.

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"The Black Man Is a Person Who Must Ride 'Jim Crow' in Georgia"
-W.E.B. DuBois
*

A nineteenth-​century federal case, United States v. Cruikshank, foreshadowed what was at stake in the twentieth-​century struggle over federalism and citizenship. The case concerned a massacre that took place in Colfax, Louisiana, on Easter Sunday 1873. When the guns fell silent in a confrontation over the results of an election pitting Republicans, Black and white, against white Democrats, many of whom were former Confederate soldiers and members of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, 3 white men and somewhere between 60 to 150 Black men were left dead, and the parish courthouse, the site of the siege, was virtually in ashes.

Historian Eric Foner described this event in majority-​Black Grant Parish as the "bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era." It "taught many lessons," he wrote, "including the lengths to which some opponents of Reconstruction would go to retain their accustomed authority." Although 97 members of the white mob were indicted under federal law, only 9 were charged. Congress investigated the massacre and released a report describing it as a "deliberate, barbarous, cold-​blooded murder" that was a "foul blot on the page of history," but the appellate courts overturned all the ensuing convictions.

The most harmful opinion came not from the US Supreme Court, but from one of its justices, Joseph P. Bradley, who was sitting on the federal appeals court along with two other judges. Bradley construed the laws that the Reconstruction Congress adopted to curtail racist terror in a manner that made it clear the federal courts would view with hostility any congressional efforts to confer all the elements of citizenship on the formerly enslaved.

He read narrowly the constitutional grant of power to Congress to pass such laws. He reduced congressional power to hold individuals liable for civil rights violations. He heightened the prosecutor's burden in these cases by demanding proof of intentional discrimination. And, in effect, he reinforced the widely held belief that Black people should not be permitted to bear arms, notwithstanding the Second Amendment. The long shadow cast over federal civil rights enforcement by Bradley's opinion, which was endorsed by the Supreme Court, has crippled civil rights enforcement to this day.
Such violence, at once calculated and casual, reconstructed the culture of policing from one generation to the next, from slavery through Jim Crow and beyond.
In Louisiana, the reaction to Bradley's opinion was swift and brutal. Night riders in Colfax slit the throat of a Black man named Frank Foster who was, disastrously, in the wrong place at the wrong time. A few days later, one of the defendants in the Cruikshank trial, seemingly emboldened by the Bradley decision, helped an armed group force five Republican officials to leave their posts. Mob terror against Republicans picked up across the South, escalating the full-​throttled project of violent redemption.

The Cruikshank case was about more than abstract theories of federalism and the separate powers of Congress and the courts. The limits on the constitutional authority of Congress to control racist violence changed the balance of power in favor of state and local police, prosecutors, and courts, who could thereafter enforce white supremacy without much fear of federal oversight. As the cases described in my new book, By Hands Now Known underscore, the violent enactment of Jim Crow's precepts aligned with the unfettered power exercised by local police-​elected sheriffs and their deputies in the rural South, police chiefs and their officers in the cities and towns.

Slavery abides in all American institutions, but its formative and enduring presence in policing during Jim Crow was particularly palpable. Indeed, the unremitting lines between violent policing, slavery, and Jim Crow were pronounced well into the twenty-first century. It could be perceived in the violence that claimed the lives of Trayvon Martin, the teenager who in 2012 violated the "white space" rule; Sandra Bland, who in 2015 defied the "never talk back to a white cop" rule; and George Floyd, the tall Black man whose mere existence was so irksome to a white officer that he felt entitled to perform a public execution in 2020. Such violence, at once calculated and casual, reconstructed the culture of policing from one generation to the next, from slavery through Jim Crow and beyond.
The violent enactment of Jim Crow's precepts aligned with the unfettered power exercised by local police-​elected sheriffs and their deputies in the rural South, police chiefs and their officers in the cities and towns.
Performance of power and degradation, of Black otherness-​this alienation of Black humanity, illegalization of Black life-​is just half of the story of the parallels between modern policing and slavery. Black communities have fought back, and that militant history-​the other half of the story-​establishes that protest against police violence has always been central to Black social movements.

From 1865 to the present, Black people have identified "law enforcement officers" as perhaps their most potent existential threat. In the first year of the twentieth century, a race riot broke out in New York City's Tenderloin district. The police force encouraged a mob intent on a lynching. New York activists who gathered the testimony of eighty victims reported that "it was the night sticks of the police that sent a stream of bleeding colored men to the hospital."

