Before the Parade Passes By: Gower Champion and the Glorious American Musical (Hardcover)

On August 25, 1980, the curtain fell on the first night of the original production of 42nd St. David Merrick, the shows megalomaniacal producer, stepped to the footlights and told the audience that the shows director, Gower Champion, had died that afternoon. Some believe he took the classic Broadway musical with him. Starting his career as one-half of a song and dance team with his wife, Gower and Marge Champion first wowed audiences in nightclubs around the world and then moved to Hollywood where they starred in many films, most notably the 1951 MGM remake of Showboat. But the stage always called to Gower and in 1960, he was hired to direct Bye, Bye Birdie. It was a smash and Champions career was off and running. John Gilvey had extensive access to all of his archives as well as to everyone associated with Champion, including Marge Champion, Carol Channing, Jerry Hermann, Jerry Orbach, Chita Rivera and others. This is one of the great theater biographies that every Broadway devotee will want.

Broadway, the Golden Years: Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-Directors, 1940 to the Presen

Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz (Hardcove

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the longest-running composer-lyricist team in Broadway history, having first joined forces in 1962. The creators of such groundbreaking musicals as Chicago, Cabaret, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, Kander and Ebb have helped to push American musical theater in a more daring direction, both musically and dramatically. Their impact on individual performers has been great as well, starting with the handpicked star of their first musical: an untested nineteen-year-old named Liza Minnelli (who writes of this experience in her introduction).

Ethel Merman: The Biggest Star on Broadway (Hardcover)

For nearly three decades Ethel Merman virtually guranteed Broadway success. This in-depth portrait details her career, marriages, affairs, and her children. It includes a complete glossary of all of Merman's appearances.

Harold Prince - A Director's Journey

Harold Prince - A Director's Journey Limelight. Size 6x9 inches. 520 pages. Published by Limelight Editions. (332485)

Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre

Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre Expanded Edition, with an Updated Foreword by Harold Prince. Applause Books. Book only. Size 6x9 inches. 288 pages. Published by Applause Books. (314675)

Irving Berlin's Show Business: Broadway - Hollywood - America (Hardcover)

Few artists have left as profound a mark on 20th-century culture as did Irving Berlin. Starting in New York's Tin Pan Alley in 1907 and continuing to Broadway and Hollywood, Berlin enraptured Americans with such songs as "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Blue Skies," and "White Christmas." In the autumn of 2001 his classic "God Bless America" even returned to the Top Ten popular songs, decades after it was written.

Lydia Thompson: A Biography (Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theater) (Hardcover)

This inaugural volume in the Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theatre series sets Lydia Thompson, queen of burlesque, under the spotlight. The series will attempt to resurrect theatre performers and writers who were famous in their era, yet who have since inexplicably faded from popular memory. Outlandish tales of Lydia's touring burlesque company, the "British Blondes," and such lurid episodes as her horsewhipping of a Chicago editor, a romance with a Russian Grand Duke and a lesbian attacker have left her with a reputation as a bawdy burlesquer, but Kurt Gänzl argues she was nothing of the kind. Through this biography, the reader will learn the whole and hitherto untold story of this fascinating, multi-dimensional musical-theatre star.

Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood (Paperback) by Arthur Laurents

Best known as the author of scripts for such hit musicals as West Side Story and Gypsy, Arthur Laurents began his career writing strong, socially conscious plays like Home of the Brave and Time of the Cuckoo; he also has impressive credits as a screenwriter (The Way We Were) and stage director (La Cage aux Folles). Such a varied professional life makes for absorbing reading in this lively autobiography stuffed with famous names, including George Cukor, Katharine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, and Stephen Sondheim, all of whom emerge vividly in thumbnail portraits ranging from affectionately frank (Stella Adler) to frankly unflattering (Jerome Robbins). Laurents, born in 1917, was a Marxist during his college years at Cornell, and he retains strong political opinions to this day: he has no use for bigots of any kind, and his memoir displays no inclination to forgive people like Elia Kazan, who named names during the 1950s. Yet the author also has a marvelous sense of humor (after critic Frank Rich inadvertently made public reference to Laurents's homosexuality, Laurents introduced him at a charity lunch as "the man who outed me as a liberal") and a zest for life that shines particularly in a loving portrait of his longtime companion, Tom Hatcher.

Somewhere for Me - A Biography of Richard Rodgers

Somewhere for Me - A Biography of Richard Rodgers Applause Books. Book only. Size 6.25x9.3 inches. 462 pages. Published by Applause Books. (314609)

Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (Paperback)

As Rent hits the big screen, Rapp, who appeared in the film and the original cast of the Broadway hit, has written a sensitive, heartfelt memoir chronicling his life on and off stage. The actor who played video artist Mark Cohen pulls back the curtains to show the musical's genesis, which involved endless rehearsals and false starts. He lauds the genius of Jonathan Larson, its creator, and the supportive New York Theatre Workshop, which lent its facilities to the exuberant troupe and director. Rapp writes most movingly of his friends who lost their battle with AIDS [...] as well as the long, painful demise of his mother from cancer. While the book sometimes plunges too deeply into its twin themes of love and loss, Rapp recognizes the healing power of drama and theater, writing that acting is "an escape of sorts." Absorbing, warm and hopeful, the book celebrates a man, his work and a generation struggling with AIDS but determined to survive. Photos. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.