It Happened on Broadway

"Here, in a book filled with the light and magic of Broadway, are the living memories of the people who created it woven together by noted oral historians Myrna and Harvey Frommer. It Happened on Broadway contains not only the stories of actors, directors, producers, composers, lyricists, and playwrights but also critics, publicists, set designers, and stage managers. Together they recreate the lowering musical and dramatic successes of the years before and after World War II, the triumph of the book musical, the emergence of the dance musical, and the era of spectacle musical. There are tales such as the one John Raitt recalls about the time he was handed a fifteen-foot piece of sheet music that turned out to be the soliloquy for Carousel and Carol Chonning's account of her unplanned debut on a grammar school stage. There are evocations of the great comedians, singers, dancers, and dramatic actors who had that indefinable magic that mode them stand out above the rest. There are stories from Gwen Verdon, Marge Champion, and Donno McKechnie remembering their late husbands, the choreographers Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, and Michael Bennett." "It Happened on Broadway tells the story of more than half a century of American theater at its very best."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.