Led by T. Thomas Fortune, a prominent Black journalist of the day, New Yorkers formed the Citizens' Protective League to pursue prosecutions against the officers. The league was not successful and the officers went back to their beats. That was more than a century ago, long before three Black women coined the phrase Black Lives Matter.

Lawless police acting on behalf of the state has defined how Black people experienced American law for two centuries, and concomitantly, Black struggles for citizenship and meaningful democratic participation have always included radical demands for relief from such state violence. When, in current times, the Department of Justice defers to state prosecutors and juries, and when the federal courts enfeeble civil rights remedies that might make victims whole, as they do by allowing police to escape civil liability by claiming immunity, they are calling up the old playbook. Hovering all around us, in our august federal courts as much as in our county courtrooms, is the law of Jim Crow and, as well, its antecedent, the law of slavery.

_____________________________________

Excerpted from By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners by Margaret A. Burnham. Copyright © 2022. Available from W.W. Norton & Company.

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How White Supremacy Was Codified Into Law in America

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"The Black Man Is a Person Who Must Ride 'Jim Crow' in Georgia" -W.E.B. DuBois * A nineteenth-​century federal case, United States v. Cruikshank, foreshadowed what was at stake in the twentieth-​ce...

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"Thus, one can explain as follows the reasons why the people who spread around the world were Eurasians, not Aboriginal Australians or Native Americans or sub-Saharan Africans. The reasons had nothing to do with differences in the peoples themselves. Instead, the reasons were continental differences in the available wild plant and animal species suitable for domestication, resulting in earlier domestication of a more productive suite of domesticates in Eurasia, plus Eurasia’s east/west axis that facilitated the spread of those domesticates throughout Eurasia."

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Guns, Germs, and Steel, my best-known book, was

published in 1997. It has been translated into 36 languages, including all the major languages of book publishing, as well as languages of small markets such as Estonian and Serbian. It won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, plus numerous other prizes. I shall now summarize Guns, Germs, and Steel's question, its answer, extensions and discoveries since its publication, unresolved questions, and criticisms.

THE QUESTION

Guns, Germs, and Steel seek to answer the biggest question of post-Ice-Age human history: why Eurasian peoples, rather than peoples of other continents, became the ones to develop the ingredients of power (guns, germs, and steel) and to expand around the world. An extraterrestrial being visiting the Earth 14,000 years ago could have been forgiven for failing to predict this outcome, because the human populations of other

continents apparently also possessed advantages. Africans enjoyed a huge head start, because Africa is the continent with by far the longest history of human occupation. North America is a big fertile continent, with the result that it supports the richest and most productive nation today. Australia provides by far the earliest evidence for human ability to cross wide water gaps, and some of the earliest widespread evidence for behaviorally modern humans. Why, nevertheless, were Eurasians the ones to expand?

Although every lay person sees that this is a question crying out for answer, historians have mostly ignored this question. Several reasons explain their neglect. One reason is that the answer clearly lies in the pre-literate past, because by 3400 BC Eurasians (and North Africans, biogeographically and politically part of Eurasia rather than of sub-Saharan Africa) had already had metal tools for thousands of years and were starting to develop writing and empires, thousands of years before any of those things would appear on any other continent. But most historians consider history to begin with the origins of writing, and consider the pre-literate past as lying outside the scope of their discipline and instead to be left to archaeologists. Also, as we shall see, the answers to this question involve details of subjects (especially plant and animal biology and microbiology) in which history graduate students receive no training. But lay people still want an answer to this obvious question. As a result of the failure of historians to supply an answer, lay people often fall back on the transparent interpretation of supposed racial superiority of Eurasian people themselves, despite the lack of evidence for that interpretation.

My own interest in this question became rekindled by my experiences in New Guinea over the last 50 years. When I arrived in New Guinea for the first time, it became clear to me almost immediately that New Guineans are curious, questioning, talkative people with complex languages and social relationships, on the average at least as intelligent as Europeans and Americans. In New Guinea I'm the dope who can't do elementary things like follow an unmarked trail or light a fire in the rain. My New Guinea friends are patient with my shortcomings and don't expect much of me when it comes to the everyday challenges of New Guinea life. Why did I nevertheless come to New Guinea as a representative of the "advanced" colonizing society possessing steel tools and writing, when my New Guinea friends traditionally had only stone tools and no writing, 46,000 years after their ancestors had reached New Guinea? Eventually, a New Guinean named Yali, in the course of a long conversation with me about birds and volcanoes and my work and other things, asked me the question directly: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [i.e., steel tools and other products of civilization] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" Despite the obviousness of Yali's question, I didn't know how to answer him. It took me 25 years until I was ready to offer an answer, in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

