Broadway in the Box Televisions Lasting Love Affair with the Musical
raking in the highest rating for a new show in the 2009-2010 season, Glee would continue to cultivate rabid fans, tie-in soundtracks and merchandising, and a spinoff reality competition show until its conclusion in 2015. Alongside Glee, NBC and Fox would crank up musical visibility with the
nighttime drama Smash and a string of live musical productions. Then came ABC's comedic fantasy musical series Galavant and the CW's surprise Golden Globe darling Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Television and the musical appeared to be a perfect match. But, as author Kelly Kessler illustrates, television had at that point been carrying on a sixty-year, symbiotic love affair with the musical. From Rodgers and Hammerstein's appearance on the first Toast of the Town telecast and Mary Martin's iconic Peter Pan airings to Barbra Streisand's 1960s CBS
specials, The Carol Burnett Show, Cop Rock, Great Performances, and a string of one-off musical episodes of sitcoms, nighttime soaps, fantasy shows, and soap operas, television has always embraced the musical. Kessler shows how the form is written across the history of American television and how
its various incarnations tell the stories of shifting American culture and changing television, film, and theatrical landscapes. She recounts and explores this rich, decades-long history by traversing musicals, stars, and sounds from film, Broadway, and Las Vegas to the small screen.
Publisher Name | Oxford University Press USA |
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Author Name | Hagendorf, Col |
Format | Audio |
Bisac Subject Major | MUS |
Language | NG |
Isbn 10 | 0190674016 |
Isbn 13 | 9780190674014 |
Target Age Group | min:NA, max:NA |
Dimensions | 00.93" H x 00.06" L x 30.00" W |
Page Count | 354 |
Kelly Kessler is Associate Professor of Communications at DePaul University and author of Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical: Music, Masculinity and Mayhem (Palgrave, 2010)