Download or read book Hooray for Captain Spaulding written by Richard J. Anobile and published by Avon Books. This book was released on 1975 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Animal Crackers written by George Simon Kaufman and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 1984 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A stage vehicle for the Marx Brothers. The scene is the Long Island estate of Mrs. Rittenhouse, a wealthy patroness of the arts with a marriageable daughter. Her celebrity weekend guest is the renowned Captain Jeffrey Spaulding, the African Explorer. He arrives with his secretary, Horatio Jameson, followed by pair of "musicians": Ravelli and the Professor. What follows is typical Marxian lunacy, involving a stolen painting, a surreal bridge game, a Broadway gossip columnist named Wally Winston, a financial wizard formerly known as Abie the Fish Peddler, and a climatic burlesque of Marie Antoinette and the Three Musketeers."--George S. Kaufman website.
Download or read book The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse written by Quentin Blake and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1996-10-03 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever eaten Poodle Strudel? Slain a Jabberwock? Bathed in Irish Stew? Quentin Blake is one of the best loved of children’s illustrators. In this brilliant book he has selected and illustrated his favourite comic verse, making it pure entertainment for nonsense-lovers of all ages. His unique style of drawing brings a new perspective to every poem. Classic writers such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear are combined with more contemporary talents such as Roger McGough, Margaret Mahy and Russell Hoban. With fifteen wonderfully absurd sections, including Distracting Creatures, Sticky Ends, I Wish I Were a Jelly Fish, A Recipe for Indigestion and Chortling and Galumphing, here is a delightful collection of the topsy-turvy, the fantastical, the anarchic, the illogical and the utterly wonderful.
Download or read book The Soundtracks of Woody Allen written by Adam Harvey and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive guide covers all of the music used in Woody Allen's films from Take the Money and Run (1969) to Match Point (2005). Each film receives scene-by-scene analysis with a focus on how Allen utilized music.
Download or read book A Century of the Marx Brothers written by Joseph Mills and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1905 Julius Marx began his vaudeville career with the singing group The Leroy Trio and was abandoned in the middle of the tour. It was an inauspicious start for the person who would become "Groucho." A hundred years later, the Marx Brothers have permeated our culture from the plastic noses and glasses worn at parties to a Smithsonian exhibition which explains DNA recombination using A Night at the Opera. Although they completed relatively few films together, the brothers have become icons, recognizable even to people who have never seen their movies. Most scholarly work on the Marx Brothers has focused on biographical aspects of their careers and lives; A Century of the Marx Brothers suggests a myriad of other useful approaches to their film and stage productions. The collection's eleven essays examine the Marx Brothers' work from a number of critical perspectives ranging from reader-response theory to film semiotics. The contributors include international scholars in a variety of fields, such as literature, cultural studies, performance studies, and film history.
Download or read book The First Hollywood Musicals written by Edwin M. Bradley and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2004-08-25 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Hollywood entered the sound era, it was rightly determined that the same public fascinated by the novelty of the talkie would be dazzled by the spectacle of a song and dance film. In 1929 and 1930, film musicals became the industry's most lucrative genre--until the greedy studios almost killed the genre by glutting the market with too many films that looked and sounded like clones of each other. From the classy movies such as Sunnyside Up and Hallelujah! to failures such as The Lottery Bride and Howdy Broadway, this filmography details 171 early Hollywood musicals. Arranged by subgenre (backstagers, operettas, college films, and stage-derived musical comedies), the entries include studio, release date, cast and credits, running time, a complete song list, any recordings spawned by the film, Academy Award nominations and winners, and availability on video or laserdisc. These data are followed by a plot synopsis, including analysis of the film's place in the genre's history. Includes over 90 photographs.
Download or read book Tynan Letters written by Kathleen Tynan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Letters of Kenneth Tynan- drama critic, talent snob, intellectual dandy, inveterate campaigner - provide a record of a soul: written between the ages of 11 and 53, they not only chart the extraordinary parabola of his career but show the constancy of his quest for grace, style and effortless wit.
Download or read book Discovering Musicals written by Marc Raymond Strauss and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-06-20 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the few studies that cover both Broadway and Hollywood musicals, this book explores a majority of the most famous musicals over the past two centuries plus a select number of overlooked gems. Doubling as an introductory college and university text for musical, dance and theater majors and a guide for both musical connoisseurs and novices, the book includes YouTube references of nearly 1000 examples of dances and songs from musicals.