The answer depends on a synthesis of four bodies of information, in the fields of social science, botany, zoology, and microbiology, applied to findings of archaeology, linguistics, and human genetics. Many social scientists have studied the development of complex societies around the world, and the emergence of technology, writing, centralized government, economic specialization, and social stratification. The conclusion of social scientists is that all of these developments required sedentary populous societies producing storable food surpluses capable of feeding not only the food producers themselves, but also capable of feeding full-time political leaders, merchants, scribes, and technology specialists. Until 11,000 years ago, all people everywhere on Earth were hunter/gatherers, living at modest population densities because the hunter/gatherer lifestyle yields only modest food quantities and little or no storable food surpluses. (Some hunter/gatherers in especially productive environments became semi-sedentary and developed chiefs, but no hunter/gatherers went as far as developing kings, metal tools, or writing). Beginning 11,000 years ago, it was the rise of food production (agriculture and herding), yielding 100 to 1,000 times more food per acre than the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, that fueled the rise of sedentary populous societies with storable food surpluses and all of their consequences. That's the first step in answering Yali's question.

One might still wonder: if food production had arisen simultaneously all around the world, then peoples everywhere would have developed complex societies simultaneously, and the subsequent world dominance of Eurasian societies would remain unexplained. Here, the bodies of information in the fields of botany and zoology become relevant. Food production didn't arise simultaneously around the world: in most of the world it never arose independently at all; it did arise independently in just nine small regions, from which it diffused to other regions; and, among those nine regions, it arose more than 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and possibly in China, but only as recently as 2500 BC in the eastern United States. The value of the domesticated plants and animals also varied among regions: the most numerous and productive suites of domesticated species arose in the Fertile Crescent, followed by China, Mexico, and the Andes, while the least numerous and least productive suites arose in the eastern U.S., New Guinea, and Ethiopia.

Why did food production arise in only nine regions? Why were those regions not the most fertile and productive regions of modern agriculture, such as California, Europe, Japan, and Java? Why didn't ancient hunter/gatherers everywhere domesticate locally available wild species? - e.g., why didn't Aboriginal Australians domesticate kangaroos, and why didn't California Indians domesticate the oak trees on whose acorns they subsisted? A century of research by botanists and zoologists has established that only certain plant and animal species lend themselves to domestication, and has identified the specific problems preventing the domestication of

kangaroos, oak trees, and most other species. This issue presented one of the crucial problems for me in writing Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's not enough to observe that kangaroos weren't domesticated, and to conclude from that observation that kangaroos couldn't be domesticated; that reasoning would be circular. Hence I devoted two of the longest chapters of Guns, Germs, and Steel to assembling many independent lines of evidence showing that the explanation for the non-origins of domestication in most regions of the world, and the non-domestication of most wild species, lay with the wild plant and animal species themselves, not with the people of those regions.

The spread of food production from those nine centers of origin followed a striking geographic pattern: rapid spread along east/west axes (such as the axis of Eurasia), slower spread along north/south axes (such as those of the Americas and of Africa). That's because crop and livestock species, and people using technologies and social behaviors associated with those species, can spread more rapidly at the same latitude, where they always encounter constant day length and seasonality and similar diseases, than across bands of latitude, where they must adapt to different day lengths and seasonality and diseases. My listeners and readers find this pattern as fascinating as did I: after I give a lecture on Guns, Germs, and Steel, I can often recognize those people nearby who have just come out of my lecture, because they are tracing horizontal and vertical lines in the air as they talk to each other.

Thus, one can explain as follows the reasons why the people who spread around the world were Eurasians, not Aboriginal Australians or Native Americans or sub-Saharan Africans. The reasons had nothing to do with differences in the peoples themselves. Instead, the reasons were continental differences in the available wild plant and animal species suitable for domestication, resulting in earlier domestication of a more productive suite of domesticates in Eurasia, plus Eurasia's east/west axis that facilitated the spread of those domesticates throughout Eurasia. That long sentence is what I answer when journalists ask me to summarize my 518-page book and 25 years of research in just one sentence for their busy readers. That sentence also explains why Guns, Germs, and Steel, a book about the biggest pattern of human history, contains seven chapters about plant and animal domestication, plus four chapters about domestication's consequences, but only five chapters about history itself; and why Guns, Germs, and Steel wasn't written by a historian, but by a biogeographer.

