Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War
Carol Oja
Abstract
This book constructs a wide-ranging cultural history to explore the earliest stage works of Leonard Bernstein, written during World War II: the Broadway musical On the Town, the ballet Fancy Free, and a nightclub comedy act called The Revuers. Bernstein and his collaborators—including the choreographer Jerome Robbins and the writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green—crossed artistic, political, ethnic, and racial boundaries with abandon. With the zeal of youth, these emerging artists infused their work with progressive political ideals. On the Town focused on sailors enjoying a day of shor ... More
This book constructs a wide-ranging cultural history to explore the earliest stage works of Leonard Bernstein, written during World War II: the Broadway musical On the Town, the ballet Fancy Free, and a nightclub comedy act called The Revuers. Bernstein and his collaborators—including the choreographer Jerome Robbins and the writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green—crossed artistic, political, ethnic, and racial boundaries with abandon. With the zeal of youth, these emerging artists infused their work with progressive political ideals. On the Town focused on sailors enjoying a day of shore leave, and its first production featured a mixed-race cast, contributing an important chapter to the racial desegregation of American performance. It projected an equitable inter-racial urban vision in an era when racial segregation was being enforced contentiously in the U.S. military. The show starred the dancer Sono Osato, even as her father was interned together with so many Japanese Americans. Fancy Free amiably encoded its own dissenting narratives. Based on a controversial painting by Paul Cadmus, it grew out of a complex web of gay relationships. The book explores cross fertilizations across art forms and high-low divides, drawing on intensive archival research, FBI files, interviews with surviving cast members, and previously untapped criticism in African American newspapers.
Keywords:
Broadway musicals,
World War II,
American ballet,
racial desegregation,
Leonard Bernstein,
Jerome Robbins,
Betty Comden,
Adolph Green,
Sono Osato,
The Revuers,
On the Town,
Fancy Free
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199862092 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199862092.001.0001 |
