Theater Biographies

Before "Fred and Ginger" there was "Fred and Adele", a show-business partnership and cultural sensation like no other. In our celebrity-saturated era, it's hard to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon these two siblings from Omaha were. At the height of their success in the mid-1920s, the Astaires seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin's music in motion, a fascinating pair who wove spellbinding rhythms in song and dance. In this book, the first comprehensive study of their theatrical career together, Kathleen Riley traces the Astaires' rise to fame from humble midwestern origins.

Christopher Lee: A One-Person Play by Michael B. Druxman (Lee’s one-time publicist), joins the actor in 1976, as he is about to depart his home in England for the United States. It is his hope that, in America, he will be able to abandon the horror genre, and find a greater variety of roles.

George Arliss (1868-1946) was an actor, author, playwright, and filmmaker who decided to spend his retirement years during World War II in London, literally Ground-Zero for German bombers. He took care of his blind and seriously ill wife amidst nightly aerial assaults from Nazi planes, V-1 and V-2 rockets flying over their home. Throughout the bombardments, Arliss maintained a lively correspondence with his American friends who were safely located in the states. Now for the first time, the George Arliss wartime letters have been published and vividly echo the 21st century trauma endured by ...

Blending a behind-the-scenes history of New York City’s Public Theater with an affecting remembrance of her husband, Public Theater founder Joe Papp, Public/Private is Gail Merrifield Papp’s enthralling and heartfelt memoir of a legendary theatrical institution.

In Yankee Doodle Dandy, the first book on Cohan in fifty years, author Elizabeth T. Craft situates Cohan as a central figure of his day. Examining his multifaceted contributions and the various sociocultural identities he came to embody, Craft shows how Cohan and his works indelibly shaped the American cultural landscape. Informative and engaging, this book offers rich listening for Broadway musical aficionados as well as scholars of musical theater and American cultural history.

Noël Coward on theatre was as dazzling and entertaining as his masterful plays and lyrics. Here his ideas and opinions on the subject are brilliantly brought together in an extraordinary collection of commentary, lyrics, essays, and asides on everything having to do with the theatre and Coward's dazzling life in it.

As a young schoolboy, David Essex dreamed of becoming a professional footballer and was signed up by his beloved West Ham United. But as a teenager, he developed a passion for music, which set him on a very different path, and ultimately led to superstardom. It wasn't, however, an easy start. Scraping a living on the edges of show business was a hard slog, and he endured many disappointments. Then, aged 23, he went along to an audition for a new musical called Godspell and won the role (Jesus) that shot him to fame.

Ed Lowry joined the vaudeville circuit in 1910 at the age of 14. He never achieved stardom equal to the likes of Fred Allen, Jack Benny, George Burns, Buster Keaton, or Eddie Cantor, and he never considered himself an "artiste". Instead, he saw himself as a hoofer and comic simply trying to make a living on the vaude scene. My Life in Vaudeville recounts Lowry's long career in entertainment from the viewpoint of a foot soldier with a big dream.

In Nothing Like a Dame, theater journalist Eddie Shapiro opens a jewelry box full of glittering surprises, through in-depth conversations with twenty leading women of Broadway. He carefully selected Tony Award-winning stars who have spent the majority of their careers in theater, leaving aside those who have moved on or occasionally drop back in. The women he interviewed spent endless hours with him, discussing their careers, offering insights into the iconic shows, changes on Broadway over the last century, and the art (and thrill) of taking the stage night after night.

Guys & Dolls...The Boyfriend...How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying...Can-Can... These are just a few of the many Broadway shows produced by the legendary Cy Feuer, who, in partnership with the late Ernest H. Martin, brought to life many of America's most enduring musicals. Cy Feuer was at the center of these creations, as well as the films based on two of Broadway's most exceptional musicals, Cabaret and A Chorus Line. He was the man in charge, the one responsible for putting everything together, and - almost more important - for holding it together.

In the fall of 1943, armed with only his notebooks and pencils, Time and Life correspondent Robert L. Sherrod leapt from the safety of a landing craft and waded through neck-deep water and a hail of bullets to reach the shores of the Tarawa atoll with the US Marine Corps. Living shoulder to shoulder with the marines, Sherrod chronicled combat and the marines' day-to-day struggles as they leapfrogged across the Central Pacific, battling the Japanese on Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

The riveting story of the rivalry between the two most renowned actresses of the 19th century: legendary Sarah Bernhardt, whose eccentricity on and off the stage made her the original diva, and mystical Eleonora Duse, who broke all the rules to popularize the natural style of acting we celebrate today.

No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain's best-loved actors. This new biography shines the stage lights on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades. From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie's path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights and directors of the era.

Albert Poland, legendary Broadway and Off-Broadway producer and general manager, presents Stages: A Theater Memoir.

Norman Mathews was born in the wrong town, the wrong era, and with the wrong name. What’s a boy to do? He conjured up a more enticing, imaginary world to better navigate the perils of childhood. Dreams of a life in the theater and of passionate romance were stymied by lack of self-assurance.

Amanda Vaill, Jerome Robbins biographer and authority, drawing on the vast and closely held Robbins archives, has put together a selection of his writings, giving us a sense of his extraordinary range as a thinker and artist, as well as a surprising and revealing glimpse into the mind and heart of this towering cultural giant.

In Wendy and the Lost Boys best-selling author Julie Salamon explores the life of playwright Wendy Wasserstein's most expertly crafted character: herself. The first woman playwright to win a Tony Award, Wendy Wasserstein was a Broadway titan. But with her high- pitched giggle and unkempt curls, she projected an image of warmth and familiarity. Everyone knew Wendy Wasserstein. Or thought they did.

Ida Lupino was a trail-blazer. Not only was she one of the most vibrant Hollywood actresses of the 1940s and 1950s, but she was also only the second woman to become a member of the Director's Guild. Michael B. Druxman's one-woman play, Ida: The Last Lupino, joins Ida in 1983 when she is living alone in her decaying Brentwood home as a virtual hermit, lamenting the break-up of her marriage with Howard Duff. Ida: The Last Lupino is a vivid, often witty, portrait of a woman who conquered a man's world.

Sir Laurence Olivier, Lord Mountbatten, and Joyce Carey are just some of the voices heard paying tribute to the elegant star in this audio biography, which is linked by the broadcaster and critic Sheridan Morley.

Extracts from interviews with Coward himself, several of his songs and moments from his plays come together to form a fascinating picture of one of the 20th century's theatre greats.

It was in Brooklyn, New York, in 1883 that William F. Cody - known across the land as Buffalo Bill - conceived of his Wild West show, an "equestrian extravaganza" featuring cowboys and Indians. The idea took off. For four months in 1885, the Lakota chief Sitting Bull appeared in the show. Blood Brothers tells the story of these two iconic figures through their brief but important collaboration.