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Bernstein Meets Broadway

Collaborative Art in a Time of War

Carol J. Oja

Broadway Legacies

Offers an in-depth look at the emerging career of Leonard Bernstein
Reveals how Bernstein challenged artistic and political conventions of the day
Draws on intensive archival research, FBI files, interviews with surviving cast members, and previously untapped criticism in African American newspapers and entertainment-trade journals
Written in an engaging and accessible style

Bernstein Meets Broadway

Collaborative Art in a Time of War

Carol J. Oja

Description

Winner of the 2015 Music in American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society

When Leonard Bernstein first arrived in New York City, he was an unknown artist working with other brilliant twentysomethings, notably Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. By the end of the 1940s, these artists were world famous. Their collaborations defied artistic boundaries and subtly pushed a progressive political agenda, altering the landscape of musical theater, ballet, and nightclub comedy. In Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War, award-winning author and scholar Carol J. Oja examines the early days of Bernstein's career during World War II, centering around the debut in 1944 of the Broadway musical On the Town and the ballet Fancy Free. As a composer and conductor, Bernstein experienced a meteoric rise to fame, thanks in no small part to his visionary colleagues. Together, they focused on urban contemporary life and popular culture, featuring as heroes the itinerant sailors who bore the brunt of military service. They were provocative both artistically and politically. In a time of race riots and Japanese internment camps, Bernstein and his collaborators featured African American performers and a Japanese American ballerina, staging a model of racial integration. Rather than accepting traditional distinctions between high and low art, Bernstein's music was wide-open, inspired by everything from opera and jazz to cartoons. Oja shapes a wide-ranging cultural history that captures a tumultuous moment in time. Bernstein Meets Broadway is an indispensable work for fans of Broadway musicals, dance, and American performance history.

Bernstein Meets Broadway

Collaborative Art in a Time of War

Carol J. Oja

Broadway Legacies

Introduction

Section I: Ballet, Nightclubs, Broadway
1.Youthful Celebrity and Progressive Visions: Breaking Out with Fancy Free
2. From Nightclubs to Broadway: The Revuers, Comedy Skits, and Progressive Politics
3. Creating a Broadway Musical: The Conception and Debut of On the Town

Section II: Staging Racial Politics
4. A Japanese American Star on Broadway: Sono Osato and "Exotic Ivy Smith"
5. Desegregating Broadway: On the Town and Race
6. Biographies on Stage: On the Town's Black Conductor, Dancers, and Singers

Section III: Musical Style
7. Crossover Composition: The Musical Styles of On the Town
8. On the Town After Dark: The Nightclub Scene

Section IV: Epilogue

Appendices
A. Discography and Videography of Fancy Free, On the Town, and The Revuers
B. Scenario for Fancy Free
C. Cast List for On the Town on Opening Night

Index

Bernstein Meets Broadway

Collaborative Art in a Time of War

Carol J. Oja

Broadway Legacies

Author Information

Carol J. Oja is William Powell Mason Professor of Music and American Studies at Harvard University. She is author of Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (2000), winner of the Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music.

Bernstein Meets Broadway

Collaborative Art in a Time of War

Carol J. Oja

Broadway Legacies

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the 2015 Music in American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society "Oja (Harvard) gives a full history of the musical, from its source in the Jerome Robbins/Bernstein ballet Fancy Free and the cabaret skits of the Revuers, a group led by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Oja covers the Broadway and road engagements, revivals, and the film version. Recommended." --Choice

"Carol Oja has given us a vivid portrait of four superbly talented young artists trying not only to create an exciting work for the musical theater but, while they were at it, using their art to 'help make a better world'. A valuable and illuminating book." --Sheldon Harnick

"This adventurously conceived, meticulously researched, elegantly argued book offers a completely new perspective on Bernstein's remarkable artistic partnerships as meetings of extraordinary creativity, progressive politics, and spirited determination. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, this is American musical theatre history at its very best." --Stacy Wolf, Professor of Theater, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University and author of Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (2011)

