Carefully Taught: American History through Broadway Musicals

by Cary Ginell

Overview

Carefully Taught looks at American history as depicted in forty Broadway musicals. Presented chronologically according to the musical timeframe, award-winning theater critic and author Cary Ginell dissects the stories, characters, and songs to not only examine how Broadway viewed historical events, epochs, and personalities, but also to capture how dramatic license separated fact from fantasy. The chosen musicals fall into a variety of categories: biographies of famous Americans, (Andrew Jackson and Fiorello LaGuardia), stories with national conflicts (Hamilton, South Pacific), events that captured the attention of the American public (Floyd Collins, Newsies), and sociological studies or satires of specific eras (The Music Man, Hair).

Many books have been written about Broadway, but Carefully Taught, from the song "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught"in South Pacific, uniquely approaches American history from two vantage points: the point of view of the playwright and composer accompanied with the context of how these events were seen when they were produced versus how they are seen today. Ginell’s research of contemporary theater reviews and in-depth studies of productions’ back stories play off his knowledge gained from his quarter century as a theater critic in Southern California.The combination is a complete overview of American history on the stage from the coveted balcony seat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493065400
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/15/2022
Pages:	284
Sales rank:	646,140
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Cary Ginell is a Grammy-nominated author of 12 books on American music. A winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, Cary recently completed a term as President of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. Since 2007, he has served as theatre critic for the Acorn Newspapers in Ventura County, California while editing Applause Books’ venerable Broadway Musicals: Show By Show. Ginell and his wife Gail live in Thousand Oaks, California.

Table of Contents

Foreword Doug Reside v

Introduction ix

1776: The Second Continental Congress 1

Dearest Enemy: The American Revolution 9

Ben Franklin in Paris: Revolutionary War Diplomacy 15

Hamilton: The Life of Alexander Hamilton 21

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson: The Life of Andrew Jackson 29

Big River: Mark Twain's America 37

Bloomer Girl: The Women's Reform Movement and the Underground Railroad at the Dawn of the Civil War 45

Shenandoah: The Civil War 53

The Civil War: The Civil War 57

Miss Liberty: The Construction of the Statue of Liberty 61

Annie Get Your Gun: The Life of Annie Oakley 69

Show Boat: The Era of Floating Theaters in the American Frontier 77

Newsies: The Newsboys' Strike of 1899 87

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: The White House and Its Occupants during the Nineteenth Century 93

Teddy & Alice: President Theodore Roosevelt and His Daughter Alice 101

Ragtime: Racism and Immigration at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 107

Oklahoma!: Territorial Oklahoma before Statehood 115

The Music Man: Life in Small-Town America in 1912 123

Parade: The Trial of Suspected Child Murderer Leo Frank 129

Fiorello!: The Rise to Fame of Fiorello La Guardia 135

Gypsy: Gypsy Rose Lee and the Demise of Vaudeville 141

Chicago: Chicago Murderesses Beulah May Annan and Belva Gaertner 147

Floyd Collins: Floyd Collins in Kentucky's Sand Cave 153

The Scottsboro Boys: The 1931 Trial of Nine Black Teenagers Accused of Rape 159

Baby Case: The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping 163

Of Thee I Sing / Let 'Em Eat Cake: Politics in the 1930s 169

The Will Rogers Follies: The Life of Will Rogers, Framed by American Vaudeville 177

Pins and Needles: The Labor Movement of the 1930s 183

South Pacific: Racial Prejudice during World War II 189

Allegiance: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II 195

Bandstand: GIs Returning Home after World War II 199

Finian's Rainbow: Racism in Postwar America 203

Million Dollar Quartet: Four Rock 'n' Roll Legends Meet in Memphis 209

Li'l Abner: Cold War Politics During the 1950s 215

Bye Bye Birdie: Elvis Presley Is Drafted 221

Fly Blackbird: The Civil Rights Movement 227

Freedom Riders: The Civil Rights Musical: The Civil Rights Movement 231

Hair: San Francisco's "Human Be-In" and the Hippie Lifestyle in New York's East Village 237

Assassins: Presidential Assassins, Successful and Foiled, throughout History 243

Selected Bibliography 251

Index 253