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[0:14] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrant, Jewish, queer, and black artists invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:28] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and this is the second segment in my recent conversation with author Ben West regarding his exceptionally comprehensive new book, The American Musical: Evolution of an Art Form.

[0:40] David Armstrong: This book traces the American musical's creative journey from its 19th century beginnings through its 20th century maturation and on to the turn of the 21st century.

[0:52] David Armstrong: Along the way, Ben sheds new light on a myriad of shows, authors, directors, and performers, including a host of often overlooked women and African American artists.

[1:03] David Armstrong: If you missed the first episode in this series, you may want to go back and catch up on that one before listening to this one.

[1:09] David Armstrong: Before I jump in, of course, I want to thank all of our patron club members whose generous support helps to make Broadway Nation possible, especially our newest patron, Taryn Darr.

[1:19] David Armstrong: If you would like to help support the creation of this podcast, I'll have information at the end of the episode about how you too can become a member.

[1:27] David Armstrong: As our previous episode ended, Ben and I were discussing the revue form, especially those annual revues, such as the Ziegfeld Follies and Earl Carroll's Vanities.

[1:37] David Armstrong: Today we pick up our conversation with some of the other forms of musical theater that Ben explores in part two of his book, a section that he titles Birth of an Art Form.

[1:47] David Armstrong: Here we go.

[1:48] Ben West: So, anyway, lots of revue in the early period. Um, musical comedy, intimate musical comedy, operetta, which we touched on a little bit.

[1:55] Ben West: I put in quotes.

[1:56] David Armstrong: And why do you put operetta in quotes?

[1:59] Ben West: Because I think the term has taken on a meaning that doesn't represent the shows that are now dubbed operetta.

[2:05] Ben West: May Time, for example, is classified as operetta now because it's associated with its composer Sigmund Romberg.

[2:12] Ben West: But one of the things I attempt to address in the book is the fact that Sigmund Romberg wasn't confined to one style of entertainment.

[2:18] Ben West: For example, he wrote Dancin's around. And you have Victor Herbert.

[2:22] Ben West: I was just watching something, and he was identified as America's premier composer of operetta.

[2:27] Ben West: And some of Victor Herbert's most popular shows were not in the operetta line.

[2:32] Ben West: The Red Mill is not really an operetta.

[2:34] David Armstrong: No, Red Mill is not an opera.

[2:35] Ben West: He wrote a burlesque, he wrote a vaudeville tab called The Songbirds.

[2:39] Ben West: He wrote a show that predates the princess musicals called The Only Girl.

[2:43] Ben West: This is in 1914. It's part of the, it's not necessarily a direct part, but it coincides with the little theater movement that is happening in America.

[2:50] Ben West: So I mean, Victor Herbert did not just write operetta.

[2:52] Ben West: And so this is why I put operetta in quotes to an extent, because it's not really the most appropriate term for some of the shows that have now been filed under that heading.

[3:02] Ben West: I think that we just pigeonhole these artists in a way that is not fair to what they were, because we don't know that much about them.

[3:08] Ben West: But even like Dorothy Donnelly, who you talk about, she wrote musical comedies as well as operettas.

[3:14] Ben West: And some of them, I mean, are clearly operettas.

[3:16] Ben West: Rosemarie is an operetta, there's no doubt about that, or the student prince.

[3:20] Ben West: But that's not all they wrote.

[3:22] Ben West: In the same way Oscar Hammerstein wrote operettas and wrote other things, but we don't pigeonhole him the same way.

[3:27] Ben West: And I think also there's a negative connotation about operetta.

[3:30] Ben West: For example, you mentioned Rosemarie, and whatever one terms it as a style, I think operetta gives the sense of frivolous, grand, classical singing, princes, lavish costumes, stately affair, and love and romance.

[3:46] Ben West: And so that term operetta, as it now has come to be understood, minimizes the progressive nature of something like what you just mentioned, Rosemary.

[3:56] David Armstrong: Right, which is a precursor to the great musical plays that will come after it.

[4:00] Ben West: Yeah, absolutely.

[4:01] Ben West: Yes, yes. That's all why I put operetta in quotes, because it doesn't really define something like May Time or something like Rosemarie.

[5:19] David Armstrong: When I'm going to see two and waiting on.

[6:07] Ben West: But if when you ring to me, and I mean all setting, then I will know all you belong to me.

[6:45] Ben West: I'll belong to Rosemary in particular, especially for Oscar Hammerstein's trajectory.