Microbiology, the fourth of the four bodies of information necessary for answering Yali's question, played a specific role in the Eurasian expansion. One means by which Europeans were able to spread at the expense of other peoples was by infecting them (usually unintentionally) with epidemic infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles, to which Europeans had evolved some genetic resistance and had acquired much immune (antibody-based) resistance through historical and lifetime exposure respectively, while unexposed non-European peoples had no such exposure, hence no such resistance. But why didn't non-European peoples evolve deadly diseases of their own to give back to invading Europeans? The explanation lies in microbiological studies of recent decades, which I summarized in one chapter of Guns, Germs, and Steel, and which Nathan Wolfe, Claire Panosian, and I updated in a 2007 paper posted on this website. The exchange of major epidemic infectious diseases was one-sided, because most of those diseases in the temperate zones came to us humans from diseases of our domestic animals (such as cattle, pigs, and chickens) with which our ancestors lived in close contact after those animal species had been domesticated. But of the world's 14 species of valuable domestic mammals, 13 were Eurasian, only one American, and none Australian. Hence Eurasians ended up as disease bearers, and with much resistance themselves to their own diseases.

EXTENSIONS AND DISCOVERIES SINCE PUBLICATION IN 1997

Since I published Guns, Germs, and Steel in 1997, much new information has accumulated, which has enriched our understanding without fundamentally changing interpretations. I discussed some of these extensions in new English-language editions of Guns, Germs, and Steel released in 2003 and 2007.

Origins of food production . A recent series of excellent papers on plant and animal domestication was published in the Journal of Anthropological Research (volume 68, no. 2, 2012). This series includes evidence that the Indian subcontinent should be considered an additional minor center of independent agricultural origins. Other updates are my article "Evolution, consequences and the future of plant and animal domestication" (Nature 418: 34-41 (2002)) and Peter Bellwood's book First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).

Spreads of language families . Updates include my paper with Peter Bellwood, "Farmers and their languages: the first expansions," posted on this website; Peter Bellwood's above-cited book First Farmers; and a book edited by Peter Bellwood and Colin Renfrew Examining the Language/Farming Dispersal Hypothesis (Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2002). Much new information has emerged about the farming-related spread of the Austronesian and Indo-European language families and the Bantu sub-sub-sub family. Edward Vajda made the surprising discovery of the first well-attested relationship between an Old World language family and a New World language family, when he demonstrated a relationship between the Na-Dene family of North America and the Yeniseian family of Central Siberia (The Dene-Yeniseian Connection (Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska, N.S. vol. 5, nos. 1-2, 2010)). This implies a long-distance ancient spread by hunter/gatherers in the absence of farming, as is also true for the spread of the Pama-Nyungan language family of Aboriginal Australia.

Extensions to the world of business . From conversations with Bill Gates, Bill Lewis of McKinsey Global Institute, and others in the business world, I learned of possible parallels between the histories of societies as discussed in Guns, Germs, and Steel, and the histories of national business sectors, industrial belts, and individual companies. Delicious examples include the contrasts in productivity between Germany's beer industry and its metal industry, or between Japan's food-processing industry and its consumer electronics industry. The Afterword to my 2003 edition of Guns, Germs, and Steel discusses these and other equally delicious examples.

Adoption of Guns, Germs, and Steel in schools . When I published Guns, Germs, and Steel, I wasn't surprised at its adoption in college courses, but I didn't expect it to be adopted in high schools and middle schools. It therefore did surprise me when my twin sons, then in the 7th grade at middle school, came home from school one day angry at me, because the history teacher had assigned Guns, Germs, and Steel to their class and had invited me to visit the class for a discussion. My sons hadn't yet read Guns, Germs, and Steel, but they told me that, even without reading it, they knew that it was a bad book, and that they would horribly embarrassed to have to sit and squirm in class while their equally disgusted friends and classmates listened to me discuss the book. When I arrived and stood up in front of the class, my sons were seated in the back row, with grim expressions on their faces. As I began talking, their classmates showed more and more visible interest, and my sons gradually faced forwards, relaxed their disgusted body posture, and began smiling. For me, that was the first of dozens of encounters with middle school and high school students reading Guns, Germs, and Steel. Nowadays, virtually every time that I give a public lecture, there is at least one school class in attendance, and the students are invariably among my most enthusiastic listeners.

