The Rodgers And Hammerstein Encyclopedia

Still the most influential and popular songwriting team in the history of the American Musical Theatre, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein represent Broadway musicals at their finest. The team revolutionized the musical play with Oklahoma! in 1943 and then went on to explore territory never put on the musical stage before in such beloved shows as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music. The team also worked in film, as with State Fair, and in the new medium of television, with Cinderella. For the first time, the lives, careers, works, songs, and themes of Rodgers and Hammerstein have been gathered together in an encyclopedia that covers the many talents of these men. In addition to their plays and films together, every work that each man did with other collaborators is also discussed. Hundreds of their songs are described, and there are entries on the many actors, directors, and other creative artists who they worked with. A complete list of awards, recordings, and books about the team are included, as well as a chronology of everything either man wrote. But The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia is not just about facts. It explains their work, explores themes in their musicals, and illustrates why they remain a driving force in the American Theatre. This is the first encyclpoedia to look specifically at the careers and works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, covering all their musicals together for stage, screen and televsion, but also everything they wrote with others. The purpose is to create a comprehensive guide to the American Musical Theatres foremost collaboration. The encyclopedia is (1) comprehensve, describing the works, the people involved in those works, and many of their famous songs; ( 2) up-to-date, including the most recent revivals of their works and new recordings of their scores; and (3) easy to use, being alphabetically arranged with cross-reference listings, chronological lists, lists of awards and recordings, and bibliographic information for further reading.

Jerome Kern (1885-1945) is considered one of the most versatile and influential of all American theatre and film composers. His pioneer work in developing a truly American musical sound inspired many of the great songwriters of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and his songs include dozens of beloved standards still heard today, such as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and “The Way You Look Tonight.” The Jerome Kern Encyclopedia consists of entries on people, theatre and film musicals, songs, subjects, and themes related to the composer. Not only are all of Kern’s stage and screen projects from 1904 to 1946 covered, but there are also entries on all the major librettists and lyricists with whom he worked, as well as producers, directors, actors, and other individuals who figured prominently in his career. Approximately 100 of Kern’s most important songs are discussed, and other entries address awards, collaborations, working methods, song styles, and other related subjects. The encyclopedia also includes a brief biography of Kern, a chronology of his life and work, and appendices on recordings, interpolations, revivals, and remakes. The most complete work on one of America’s greatest composers, this fascinating, readable, and extensive look at Kern will appeal totheatregoers, movie musical fans, students, teachers, and professionals in musical theatre.

Thornton Wilder is one of America’s greatest writers, and the only author to win Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and drama. Equally well known for his plays and novels, his unique and diverse body of work also includes essays, journals, lectures, and film and television scripts. In The Thornton Wilder Encyclopedia, Thomas S. Hischak exhaustively covers Wilder’s life and extensive career. Entries not only contain every one of his novels, plays, and scripts, but also his letters, journals, and all other existing works by Wilder, published or unpublished. In addition, this valuable reference features entries on the individuals who worked with Wilder and friends and family members who were a great influence on him. With a biography of Wilder to introduce the work and a chronology and selected bibliography to augment the entries, The Thornton Wilder Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive reference available on one of America’s greatest playwrights and finest novelists.

For more than five decades, Woody Allen has been one of the most critically acclaimed talents in American cinema. Allen has been nominated for best director seven times by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—winning for his 1977 film Annie Hall—and he has received more Oscar nominations for best screenplay than any other individual. But Allen’s accomplishments are not limited to the big screen. In addition to writing and directing nearly fifty films—many of which he starred in—Allen has been a television writer, a stand-up comedian, a playwright, and the author of several short stories. TheWoody Allen Encyclopedia is a compendium of information and commentary about every aspect of Allen as an artist. In this volume, Thomas S. Hischak details all of Allen’s works for the cinema, television, and the stage, as well as all of his fiction; his comedy albums; his performances in other directors’ movies; and even documentaries about him. In addition to such critically acclaimed films as Sleeper, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Zelig, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point, and Midnight in Paris, entries in this volume feature many of his collaborators, including actors, actresses, cinematographers, editors, designers, producers, and cowriters. This resource also highlights themes in Allen’s work, the music he utilizes in his films, and his working methods, as well as box-office figures and awards. An extensive and comprehensive overview of this artist’s remarkable career, The Woody Allen Encyclopedia is a must-have for film aficionados and will be of great interest to all readers, from professors and students to Allen’s most devoted fans.