[6:57] Ben West: Rosemary was instrumental. Talk a little bit about burlesque, because I think that's the most misunderstood because there's this sort of Nouveau burlesque, and that you can go to Seattle, and there's several burlesque shows running right now, and they're sexy shows.

[7:12] Ben West: That term didn't mean that, as you said a little while ago until the 1930s.

[7:16] Ben West: It might have meant it was sexy, but it wasn't a skin show.

[7:19] Ben West: It wasn't striptease.

[7:21] Ben West: It wasn't striptease or even particularly in your face sexuality.

[7:25] Ben West: And I think part of the confusion is because the form is so amorphous.

[7:30] Ben West: It is also a style. There is burlesque a style, which is slapstick, travesty, comedy, and that is largely what characterized the form pre-1930s.

[7:41] Ben West: Not exclusively. There were some seedy places like the Dewey Theater.

[7:44] Ben West: That's one of the things I had to cut from the book.

[7:46] Ben West: But the Dewey Theater is fascinating.

[7:48] David Armstrong: Where was that?

[7:49] Ben West: Lower Manhattan. I think it was around Union Square.

[7:52] Ben West: They presented burlesque troops, but they also did their own burlesque shows.

[7:57] Ben West: This would have been late 1890s. One of the shows that they did involved a woman going into a lion cage with a real lion, or maybe it was a tiger.

[8:06] Ben West: It was a lion or a tiger, I can't remember right now, and feigning sexual intercourse with the lion or the tiger.

[8:12] Ben West: So that was one of the things. And then I found a clipping, I don't know how many weeks or months later, that the tiger had bit her, or the lion had bit her during the performance.

[8:20] Ben West: There were certain venues, but by and large, burlesque as a form was generally a high class institution.

[8:27] Ben West: Vaudeville operated in circuits.

[8:29] Ben West: Vaudeville was a major, major, major institution.

[8:32] Ben West: Burlesque didn't really even come close to it.

[8:34] Ben West: Vaudeville operated in bills, and you had big time, small time, and week to week, etc.

[8:38] Ben West: Uh, we can go into that further if you want.

[8:40] Ben West: But burlesque operated primarily in wheels.

[8:42] Ben West: So you had never more really than two wheels operating at the same time, and each wheel would have roughly 30 to 40 theaters and corresponding troops.

[8:52] Ben West: So everyone moved in the same pattern around the wheel, basically.

[8:56] Ben West: And it was a set show, the whole show moved to the next venue.

[8:59] David Armstrong: Exactly right.

[9:00] Ben West: As opposed to a vaudeville where the acts moved individually, independently of one another.

[9:04] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[9:04] Ben West: Yeah, yeah. It's a scripted entertainment, which also separates it from vaudeville.

[9:08] Ben West: The Columbia was the premier institution.

[9:10] Ben West: They operated for a great number of years, basically presided over this period.

[9:14] Ben West: And they had a house on Broadway.

[9:16] Ben West: The Columbia Theater was a Broadway house that played burlesque.

[9:19] Ben West: And again, this is burlesque of a high class order before it's associated with striptease.

[9:23] Ben West: Which comes in in the 1930s.

[9:25] Ben West: And it sort of infiltrates burlesque to the point where then today we think that's all a burlesque show was.

[9:31] David Armstrong: Oh, I mean, I think yes, it's become synonymous with burlesque.

[9:34] Ben West: Yeah, yeah.

[9:35] David Armstrong: So let's talk about jazz. How does jazz influence the musical?

[9:36] Ben West: I was just talking to my students yesterday about this.

[9:41] Ben West: Can talk about jazz and the show tune happen at the same time, but they're not the same thing.

[9:46] David Armstrong: What's your take on jazz and its relationship to Broadway?

[9:50] Ben West: Well, it depends, first of all, it depends on your definition of Broadway in terms of that question.

[9:54] Ben West: I think you mean the music and jazz.

[9:56] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah.

[9:57] Ben West: That's yes, yes.

[9:58] Ben West: First of all, jazz doesn't just happen in 1917, it is evolving over a period of time.

[10:03] Ben West: And that evolution is largely found in nightclubs and vaudeville.

[10:08] David Armstrong: And let's just highlight that for a moment, because I think one of the things that makes your book different than most other books is that you do include the nightclub world of Times Square and not just Times Square, but especially Times Square.

[10:21] David Armstrong: And I've made this argument myself several times.