Advantages of Eurasian species. Eurasia was home to the largest number of valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species. Why was that the case?

A naïve answer would be: that's just because Eurasia is the largest continent, and because species diversity is (all other things being equal) higher on large land masses than on small land masses. But that naïve answer proves to be either wrong or else incomplete. Tropical areas are more species-rich than are temperate areas, and most of Eurasia's area lies in the temperate zones. In at least the two groups of plants and animals most important to humans, something about Eurasia besides its area causes it to harbor a disproportionate number of the world's valuable domesticable species.

One of those two cases is understood: the case of large-seeded wild grasses (cereals) such as wheat and barley, which contribute more calories to human diets than any other plants. The geographer Mark Blumler tabulated the native distributions of the world's 56 grasses with the largest seeds (summarized in Table 8.1 on page 140 of Guns, Germs, and Steel). Of those 56, almost all are native to Mediterranean zones or other seasonally dry environments, and 32 are concentrated in the Mediterranean zone of Western Eurasia. The world's four other Mediterranean zones - those of Chile, California, South Africa, and Southwest Australia - offer respectively only 2, 1, 1, and 0 large-seeded wild grasses. Half of the reason is that a Mediterranean climate of mild wet winters and long hot dry summers selects for large seeds of annual plants able to survive the long dry season, and to grow rapidly and outcompete smaller seeds when the rains return. The other half of the reason is that, among the world's Mediterranean zones, that of Western Eurasia is by far the largest, the one with the greatest range of altitudes and topographies within a short distance, the one with the greatest variation in climate between seasons and between years - hence the one that evolved the largest number of large-seeded wild grasses. It's possible that the same reasoning might apply to large-seeded wild legumes such as beans, but no one has done the corresponding calculations for legumes that Mark Blumler performed for grasses.

The other case is not understood. Of the world's 14 species of valuable large domesticated mammals, 13 are native to Eurasia, while only one (South America's llama) is native to another region. It's true that Eurasia is home to more wild species of terrestrial herbivores or omnivorous mammals (72 species) than the next richest continent, Africa with 51 species. Those wild species are the potential "candidates" for domestication. But a much higher percentage of those candidate species were actually domesticable in Eurasia (18%) than in the other continents (0% for sub-Saharan Africa and Australia, 4% for the Americas), so Eurasia ended up with more domesticated species (Table 9.2 on page 162 of Guns, Germs, and Steel). Why did so few of the big mammals for which Africa is famous proved domesticable? It turns out that the domesticable large Eurasian species have a follow-the-leader herd structure based on a dominance hierarchy. Hence it's feasible for us humans to maintain the species in captivity in herds, to take over that hierarchy, and to drive the herds. In contrast, all of Africa's social antelope species are territorial in the breeding season, when they fight and don't tolerate each other and can't be herded. What is it that selects for herds based on dominance hierarchies in Eurasia, and for territorial breeding behavior in sub-Saharan Africa? We don't know the answer. It's a question of zoology rather than of human sociology, but it's a question that had important consequences for human history.

Of the eight species of wild equids (horses and their relatives) that survived until recent times, two were successfully domesticated (horse and donkey); the onager was commonly hunted in antiquity, but it is uncertain whether it was ever tamed and kept in captivity; and the other five (Africa's three zebra species, the South African quagga, and the kiang of Tibet) were not domesticated. Why were zebras not domesticated, despite their apparently being so similar to horses, able to interbreed with horses and donkeys, and locally abundant? Suggested answers include: nasty disposition (by biting and kicking, captive zebras kill or cripple more American zoo-keepers than do captive tigers); keen peripheral vision that makes them impossible to lasso; and anatomy of the back that makes it difficult for them to support a rider's weight. Zebra-lovers object that there are some gentle captive zebras, and that zebras have occasionally been hitched to carts and (rarely) borne riders. The fact remains that, even when Europeans experienced with livestock reach South Africa, they did experiment with zebras but abandoned them, suggesting that there really are obstacles to domesticating zebras.

