Ray Bolger: More than a Scarecrow

by Holly Van Leuven

Overview

Best remembered for his role as the Scarecrow in the 1939 MGM musical The Wizard of Oz, Ray Bolger led a rich and extraordinary career in the decade before and more than four decades after the creation of the film. Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow is the first biography of this classic American entertainer, covering the luminous and forgotten career of the eccentric dancer outside of his burlap mask. The product of a fragmented, working-class Boston Irish family, Bolger learned tap and eccentric dance steps as solace for a difficult life before running away to repertory theater and Vaudeville. From there, he would go on to become a Broadway star, a contract player at Hollywood's major studios, one of the first performers to tour the South Pacific for the USO, a Tony Award winner, an early sitcom star, and the opening headliner of the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. Using unprecedented access to Bolger's papers and many never-before-published photographs, Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow pieces together the lost story of an itinerant hoofer who survived and thrived during the major media changes of the twentieth century and established himself as a staple of American pop culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190639068
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Holly Van Leuven is a writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles, California. She is the first researcher to access the personal papers of Ray Bolger. She is the inaugural winner of the Biographers International Organization's Hazel Rowley Prize for first-time authors.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Timeless Wanderer Chapter 1: "What Will You Be? It's Up to You!" Chapter 2: Entering Show Business Chapter 3: Steppin' in Society Chapter 4: Depression Days Chapter 5: Broadway Goes West Chapter 6: Jupiter Forbid Chapter 7: Soldiers in Greasepaint Chapter 8: Where's Charley? Chapter 9: The New Triple Threat Man Chapter 10: All American Epilogue: No Sad Songs Index

Editorial Reviews

"The book is most engaging in reconstructing the creation of shows, with offstage difficulties set in counterpoint to onstage creativity. Summing up: Recommended" — CHOICE

"Not only does Van Leuven provide an exploration of Bolger's life and career, but she also re-creates the eras in which he worked. Written in an inviting style without being overcomplicated, the author introduces readers to vaudeville in the 1920s, then the growing popularity of film, and later, television." — Judd Hollander, The Epoch Times

"Holly Van Leuven transfigures Ray Bolger from a tall and gangling man of straw, with a long face and sad-drooping eyelids over bulging eyes, tripping over his steps in wobbling legomania, to an elegant and ever-so-smooth soft-shoe dancer whose entwining slides, crossover steps, and graceful tapping turns ennobled him as one of the greatest stylists of all. Why has it taken three decades from Bolger's death to write about this dancing vaudevillian who was dubbed the Jazz Nijinsky? A terrifically entertaining and insightful read." —Constance Valis Hill, author, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History

"Deftly written and astutely researched, Holly Van Leuven's Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow is as enchanting as her subject. Van Leuven skillfully places the beloved hoofer at the center of a history of the American entertainment industry- from Vaudeville to Broadway to Hollywood- that reads as vividly as Ray Bolger danced." —Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast

"Holly Van Leuven has written an outstanding book about Ray Bolger, which tells the compelling story of his career at the same time as it powerfully places him in the greater narrative of American show business in the 20th century. The tales of Bolger's legendary career are filled with fascinating, meticulously researched details, and simultaneously feel personal and emotionally engaging." —Jennifer Ashley Tepper, author of The Untold Stories of Broadway, volumes 1, 2, and 3

"Holly van Leuven has written an exhaustively researched, well-written chronicle of Bolger's life and career. The book gives us a rich sense of Bolger's place in various aspects of show business."- New York Journal of Books

"Very well may become the definitive Bolger biography."- Library Journal, Starred Review

"Van Leuven is to be praised for her inaugural writing efforts as a first-rate biographer of the highest order. Bolger must be smiling down from Oz and grateful his life has been so lovingly cherished, proving that this scarecrow was a real man with more than a brain, but an honest and courageous heart."- Broadway World

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2019

Ray Bolger (1904-87), who played one of the most beloved and iconic characters in American cinematic history, the slack-limbed Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, finally gets his due in this biography, the culmination of six years of research and writing. First-time author Van Leuven's interest in Bolger began when she was 14, and the resulting book's backstory is its own fascinating tale. The inaugural winner of the Biographers International Organization's Hazel Rowley Prize, she was the first to be granted access to Bolger's personal papers, housed at the University of California, Los Angeles's Library Special Collections. Wending her way chronologically, she reveals the range and depth of a 60-year career that began with Bolger dancing in the streets of Boston as a teenager and spanned Vaudeville, Broadway, a period as a USO performer in the South Pacific during World War II, Hollywood films, television, and Las Vegas. Intertwined throughout is the story of Bolger's 58-year marriage to business partner Gwendolyn Bolger. VERDICT Anyone who loves The Wizard of Oz will be enamored of this volume, which may very well become the definitive Bolger biography.—Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX

Library Journal