[10:23] David Armstrong: When you talked about Broadway back then, in the public imagination, it was just as much about those nightclubs, maybe even more so, than it was about the shows in the legitimate theaters.

[10:33] David Armstrong: Broadway was this world of Times Square, including hundreds of world of entertainment.

[10:39] Ben West: A world of entertainment, exactly.

[10:41] Ben West: They are influencing what is happening on the legitimate stage.

[10:45] Ben West: The musical that we understand that matures mid-century is not in its maturation and what it becomes is not confined exclusively to the legitimate stage.

[10:53] Ben West: It is vaudeville, it is nightclubs, which you're just talking about, burlesque, it is vestiges of minstrelsy.

[10:59] Ben West: So just to get back to the point you were making, jazz starts to emerge for the first time in New York in these nightclub venues.

[11:05] David Armstrong: Correct, correct.

[11:06] Ben West: In 1917 specifically, we have the original Dixieland jazz band at Rice and Weber's, which is one of the major nightclubs.

[11:13] Ben West: It is flourishing in these nightclubs.

[11:15] Ben West: Two of the major figures in the early jazz scene are Paul Whiteman and Vincent Lopez, both of them with roots in nightclubs and vaudeville.

[11:23] Ben West: Vincent Lopez, he had a jazz orchestra, and they were quite theatrical in nature in how he dramatized the music that the orchestra was playing.

[11:31] Ben West: So anyway, these two major figures were a major part of nightclubs, vaudeville. Both of them also performed briefly in legit with their orchestra. And then of course, Paul Whitman has the concert hall, uh, Rhapsody and Blue concert. And that same year, which is 1924, Vincent Lopez has his own symphonic jazz concert as well. Jazz is really incubated on and closely attached to the musical stage and is immediately embraced in legit and in popular songwriting. All of this is happening on top of each other at the same time, really. And this synthesis of syncopation blues, ragtime that we call jazz, is instrumental in advancing songwriting craft and maturing the popular song, which itself overlapped with the musical stage.

Thus it is so theatrical in the first three decades. Is it possible to identify the first Broadway shows that include elements of jazz or include jazz music or the first, again, as you said before it? You're wary of anything first, but are there a couple of names that are part of the mix? For example, later we're able to say, bye bye, Bertie probably is the first Broadway show that includes any kind of real rock and roll music in it. What's the equivalent of that for jazz? Well, it's difficult because jazz is not something that just happens. Again, when you say Broadway, are you meaning legit musical? I'm talking legit now, yeah. So as opposed to the nightclubs, when does jazz go legit? I wouldn't say the first, but I do identify shows that are using this new sound.

For example, Jim Jam Jems, which we talked about. That's 1920. Sophie Tucker and her seven kings of syncopation go into a show called Hello Alexander, which is 1919. There is a black jazz band that goes into a play in 1917. I can't remember the name of the play. It's by George Hobart. I think it's called What's Your Husband Doing. Again, this idea that Shuffle Along is the first black jazz band on Broadway is false. Sorry, just a side note to debunk that myth. Earl Carroll, before he becomes this major review producer, writes the score to a show called So Long Letty. This predates the official jazz designation, but their suggestions that it is a contemporary score in terms of its feel on some of the instrumentation.

There's a show called Sunny, which had a little bit of jazz element. And then review, of course, because of the nature of review was a major home to jazz early on. So there were a number of early shows. I think the annual review most closely associated with jazz was and remains George White Scandals. Because George Gershwin was involved with that show. You were talking about there's a theme or sort of an atmosphere to each of the reviews. The atmosphere of George White scandals was very much contemporary jazz. That's why I would say that is probably the annual review most closely associated with jazz. And just to make sure everybody understands, we're not saying that Shuffle Along was not hugely important in popularizing it.

Just the fact that it ran so long and was such a sensation, you could not get a ticket. It may be the most important thing in terms of bringing jazz to Broadway, but it's not the first. It's not the first. I don't know if I personally would say the most important thing. It is a landmark show, and there are so many incredible things about that show, so momentous. I think what frustrates me and why I try to debunk the myths around it is that over the years, the lore around it has been so inflated. It stands on its own as a landmark work. So there's not really a need to sort of add these extra things which are just false. But it was hugely influential piece. But in terms of the point about jazz musicians, you have folks like James Reese Europe, who was hugely influential in pushing forward jazz and also black musicians.

And around the time of his death, which was 1919, there were on Broadway, I discovered a number of black bands performing on the legitimate Broadway stage. They would do special concerts on Sunday, or there would be some sort of week long engagement. There was a momentum going into Shuffle Along, I think, which is often left out of the conversation.