This wide-ranging, two-volume encyclopedia of musicals old and new will captivate young fans—and prove invaluable to those contemplating staging a musical production. Written with high school students in mind, The World of Musicals: An Encyclopedia of Stage, Screen, and Song encompasses not only Broadway and film musicals, but also made-for-television musicals, a genre that has been largely ignored. The two volumes cover significant musicals in easily accessible entries that offer both useful information and fun facts. Each entry lists the work's writers, composers, directors, choreographers, and cast, and includes a song list, a synopsis, and descriptions of the original production and important revivals or remakes. Biographical entries share the stories of some of the brightest and most celebrated talents in the business. The encyclopedia will undoubtedly ignite and feed student interest in musical theatre. At the same time, it will prove a wonderful resource for teachers or community theatre directors charged with selecting and producing shows. In fact, anyone interested in theatre, film, television, or music will be fascinated by the work's tantalizing bits of historical and theatre trivia.

The Business of American Theatre is a research guide to the history of producing theatre in the United States. Covering a wide range of subjects, the book explores how traditions of investment, marketing, labor union contracts, advertising, leasing arrangements, ticket scalping, zoning ordinances, royalties, and numerous other financial transactions have influenced the art of theatre for the past three centuries. Yet the book is not a dry reiteration of hits and flops, bankruptcies and bamboozles. Nor does it cover "everything about it that's appealing, everything the traffic will allow" (as Irving Berlin did in the song "There's No Business Like Show Business"). It is instead a highly readable resource for anyone interested in how money, and how much money, is critical to the art and artists of theatre. Many of those artists make appearances in the book: Richard Rodgers and his keen eye for investment, Jacob Shubert and his construction of "the bridge of thighs" for his showgirls at the Winter Garden, the significance of the Disney Souvenir Shop near the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, and the difference between a Broadway show losing millions of dollars or making billions in one night. Consider this book a go-to resource for readers, students, and scholars of the theatre business.

This book seeks to trace the rise of popular music, identify its key figures and track the origins and development of its multiple genres and styles, all the while seeking to establish historical context. It is, fundamentally, a ready reference guide to the broad field of popular music over the past two centuries. It has become a truism that popular music, so pervasive in the modern world, constitutes a soundtrack to our lives – a constant though changing presence as we cross thresholds and grow from children to teenagers to adults. But it has become more than a soundtrack; it has become a narrative. Not just an accompaniment to our daily lives but incorporating our lives, our sense of identity, our lived experiences, into it. We have become part of the music just as the music has become part of us. The Historical Dictionary of Popular Music contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on major figures across genres, definitions of genres, technical innovations and surveys of countries and regions. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about popular music.

The lights dim and soon the theatre becomes dark. The audience conversations end with a few softly dissipating whispers, and the movie begins. Nina Sayers, a young ballerina, dances the prologue to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a ballet expressing a story drawn from Russian folk tales about a princess who has been turned into a White Swan and can only be turned back if a man swears eternal fidelity to her. However, this is not that ballet. This is the beginning of Black Swan, a controversial movie employing symbolism in a complex interweaving of dance and film to reveal the struggles and paradoxes of everything from a female rite-of-passage to questions about where artistic expression should demand self-sacrifice and whether such sacrifice is worth the price. The dance floor is the stage of life, the place where physical actions take on the symbolic meanings of mythology and express the deepest archetypes of the human mind. This book explores how dance gives shape to those human needs and how it reflects, and even creates, the maps of meaning and value that structure our lives. Though the volume looks at all the forms of dance, it focuses on three main categories in particular: religious, social, and artistic. Since the American Musical and subsequent Musical Videos have both reflected and influenced our current world, they receive the most space—such acclaimed performers as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, such important composers and lyrists as Gershwin, Rodgers-and-Hammerstein, Porter, Berlin, Webber, Bernstein, the Beatles, and the Who, and such choreographers as Graham, Balanchine, Robbins and Fosse are examined in particular detail.