Make Believe: The Broadway Musical in the 1920's
Anyone seeking to understand 20th-century America should consider examining it through the lens of musical theater. Ethan Mordden'sMake Believe: The Broadway Musical in the 1920stells us so much more about what was really on people's minds during that decade than a hundred hours of newsreels ever could.Mordden conjures up a parade of glittering Ziegfeldian revues, galumphing operettas, Marxian star vehicles, writers like Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, and Irving Berlin in their first flowering, musical comedies full of "nutty moxie." But Mordden goes beneath the art deco surface to show how these shows dealt--in their own ways--with issues of race, immigration, the growing power of women and technology, America's changing place in the world vis-à-vis Europe, the tension between classical music and jazz as illustrative of class struggle and generation gaps. Mordden doesn't clobber you with this revelation--he simply finds that it's impossible to treat the material, regardless how fluffy and frothy, without it popping out. The book is capped with Mordden's masterful examination ofShow Boatas a seminal work of musical theater--and as a quintessential American document.