[15:18] David Armstrong: Absolutely. It's part of what made it pop so much. It had been primed to have this sort of success in some way. So let's talk about some of these other nightclubs during this period. So now we're in this intensification period. How do the nightclubs figure into that intensification?

[15:33] Ben West: I assume you mean by intensification, shows are starting to get better.

[15:37] David Armstrong: Get better, yes.

[15:38] Ben West: Yes, that's the crude way to say it. Yes. I mean, nightclubs are first of one, an incubator for talent, both on stage and off. Two, shaping sounds. So when we're talking about, we just mentioned Shuffle Alongs, so let's stand black artists for just a moment. The nightclub really becomes an engine for black entertainment. And when we get to this intensification period, there are a number of black shows. Most polished and proficient and successful black shows on the legitimate stage are actually transplants from nightclubs. Hot Chocolates, for example, that's a show that I think some people are familiar with. This had a score by Harry Brooks, Fats Waller, and Andy Rizat. This comes from a floor show in Harlem at Connie's Inn.

And then, of course, the most iconic is the Blackbird series. And this comes out of a floor show called Blackbirds of 1925 at the plantation, which was the second floor Schubert Nightclub. Not operated by the Schuberts, to be clear, but they own the real estate effectively. And there were a number of shows that came out of the plantation. And so nightclubs play a huge factor in terms of the sound of shows, the movement of shows in nightclubs and legit black talent in particular. But it's not exclusive to this type of hot jazz environment, which I write about a little bit. Lou Brown and Sidney Clare had a hugely popular nightclub called the Melody Club, where it was about comedy. It was about sharper comedy, satirical comedy, witty comedy.

Also on the comedy front, separately, you have Luke Clayton, Jimmy Durante, and Eddie Jackson, three crazy clowns who had their own brand of nightclub entertainment. Again, this is in the second half of the 1920s. They will eventually go into, actually, will stay on the Schubert Nightclub. They go into the second floor nightclub. At that time, it's called Le Ambassadeur. Well, the rendezvous first and then Le Ambassadeur there both times, I believe. And then in 1929, the show that they do there has Ethel Merman. Of course, this is a year before she does Girl Crazy. Nightclubs are just a major force during this particular period on virtually all fronts, or influencing virtually all fronts. I just find them deeply exciting, I will say, on a personal note.

[17:36] David Armstrong: Absolutely. And all the creators of legitimate Broadway musicals are sitting in those nightclubs or going to those nightclubs after the show or performing in those nightclubs after they leave the stage from their legit show.

[17:47] Ben West: There's a crossover, yeah, yeah. So it's all mixed up together. It's a bubbling cauldron of all this creativity that's going on. As we mentioned earlier, just to reinforce, the nightclub at this particular time was largely theatrical in nature. We're talking about proper reviews in nightclubs. There are some clubs that are an individual performer, there's just a band playing for dancing that existed, but by and large, the nightclubs were talking about, and the most prominent were these nightclubs of a theatrical nature.

[18:16] David Armstrong: You hinted at this earlier. Why did it get that name? What was different about these intimate reviews from the annual reviews?

[18:31] Ben West: They were focused more on material and innovative stagecraft than on elaborate stage pictures, I would say. And actually he and his directors, Julian Mitchell, Ned Wayburn, Liam Errol, were utilizing inventive stagecraft. By the time we get to the 20s, though, there is, I think, an exhaustion of the lavishness that is happening. And so there is this turn throughout the 20s, actually, and this is something that happens toward the end of the period we had previously discussed, birth of an art form, early 20s. There starts to be this turn alongside jazz toward sharper material, more refined dialogue, more refined lyrics, a greater deal of cleverness, ingenuity, character, satire, comment. And so this really bursts forth in the late 20s.

[19:19] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Ben and I will burst forth with more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[19:25] ♪ Musical number ♪

[20:23] Ben West: And so there is satire, there's social comment, political comment, sharp lyrics, the idea of an elevated lyric writing and more complex musical figures.

[20:31] Ben West: Review is really the epicenter of this move toward more sophisticated songwriting, sophisticated sketch writing, integration of staging and story. From what we would think today, they were still comparatively large compared to today's more intimate shows, but they were more intimate compared to the annuals that had previously dominated the scene. And they were really incredible. Especially Howard Deeds, I talk about a great deal because he's an extraordinary showman, excellent lyricist, one of the individuals that really is pushing toward complex writing, complex narrative structure, and lyric writing, use of language, sophisticated use of language. But also in his creation of reviews, there was, as you alluded to, this distinct style to each of his reviews.