The next most often-discussed non-domestication is that of bison. Neither European nor American bison (probably conspecific rather than separate species) were domesticated, despite American bison being the dominant wild ungulate and most important game species of the North American plains and being successfully ranched today, and despite five other species of wild cattle having been domesticated (the aurochs ancestral to cows, the mithan, the banteng, the yak, and the water buffalo). When I ask American readers and animal handlers familiar with bison the possible reasons for bison non-domestication, they mention two factors: unpredictable dangerous disposition, such that bison ranchers remain wary of them; and ability to jump fences, such they could not be penned until modern strong high fences became available. One may object to citing claims of nasty disposition as a reason for non-domestication of bison and zebras, by noting that wild horses are, and the now-extinct aurochs was, also nasty and dangerous. One may also object that some wild species have had nastiness successfully bred out of them by domestication, notably wolves and silver foxes. However, one should not overgeneralize those successes by assuming that, because behavioral obstacles to domestication have been successfully bred out of a few wild animal species, they could be bred out of any wild animal species. The fact remains that bison have not been domesticated in either North America or Europe despite long co-existence with human livestock handlers, and that suggests obstacles.

There is no serious, detailed alternative theory to explain why human history unfolded differently on the different continents. There has been no refutation of the body of studies by botanists and zoologists about food production, nor of the body of studies by social scientists about food production's consequences.

Nevertheless, Guns, Germs, and Steel has been criticized from three directions. None of those criticisms constitutes an attempt to refute the book's reasoning. The criticisms instead involve people disliking the book's interpretation or question, and expressing their generalized dislike.

One of the criticisms consists of using the term "geographic determinism" as a pejorative. This term is invoked by some scholars in many contexts, in order to deny arguments that geographic factors contribute importantly to explanations of some human phenomena and dominate explanations of other human phenomena. Elsewhere on this website, I have discussed what is wrong with this reflex response of "geographic determinism" to deny geographic explanations.

A second criticism comes from many people of European and Japanese ancestry, who believe that the long-term differences between human societies on different continents are instead due to genetic differences in IQ between different human populations. Specifically, supporters of this view believe that Europeans or Japanese are on the average innately more intelligent than other peoples, and that's why they were the first to develop guns, steel, and the other ingredients of modern power. I have never heard proponents of this view discuss why IQ led to germs, a major driver of European conquests, also arising preferentially in Europe. Proponents of this view also don't discuss the bodies of research by botanists, zoologists, and social scientists underlying the interpretations of Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Proponents of this view recognize that their view is often viewed as "politically incorrect," so I have encountered it much more often expressed privately in conversation than in writing. Among the many accomplished and influential people who have expounded this view to me are numerous famous academics (especially in fields other than the social sciences), famous inventors, and powerful cabinet ministers.

One problem with the view is that there is no convincing evidence for higher IQ, and for stronger genetic factors contributing to IQ, among people of European and Japanese ancestry, despite much effort devoted to obtaining such evidence. It has proved difficult to develop cross-culturally valid methods of measuring IQ, and to separate genetic from learned contributions to IQ. Another problem is that the view's proponents focus on the IQ's of modern Europeans and Japanese. However, history's broad pattern discussed in Guns, Germs, and Steel was already mostly in place by 3400 BC, by which time peoples of the Fertile Crescent had developed empires, writing, metal tools, and highly productive agriculture thousands of years before those ingredients of power arose elsewhere. In fact, in most parts of the world, including Europe and Japan, those ingredients of power never arose independently at all: they were imported from the Fertile Crescent and from China via Korea respectively. Hence IQ-based explanations should not focus on modern Europeans and Japanese, but instead on descendants of Fertile Crescent inhabitants of 3400 BC, such as modern Iraqis and Syrians. So far as I know, proponents of the IQ hypothesis haven't claimed that modern Iraqis and Syrians are innately superior to modern Europeans and other peoples in intelligence.

The remaining criticism comes especially from some politically liberal social scientists. A pejorative term that they often invoke to tarnish Guns, Germs, and Steel is "Eurocentrism" i.e. focusing on Europe. Racism and sexism are also sometimes mentioned or implied as criticisms. One often cited example is a paper by the geographer Blout "Eight Eurocentric historians" [including me]. Explicitly or implicitly, the critics believe that discussions of Europe's rise to power ought to be condemned as Eurocentric. However, it's a fact of history that Europe did rise to power, and that fact deserves explanation. Guns, Germs, and Steel actually says little specifically about Europe but says a lot about the Fertile Crescent. As for the charge of racism, Guns, Germs, and Steel's conclusion is that history's broad pattern has nothing to do with human racial characteristics and everything to do with plant and animal biology, so that the vast majority of readers see Guns, Germs, and Steel as refuting rather than promoting racist explanations. As for the implication of sexism, Guns, Germs, and Steel contains scarcely any discussion of gender roles, not because they are unimportant in general, but because I know of no evidence that continental differences in gender roles contributed to the continental differences in societal development.

