Making Americans : Jews and the Broadway musical / Andrea Most.
Material type:
TextPublication details: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2004Description: viii, 253 p. : ill. 24 cmISBN: - 674011651
- ML 1711 .M855 2004
| Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
American Learning Resource
|
Aklatang Emilio Aguinaldo-Information Resource Center | ML 1711 .M855 2003 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 9ALRC201101840 |
Browsing Aklatang Emilio Aguinaldo-Information Resource Center shelves Close shelf browser (Hides shelf browser)
|
|
No cover image available | No cover image available | No cover image available | No cover image available |
|
||
| ML 420.S77 .T445 2005 The ties that bind : Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z / | ML 420.W452 .W520 2007 Raising Kanye : life lessons from the mother of a hip-hop superstar / | ML 1211.8.S32 .Sch57 1987 The San Francisco Symphony : music, maestros, and musicians / | ML 1711 .M855 2003 Making Americans : Jews and the Broadway musical / | ML 1711.8.S2 .B623 1972 50 years of the San Francisco opera / | ML 1711.8.S2 .L585 1977 The Lamplighters : 25 years of Gilbert and Sullivan in San Francisco / | ML 3477 .Un81 1999 Music USA : the rough guide / |
Includes index.
"I whistle a happy tune"
Jews, theatricality, and modernity -- 2. Cantors' sons, jazz singers, and Indian chiefs
or, 'doin' what comes natur'lly" -- 6. "You've got to be carefully taught"
The invention of ethnicity on the musical comedy stage -- 3. Babes in arms
The politics of race in south pacific -- Coda
The politics of theatricality during the great depression -- 4. "We know we belong to the land"
The theatricality of assimilation in Oklahoma! -- 5. The apprenticeship of Annie Oakley
1. Acting American
From 1925 to 1951--three chaotic decades of depression, war, and social upheaval--Jewish writers brought to the musical stage a powerfully appealing vision of America fashioned through song and dance. It was an optimistic, meritocratic, selectively inclusive America in which Jews could at once lose and find themselves--assimilation enacted onstage and off, as Andrea Most shows. This book examines two interwoven narratives crucial to an understanding of twentieth-century American culture: the stories of Jewish acculturation and of the development of the American musical. Here we delve into the work of the most influential artists of the genre during the years surrounding World War II--Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Dorothy and Herbert Fields, George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, and Richard Rodgers--and encounter new interpretations of classics such as "The Jazz Singer," "Whoopee," "Girl Crazy," "Babes in Arms," "Oklahoma!," "Annie Get Your Gun," "South Pacific, " and "The King and I." Most's analysis reveals how these brilliant composers, librettists, and performers transformed the experience of New York Jews into the grand, even sacred acts of being American. Read in the context of memoirs, correspondence, production designs, photographs, and newspaper clippings, the Broadway musical clearly emerges as a form by which Jewish artists negotiated their entrance into secular American society. In this book we see how the communities these musicals invented and the anthems they popularized constructed a vision of America that fostered self-understanding as the nation became a global power. www.alibris.com
There are no comments on this title.