There was a cohesive character to his reviews, even if there was not a theme, a specific theme, as one found, for example, in Ass Thousand's Cheer, which is a Heart Moss Hart Irving Berlin show about headlines or based on newspaper headlines. I said that very casually. I don't mean to dismiss it.

[21:30] David Armstrong: Which of these shows most interests you of these intimate reviews?

[21:34] Ben West: And certainly that Irving Berlin Moss Hart show was very much part of this sophisticated idea. Something that deeply interests me, which I address is a show called The Comic Supplement, which is a JP McAvoy review that did not make it to New York, which is actually an early instance of non-traditional storytelling. Review becomes a central component in non-traditional storytelling in the 60s when one starts talking about Stephen Sauntheim, Harold Prince, etc. Review is a central component. And this is an early instance of that in that it is a review. So it is episodic in nature. There's not a specific plot that is happening, but it centers around one typical American family, and you see them over the course of a number of years in everyday circumstances.

So the daughter, uh, which was played by Ray Dooley, who's a major female comedian at the time. She begins the show as a little baby, and she ends the show dancing in a cabaret. So this gives you an idea. So that is fascinating. And I'll just go back to Howard Deeds, though, because I find him to be extraordinary. And I think the little show is an exquisite piece of theater, the way that it's routined, how calculated it is, the quality of all of the material, and the way it is put together, the ideas that it has. And it was a game changer in terms of the trajectory of review. Three's a crowd as well. That's another Howard Deeds, that's uh 1930. That's his first show with Hazard Short, who is a major force in terms of utilizing lighting and staging to amplify story. He starts doing this in terms of the musical in Vaudeville, actually, in Vaudeville tabs.

[23:00] Ben West: Then he's associated with Irving Berlin's Music Box Review. And then in 1930, he's with Howard Deeds doing Theresa Crowd. And then interestingly, the show that I think most people who know Review remember is The Bandwagon. Because it was a major hit, it was really an extraordinary production. I think what's especially interesting about that show is that if you drill down, it is the production and the conceit that is carrying the day. The material itself is actually somewhat uneven, particularly given it's Howard Deeds, George S. Kaufman. The music is fairly consistently excellent across the board. That's Arthur Schwartz. But the material is weaker than Deeds' two prior reviews that he owned.

There was another review in there. That's why I say he owned. The second little show was not really a deep driven piece. He and Schwartz contributed several songs though. So anyway, The Bandwagon is an interesting piece because it was conceived by Deeds to be played on a double turntable. Hamilton, for anyone listening, is played on a double turntable. And by that you mean a turntable inside a turntable. Correct, correct. So Deeds specifically conceived this review to be played on a double turntable. This is the brilliance of the review, is that conceit. And then the material was specifically sculpted for that physical environment, for the double turntables, and for the specific personalities of the cast.

So it was this extraordinarily cohesive affair, extraordinarily modern stagecraft. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Again, though, if you drill down and you just take the material out of the show and look at the sketch, or you're reading a sketch or looking at a song, most of them don't rise to the level of George Kaufman or Howard Deeds, incidentally. But it is again the cohesive whole that I think enraptured audiences. Let's also talk about what's happening in the musical comedies of this time, the story-driven shows. These things are obviously all influenced by each other as well. The reviews are influencing the musical comedies, and vice versa. But what's the essence of this period? We're talking again, 1925 to 1930. What are we seeing in the musical comedies?

[24:59] Ben West: That's well, I break them down into two categories. It's not so distinct, but in terms of clarity and structure purposes. There are the shows that people think of when they think of 1920s, in terms of sunny, syncopated, carefree college football games on the stage. And so you have those shows like the Brown to Silva and Henderson shows, Good News, for example, followed through. Their musical comedies were 1927 through 1930. They had a number of shows during that period. We've always thought knowledge is not we should be taught to dance right here at night. We're up to date. We teach a great new dance. Don't think that I brag. I speak of a drag. Why should a sheep learn how to speak Latin and Greek?