For these reasons, my current view, and that of many (most?) scholars who have seriously studied the question posed by Guns, Germs, and Steel, is that the book's interpretation is correct, fundamentally and in detail.

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Guns, germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

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Guns, Germs, and Steel, my best-known book, was published in 1997. It has been translated into 36 languages, including all the major languages of book publishing, as well as languages of small markets such as Estonian and Serbian. It won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, plus numerous other prizes.

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Remembering the Historic All-Black "Hello, Dolly!" from 1967 - LIFE

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The musical Hello, Dolly! made its Broadway debut in 1964 and was an instant smash with Carol Channing in the title role. Three years later, when ticket sales were starting to slump, producer David Merrick retooled with an entirely black cast that featured Pearl Bailey as the lead and Cab Calloway as her love interest.

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changed musical theater forever when it premiered in 1975. It's a completely ensemble show with no large scenery, no costumes (except the final number), no intermission and no star. For an era that relied on showy elements, this was the anti-musical musical. But then, the show won the Pulitzer Prize, nine Tony Awards®, and a host of other accolades. How did this musical, called "the first reality show" by original cast member Baayork Lee, capture such an iconic role in American culture? The idea behind A Chorus Line began with two Broadway dancers, Michon Peacock and Tony Stevens. As musicals became more expensive to produce (and flops were abundant), Broadway began to struggle in the early 1970s which caused many dancers to be out of work. Peacock and Stevens thought of an idea to create a theater troupe of just Broadway dancers and approached their friend Michael Bennett with their idea. They knew they needed a name and Bennett was a well-known Tony Award®-winning director and choreographer who got his start as a chorus dancer. Coincidentally, Bennett had been thinking along the same lines - although his idea was for a show, not a troupe. They decided to get together a group of dancers to share their stories and experiences. On a snowy Saturday evening in January 1974, they did just that.

A Chorus Line Original Playbill Cover

The interviews began in a circle with each dancer stating their name, where they were born and why they started dancing. As the evening continued, the stories grew and encompassed everything from childhood traumas, insecurities, sexuality and more. The event lasted twelve hours, but there was still more to tell and another evening was scheduled and recorded. Bennett knew he had something with the material and pitched his idea to Joseph Papp, the founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival (NYSF), who loved it. Papp allowed Bennett an unprecedented amount of workshop time for the project and planned to open it in his theater complex, The Public Theater. Bennett then invited the other collaborators to the project.

Bennett drew from friends to help shape the piece. First was Nicholas Dante, one of the dancers at the interviews whose story turned into Paul's moving monologue, to develop the book from the recordings. Then Bennett approached longtime collaborator Bob Avian to assist with choreography. He asked Marvin Hamlisch, then a three-time Academy Award® winner and Hollywood's hottest composer, to write the score. Hamlisch had always wanted to write a Broadway musical and accepted. Edward Kleban would write the lyrics and later James Kirkwood came on as a co-bookwriter. However, Bennett was the one who drove the show.

The first workshop was on August 4, 1974. A Chorus Line is unique in its development. There was no real script to start with and each role was created organically, individually crafted to suit the talents and personality of the person playing it. Several dancers played versions of themselves and others played characters created from combining several different dancers' stories. The cast members also contributed their own stories that enhanced the characters. Most fascinating was that all of the stories were true - and the process was deeply emotional for the cast who were used to not being allowed a voice in the creative process. From these character developments and personalities, Hamlisch and Kleban fashioned songs - for instance, they thought of the song that became "Sing!"during the actress's poor singing audition. But it wasn't until "At the Ballet" that they knew they had something special.

Throughout the development process, the cast and creative team worried that the show might be too insular, too focused on the business. They needn't have worried. The show was a massive hit immediately after it premiered at The Public Theater. The glowing reviews poured in. Clive Barnes of The New York Times said, "the conservative word for A Chorus Line is tremendous, or perhaps terrific." A Chorus Line quickly transferred to Broadway and had its first performance on July 25, 1975.