Download or read book Hermes Pan written by John Franceschina and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-08 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armed with an eighth-grade education, an inexhaustible imagination, and an innate talent for dancing, Hermes Pan (1909-1990) was a boy from Tennessee who became the most prolific, popular, and memorable choreographer of the glory days of the Hollywood musical. While he may be most well-known for the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals which he choreographed at RKO film studios, he also created dances at Twentieth Century-Fox, M-G-M, Paramount, and later for television, winning both the Oscar and the Emmy for best choreography. In Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire, Pan emerges as a man in full, an artist inseparable from his works. He was a choreographer deeply interested in his dancers' personalities, and his dances became his way of embracing and understanding the outside world. Though his time in a Trappist monastery proved to him that he was more suited to choreography than to life as a monk, Pan remained a deeply devout Roman Catholic throughout his creative life, a person firmly convinced of the powers of prayer. While he was rarely to be seen without several beautiful women at his side, it was no secret that Pan was homosexual and even had a life partner. As Pan worked at the nexus of the cinema industry's creative circles during the golden age of the film musical, this book traces not only Pan's personal life but also the history of the Hollywood musical itself. It is a study of Pan, who emerges here as a benevolent perfectionist, and equally of the stars, composers, and directors with whom he worked, from Astaire and Rogers to Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Bob Fosse, George Gershwin, Samuel Goldwyn, and countless other luminaries of American popular entertainment. Author John Franceschina bases his telling of Pan's life on extensive first-hand research into Pan's unpublished correspondence and his own interviews. Pan enjoyed one of the most illustrious careers of any Hollywood dance director, and because his work also spanned across Broadway and television, this book will appeal to readers interested in musical theater history, dance history, and film.
Download or read book America s Songs II written by Michael Lasser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-03 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s Songs II: Songs from the 1890's to the Post-War Years continues to tell the stories behind popular songs in our country’s history, serving as a sequel to the bestselling America’s Songs: Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. Beginning in 1890 and ending in post-war America, America's Songs II is a testament to the richness of popular music in the first half of the 20th century. This volume builds on the unique features of the first volume, delving deeper into the nature of the collaboration between well-known songwriters of the time but also shedding light on some of the early performers to turn songs into hits. The book’s structure – a collection of short easy-to-read essays – allows the author to provide historical context to certain songs, but also to demonstrate how individual songs facilitated the popularity of specific genres, including ragtime, jazz, and blues, which subsequently reshaped the landscape of American popular music. America’s Songs II: Songs from the 1890's to the Post-War Years will appeal to American popular music enthusiasts but will also serve as an ideal reference guide for students or as a supplement in American music courses.
Download or read book The Songs of Hollywood written by Philip Furia and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-07 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From "Over the Rainbow" to "Moon River" and from Al Jolson to Barbra Streisand, The Songs of Hollywood traces the fascinating history of song in film, both in musicals and in dramatic movies such as High Noon. Extremely well-illustrated with 200 film stills, this delightful book sheds much light on some of Hollywood's best known and loved repertoire, explaining how the film industry made certain songs memorable, and highlighting important moments of film history along the way. The book focuses on how the songs were presented in the movies, from early talkies where actors portrayed singers "performing" the songs, to the Golden Age in which characters burst into expressive, integral song--not as a "performance" but as a spontaneous outpouring of feeling. The book looks at song presentation in 1930s classics with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and in 1940s gems with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. The authors also look at the decline of the genre since 1960, when most original musicals were replaced by film versions of Broadway hits such as My Fair Lady.
Download or read book Free and Easy written by Sean Griffin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of the American Musical narrates the evolution of the film musical genre, discussing its influences and how it has come to be defined; the first text on this subject for over two decades, it employs the very latest concepts and research. The most up-to-date text on the subject, with uniquely comprehensive coverage and employing the very latest concepts and research Surveys centuries of music history from the music and dance of Native Americans to contemporary music performance in streaming media Examines the different ways the film musical genre has been defined, what gets counted as a musical, why, and who gets to make that decision The text is written in an accessible manner for general cinema and musical theatre buffs, whilst retaining theoretical rigour in research Describes the contributions made to the genre by marginalized or subordinated identity groups who have helped invent and shape the musical
Download or read book They re Playing Our Song written by Max Wilk and published by Easton Studio Press, LLC. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1973, when it won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award , reprinted and revised several times since, They're Playing Our Song is a classic oral history of American popular music. Now further updated with new material and new photographs, this book is indispensable for anyone interested in the Great American Songbook of the 20th Century, original, classic and timeless songs and lyrics as popular today as ever.
