Approaches To The American Musical

Contributions by Stephen Banfield, Ann-Charlotte Hanes Harvey, David Horn, Robert Lawson-Peebles, Wilfrid Mellers, Sue Rickard, Carey Wall, Ralph Willett Edited by Robert Lawson-Peebles

Publication date:

01 March 1996

Length of book:

176 pages

Publisher

University of Exeter Press

Dimensions:

229x144mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780859894050

Most books on the American musical are little more than exercises in nostalgia. The specially commissioned essays that make up Approaches to the American Musical take a different view of the form. Going beyond the common assertion that musicals are simply escapist; these examinations of American stage and film musicals argue that Porgy and Bess, Top Hat, Kiss Me Kate and All That Jazz were popular precisely because they engaged with such important American issues as ethnicity, commerce and international relations.

Copyright Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

1. Introduction. Cultural Musicology and the American Musical, Robert Lawson-Peebles

2. From Butterfly to Saigon - Europe, America and "Success", Wilfrid Mellers

3. There's No Business like Show Business - a Speculative Reading of the Broadway Musical, Carey Wall

4. From Gold Diggers to Bar Girls - a Selective History of the American Movie Musical, Ralph Willett

5. Holy Yumpin' Yiminy Scandinavian Immigrant Stereotypes in Early 20th Century American Musical, Anne-Charlotte Hanes Harvey

6. Movies in Disguise - Negotiating Censorship and Patriarchy Through the Dances of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Sue Rickard

7. Brush Up Your Shakespeare, Robert Lawson-Peebles

8. Who Loves You Porgy? The Debates Surrounding Gershwin's Musical, David Horn

9. "West Side Story" Revisited, Wilfrid Mellers

10. Sondheim and the Art that has No Name, Stephen Banfield

Index