It is not an exaggeration to say that A Chorus Line saved Broadway. Broadway attendance was at a near all-time low of 6.6 million before the musical premiered. Afterwards, A Chorus Line shot the attendance up to 8.8 million, became the centerpiece for New York City tourist promotion and led to the revitalization of Times Square. In 1983, on its 3,389 performance, A Chorus Line became the longest running musical in Broadway history, a title it would hold until 1997.

One of the reasons A Chorus Line achieved such a blockbuster success was that its stories resonated with everyone - not just those who dance. While the stories came specifically from dancers, the experiences they described of childhood memories, adolescent awkwardness, loss and hope were universal. It was a show created specifically from the experiences of baby boomers, and strongly appealed to them. Even now, more than forty years later, the themes still resonate and A Chorus Line remains the one singular sensation.

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Behind the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line

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A Chorus Line changed musical theater forever when it premiered in 1975. It's a completely ensemble show with no large scenery, no costumes (except the final number), no intermission and no star. For an era that relied on showy elements, this was the anti-musical musical.

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I'm absolutely obsessed with Chicago's serendipity with both Watergate AND the OJ Simpson trial

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Stephen Schwartz was born in New York City on March 6, 1948. He studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School of Music while in high school and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1968 with a B.F.A. in Drama. Upon coming back to live in New York City, he went to work as an A&R producer for RCA Records, but shortly thereafter began to work in the Broadway theatre. His first major credit was the title song for the play BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE; the song was eventually used in the movie version as well.

In 1971, he wrote the music and new lyrics for GODSPELL, for which he won two Grammys among other awards. This was followed by the English texts, in collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, for Bernstein's MASS, which opened the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The following year, he wrote the music and lyrics for PIPPIN, and two years later, THE MAGIC SHOW. At one point, GODSPELL, PIPPIN and THE MAGIC SHOW were all running on Broadway simultaneously.

He next wrote the music and lyrics for THE BAKER'S WIFE, followed by a musical version of Studs Terkel's WORKING, to which he contributed four songs and which he also adapted and directed, winning a Drama Desk Award as best director. He also co-directed the television production, which was presented as part of the PBS "American Playhouse" series.

Other work for the musical theatre includes lyrics to RAGS (music by Charles Strouse), music and lyrics for CHILDREN OF EDEN, and two musicals produced overseas, MIT EVENTYR (MY FAIRY TALE) in Denmark and SCHIKANEDER in Austria. He has also written songs for two musicals for young audiences, CAPTAIN LOUIE and MY SON, PINOCCHIO. Compilation revues of his work include SNAPSHOTS and, for Princess Cruise Lines, MAGIC TO DO.

For film, he collaborated with composer Alan Menken on the songs for Disney's POCAHONTAS, for which he received two Academy Awards and another Grammy, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, and ENCHANTED. He also provided songs for DreamWorks' first animated feature, THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, for which he won another Academy Award for the song "When You Believe." THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and THE PRINCE OF EGYPT have both been adapted for the stage.

Mr. Schwartz's most recent stage musical, WICKED, opened in the fall of 2003 and is currently running on Broadway and in several other productions around the world. He received another Grammy for the cast recording, and in 2008, WICKED reached its 1900th performance on Broadway, making Mr. Schwartz the only songwriter in Broadway history ever to have three shows run more than 1900 performances.

His first opera, SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON, premiered at Opera Santa Barbara in the fall of 2009 and was subsequently produced by New York City Opera. His frequently-performed choral works include "Testimony", based on the It Gets Better Project, "Keramos" and part of the "Tyler Clemente Suite." He has also released two singer/songwriter CDs, RELUCTANT PILGRIM and UNCHARTED TERRITORY.

Mr. Schwartz has been awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2015, he received the Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award for his humanitarian and mentorship contributions to the theatre. A book about his career, " Defying Gravity," has been released by Applause Books.

Under the auspices of the ASCAP Foundation, he has been the artistic director of musical theatre workshops in New York and Los Angeles for over twenty years, as well as conducting workshops for aspiring musical theatre writers and performers in countries around the world, including Australia, Germany, Latvia and Kenya. He is also a past President and current Council Member of the Dramatists' Guild.

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Stephen Schwartz was born in New York City on March 6, 1948. He studied piano and composition at the Juilliard School of Music while in high school and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1968 with a B.F.A. in Drama. Upon coming back to live in New York City, he went to work as an A&R producer for RCA Records, but shortly thereafter began to work in the Broadway theatre. His first major credit was the title song for the play BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE; the song was eventually used in the movie version as well.