An old-fashioned Broadway biography of Richard Rodgers's first lyricist. Nolan (The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1978) presents a ``this-is-your-life'' account of Lorenz Hart's rise and fall. Born in 1895 to Jewish immigrant parents in New York City's Harlem, Hart was raised in a boisterous household by a loving mother and a ne'er-do-well father who specialized in elaborate business scams. After directing amateur theatricals at summer camp, Hart began working on student revues at Columbia, where he met a young piano player named Richard Rodgers. Through classmate Herb Fields, then an aspiring writer, they were introduced to Fields's father, Lew, a theatrical impresario, who gave them their first break. After several abortive stabs at writing for Broadway, the partners were so unsure of their eventual success that Rodgers was tempted by an offer to sell babies' underwear just before their first big hit, a score for the Theater Guild's Garrick Gaieties of 1935. Rodgers and Hart went on to create many well-known musicals, including Babes in Arms, I Married an Angel, The Boys from Syracuse, and the great Pal Joey. Along the way, Hart pushed for lyrics—witty, cosmopolitan, full of current slang and topical allusions—whose quality was a notch above the ``moon-June-spoon'' fare of previous popular songs; he also insisted that songs be an integral part of the play, not just interpolations to suit a particular singing star. The writer was dogged by low self-esteem and a homosexual bent that Nolan seems most uncomfortable discussing; Hart eventually became so addicted to late-night carousing that he aggravated his more prudish partner. Rodgers finally paired up with Oscar Hammerstein shortly before Hart's death in 1943 to compose the immortal Oklahoma!, which launched the modern musical era. A sympathetic account for fans of the musical theater of the '30s and '40s. (15 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-506837-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
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