Download or read book Best Songs of the Movies written by John Funnell and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-12-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Thanks for the Memory." "Swinging on a Star." "The Way You Look Tonight." Three great and popular standards of the American songbook--and all three won Oscars for best song. But who wrote these songs? What movies were they written for? Which stars introduced them? In the 25 years covered by this book, 160 songs were nominated for Academy Awards. Some are well known, but many are nearly forgotten. They deserve more lasting recognition. Best Songs of the Movies tells the stories behind all these songs, year by year. After announcing the nominated songs, the text describes the way each song was presented and performed, critiques the lyrics and melody, and provides appropriate historical and biographical insights. One appendix presents brief biographies of all the lyricists and composers responsible for these songs; another lists the Oscar-nominated and winning songs from 1959 through 2003. A bibliography and index complete the volume.
Download or read book Lorenz Hart written by Frederick Nolan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-11-02 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lorenz Hart singlehandedly changed the craft of lyric writing. When Larry Hart first met Dick Rodgers in 1919, the commercial song lyric consisted of tired cliches and cloying Victorian sentimentality. Hart changed all that, always avoiding the obvious, aiming for the unexpected phrase that would twang the nerve or touch the heart. Endowed with both a buoyant wit and a tender, almost raw sincerity, Hart brought a poetic complexity to his art, capturing the everyday way people talk and weaving it into his lyrics. Songs had never been written like that before, and afterwards it seemed impossible that songs would ever be written any other way. Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway presents the public triumphs of a true genius of the American musical theatre, and the personal tragedies of a man his friend the singer Mabel Mercer described as "the saddest man I ever knew." Author Frederick Nolan began researching this definitive biography in 1968, tracking down and interviewing Hart's friends and collaborators one by one, including a remarkable conversation with Richard Rodgers himself. A veritable who's who of Broadway's golden age, including Joshua Logan, Gene Kelly, George Abbott and many more, recall their uncensored and often hilarious, sometimes poignant memories of the cigar-chomping wordsmith who composed some of the best lyrics ever concocted for the Broadway stage, but who remained forever lost and lonely in the crowds of hangers-on he attracted. A portrait of Hart emerges as a Renaissance and endearing bon vivant conflicted by his homosexuality and ultimately torn apart by alcoholism. Nolan skillfully pulls together the chaotic details of Hart's remarkable life, beginning with his bohemian upbringing in turn of the century Harlem. Here are his first ventures into show business, and the 24-year-old Hart's first meeting with the 16-year-old Richard Rodgers. "Neither of us mentioned it," Rodgers later recalled, "but we evidently knew we would work together, and I left Hart's house having acquired in one afternoon a career, a best friend, and a source of permanent irritation." Nolan captures it all: the team's early setbacks, the spectacular hour long standing ovation for their hit song, "Manhattan," the Hollywood years (which inspired Hart to utter the undying line, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the bastards aren't out to get you"), and the unforgettable string of hit shows that included "On Your Toes," "The Boys from Syracuse," and their masterpiece, "Pal Joey." But while success made Rodgers more confident, more musically daring, and more disciplined, for Hart the rounds of parties, wisecracks, and most of all drinking began to take more and more of a toll on his work. When Hart's unreliability forced Rodgers to reluctantly seek out another lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II, and their collaboration resulted in the unprecedented artistic and commercial success of "Oklahoma," Hart never truly recovered. Meticulously researched and rich with anecdotes that capture the excitement, the hilarity, the dizzying heights, and the crushing lows of a life on Broadway, Lorenz Hart is the story of an American original.
Download or read book Four of the Three Musketeers written by ROBERT S. BADER and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four of the Three Musketeers is the definitive history of the Marx Brothers' hardscrabble early years honing their act in front of live audiences on the vaudeville circuit.
Download or read book The Marx Brothers as Social Critics written by Martin A. Gardner and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2009-10-21 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marx Brothers' films are packed with slapstick and obvious jokes, gags, puns, pratfalls, and mimicry. But beneath the laughs is a serious and biting condemnation of American culture. This book examines historical events, political practices, economic conditions, manners and customs, literary subjects, and popular entertainment as satirized in the films and considers the ways in which the films were relevant in their era and remain so today.
