Mary Martin, Broadway Legend
Forever Peter Pan, thanks to her 1955, 1956, and 1960 live-TV performances, Martin was also the first Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, the first Maria in The Sound of Music. David charts her progress from Weatherford, Texas, where her father was a prominent lawyer, to Broadway, where she first made her name singing Cole Porter’s “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” to Hollywood and beyond. Frankly idolatrous of Martin, David describes interviewing her as “living out a fantasy” but doesn’t let idolatry interfere with scholarship. He reveals Martin as talented but flawed, sometimes putting career before family—she left son Larry Hagman to be raised by her mother—and making bad, or at least odd, career decisions. Offered the role of Laurey in what became Oklahoma!, she chose instead a show that closed out of town. Expectably for a professor emeritus, David has a healthy respect for facts. More surprising, he sensitively and intelligently dissects the many small events, chance meetings, false starts, and lucky and unlucky breaks that turned a gifted but unfocused teenage amateur into a star. --Jack Helbig