A place for us
Subtitle: West Side story and New York
By: Julia L. Foulkes
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 246
ISBN-13: 9780226301808
Copyright date: 2016
Subjects: In motion pictures; Urban renewal; Musicals; Production and direction; Popular culture; History and criticism; West Side story (Motion picture); History
Other titles: West Side story and New York
Description: Foulkes interweaves the story of the creation of the musical and film with the remaking of the Upper West Side and the larger tale of New York's postwar aspirations. Making unprecedented use of Jerome Robbins's revelatory papers, she shows the crucial role played by the political commitments of Robbins and his fellow gay, Jewish collaborators, Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents: their determination to evoke life in New York as it was actually lived helped give West Side story its unshakable sense of place even as it put forward a vision of a new, vigorous, determinedly multicultural American city.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-238) and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue. "There's a place for us"; title: "Have you heard the voice of my city," 1949-55; title: "Make alive the daily life," 1955-57; title: "Comes from life itself," 1957; title: "Get cool, boy," 1958-59; title: "Camera and choreography," 1960-61; title: "New York rhapsody," 1962-70; title: "Somewhere."