From Publishers Weekly
The 1915 Broadway show Nobody Home , by composer Jerome Kern and librettist Guy Bolton, was the first American musical to treat music, lyrics and book as equal components; Oklahoma! (1943) added dance to the formula. So contends Davis, a playwright, theater historian and Long Island University lecturer, in a triple biography that wondrously re-creates the heady enchantment of Broadway's musical theater in the teens, '20s and '30s. Joining the Kern-Bolton team in late 1915 was P. G. Wodehouse, English novelist and humorist, then a Vanity Fair drama critic. Over the next five years, the trio collaborated on several sophisticated musical comedies, and their paths and fates would cross constantly. Generously quoting stage dialogue and lyrics, and drawing on interviews with the likes of Ira Gershwin, Myrna Loy, Fred Astaire and Sir John Gielgud, Davis brings critical acumen and a raconteur's gifts to a star-studded narrative. It restores Bolton (1882-1979), who worked in New York, Hollywood and London, to his rightful place in theater history. Davis challenges conventional wisdom on many points, such as the popular belief that the Bolton-Wodehouse script for the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes was rewritten by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse because of the plot's similarity to the tragic fire at sea of the liner Morro Castle. The real reason for the rewrite, he shows, was the producer's dislike of the first script's satire on Hollywood, plus the messy complexity of the second Bolton-Wodehouse version. Davis also scrutinizes Wodehouse's notorious shortwave broadcasts made during his year-long imprisonment by the Nazi who captured him in France in 1940. Intended to reassure fans that his captors were treating him well, Wodehouse's jocular broadcasts resulted in his being branded a traitor and his books getting banned in Britain, where he never returned. Davis, defending Wodehouse against his critics, faults the humorist for naive, foolish misjudgment, suggesting he was duped by the Germans. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