"Carol J. Oja is an established and important scholar, and Bernstein Meets Broadway reflects her characteristic thoroughness, insight, and clear writing. On the Town is a groundbreaking show obviously worthy of this excellent book-length study." --Larry Starr, Ruth Sutton Waters Endowed Professor, University of Washington

"Bernstein Meets Broadway is an outstanding exemplar of integrated humanistic arts scholarship. Grounded in exhaustive archival research, it offers bracing new insights on an important stage work and its creators. It's also liberal in the best traditional sense of the term: tolerant and generous and questioning, skeptical of conventional wisdom and ideological platitudes." --Jeffrey Magee, author of Irving Berlin's Musical Theater

"This is a book full of the rare joy of artistic creation and collaboration. In recounting the making of On the Town Carol Oja weaves wartime history, social mores, gender, racial politics, dance, comedy and music into a fascinating and immensely entertaining narrative that percolates with the brashness and brilliance of the show's creators, Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden and Adoph Green. 'We were all 25 years old,' Bernstein later said about it, 'we were nothing but energy then.'" -- John Adams, composer

"Throughout this book Oja demonstrates clarity of thought, precision of enquiry and meticulous research."--Studies in Theatre and Performance

"An expert synthesis of traditionally disparate musicological frameworks. Her text is at once a superlative narrative-one that weaves together the untold stories and broad cultural contexts of a seminal work of American musical theatre, On the Town, and its antecedent, the ballet, Fancy Free-and a thoroughgoing analytical study in American history, informed by extensive ethnography, archival research, and the author's keen music-theoretical sensibility."--American Music Review

Bernstein Meets Broadway

Collaborative Art in a Time of War

Carol J. Oja

Broadway Legacies

From Our Blog

On the Town and the long march for civil rights in performance

As we celebrate the golden anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a significant aspect of the struggle for racial equality often gets ignored: racial activism in performance. Actors, singers, and dancers mobilized over the decades, pushing back against racial restrictions that shifted over time, and On the Town of 1944 marked an auspicious but little-recognized moment in that history.

Posted on December 3, 2018

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Misty Copeland dances On the Town

Misty Copeland captured the world's attention this summer when she became the first black female principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. In late August, Copeland will once again be in the headlines when she stars in Leonard Bernstein's On the Town for a limited engagement at New York's Lyric Theatre, where she will bring the show's nearly year-long run to a close.

Posted on August 20, 2015

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Remembering the original On the Town during World War II

A stunning new production of On the Town, directed by John Rando, opened in October at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway. It transports a viewer back to the golden age of American musical theater, when highly skilled orchestras delivered a robust sound while extended segments of dance were central to telling the story.

Posted on December 2, 2014

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On the Town, flashpoint for racial distress

When the first production of On the Town in 1944 featured the Japanese American ballerina Sono Osato as its star, as part of a cast that also included whites and blacks, it aimed for a realistic depiction of the diversity among US citizens during World War II.

Posted on September 23, 2014

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On the Town and the long march for civil rights in performance

As we celebrate the golden anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a significant aspect of the struggle for racial equality often gets ignored: racial activism in performance. Actors, singers, and dancers mobilized over the decades, pushing back against racial restrictions that shifted over time, and On the Town of 1944 marked an auspicious but little-recognized moment in that history.

Posted on September 11, 2014

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The teenage exploits of a future celebrity

Rising to prominence at lightning speed during World War II, Leonard Bernstein quickly became one of the most famous musicians of all time, gaining notice as a conductor and composer of both classical works and musical theater. One day he was a recent Harvard graduate, struggling to earn a living in the music world.

Posted on August 12, 2014

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Echoes of Billie Holiday in Fancy Free

When Leonard Bernstein first arrived in New York, he was unknown, much like the artists he worked with at the time, who would also gain international recognition. Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War looks at the early days of Bernstein's career during World War II, and is centered around the debut in 1944 of the Broadway musical On the Town and the ballet Fancy Free.

Posted on July 24, 2014

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