Customer Reviews

Red Hot & Blue: A Smithsonian Salute to the American Musical

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The development of American musicals is a gift we gave to the world, but how do we begin? This book is a cultural history, focusing on the interweaving history of theater and film musicals. Red, Hot, and Blue brings in the various elements that go into creating a musical movie or play. These include performers, songwriters, directors, choreographers all within the framework of the society in which they work. It presents the atmosphere in which an art form was created.

Photographs, posters, sheet music, all help to illustrate this phenomenon called musical theater, which blossomed during the 20th century. It also offers other sources for further information on any of the aspects treated here.

-Elizabeth Ahlfors

Since I am a docent at the Smithsonian American History Museum in DC and this was our book of the month, I decided to purchase it. It is very informative and is well documented. It is a very good resource for those who are interested in musical history of American Theater. The pictures and individual biographies are well done. The only criticism I had was it failed to really analyze some of the shows that failed. It's a lot of book for the money.