Badly, give him a neat motto. Complete it with me. Badly, first lesson right now. You love it and how you love it. Here is the drag. See how it goes down on the heels, up on the toe. That's a way to do the varsity drag. No de oldo, hotter than hot. New or the new, leader than mean, blue of the blue. Get as much applause as waving the fly. You can pass many a class, whether you're dumb or wise. If you all answer the call when your professor cries, everybody down on the heels, up on a toe. They after school and learn how to goes. Everybody do the hardly drive. Sort of one hit after another. Oh, yes, hugely successful. We should, sorry, I don't mean to minimize them. Yes, they were hugely successful and quite exciting.

The way in which I'm talking about them in terms of the categories, is a lot of these shows are written by writers primarily associated with popular songwriting. And again, popular songwriting at this time overlaps with the musical stage. So you have the Brown to Silver Henderson shows, hugely successful. Some of the Ziegfeld shows like Whoopi, Eddie Cantor show, Eddie Dowling, I mentioned a couple of his shows actually, which are in this sort of sunny syncopated line. And he deliberately was not interested in proper character development. And he speaks about this. I don't mean to put this on him. He was not interested in sculpting a clearly defined arc for a certain character. He liked the characters to find themselves and speak for themselves.

I don't want to bastardize what he's saying. There is an interview where he speaks about this, which is more articulate than what I'm saying, so I don't want to put words in his mouth. But incidentally, just as a little asterisk, he then will do later on Time of Your Life, Blast Menagerie, Iceman Comet. So there is a transition that happened. But nonetheless, so there's that sort of brand of 1920s musical comedy that I think is what people most often think of when they think of 1920s, but that is not all that was happening.

[27:42] Ben West: That is one of the points that I make in the book, that it's not just this sort of carefree confection with pop songs. There are other shows that are happening. Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, for example, write a handful of clown shows, which are, to be fair, ephemeral. This is not the soundly constructed work that someone's gonna pick up and do today, but there are dramaturgical techniques or certain things that are happening in the shows they're creating, which will pave the way for something like Forum or something like Top Banana, Guys and Dolls, when we get into this period of maturity. Who else? The Gershwins, for example, are aiming for a more integrated type of work, particularly in the song element or the music department of their shows.

And then Lorenz Hart, Richard Rogers, and specifically Herbert Fields. Hart and Rogers, as you know, write a number of shows. I focus in particular on the ones with Herbert Fields because those tend to be the most adventurous and pioneering in terms of their dramaturgical construct. Go into that just a little more because I think Herbert Fields is somebody I love to highlight as well. He's so important, and yet most people do not know his name.

[28:41] Ben West: Yeah, yeah. He comes from a legendary family, and he's involved not only from the 20s into the 50s, into the 60s. Yeah. He has a major Broadway career, and yet he's sort of fallen out of the way. He's not named actor almost anywhere. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Herbert Fields, major librettist, particularly in the 20s. And if I can posit a reason for his disappearance as you describe, I think it is because he's one of the individuals who is revolutionary in the 20s, but who doesn't necessarily continue to progress with the times. For example, some of his later shows are, I think he does three or four with Cole Porter, Something for the Boys is one of them. He does the book with his sister Dorothy Fields for Any Get Your Gun.

So, in any case, in the 20s, though, in particular, he's working with Lorenz Hart, Richard Rogers, Vincent Humans, quite an innovative librettist for this particular period. The show that I focus on in the book in particular is Peggy Ann, which also has its own lineage because it's produced by Lou Fields. It's based on a Lou Fields musical from the early teens. And then, of course, Lou Fields is sort of king of legitimate or less turn of the 20th century with his then partner Joe Weber. Interesting in terms of Herbert Fields in particular, in terms of dialogue, construction, crafting character, integrating certain elements. Peggy Ann is really an interesting show just for how it's put together, the way it's composed.

It takes place primarily in a series of dream sequences, an adventurous and forward-thinking, modern-minded librettist in the way that he Herbert Fields is working in this particular era. I don't think, again, that translates when we get into the 30s and 40s. There are people who are moving beyond him in terms of sound dramaturgical construction, but he's certainly one of the engines that is driving this intensification in the late 20s.

[30:18] Ben West: Where we're headed next is the musical play. Your final section of this chapter is Oscar Hammerstein the second and the musical play. So I think it's an appropriate time to leave that for the next episode because things are going to change dramatically. It's interesting always to think about what would have happened if the depression hadn't happened. Would Showboat have had more immediate impact than it was allowed to? Interesting. I don't know. But it had been open for a year, you know, two years, actually. I mean, because crash is late 29. Or it was it, I hate to use the word ahead of its time, but was it so its own thing? The other writers didn't think, well, we should do that too. They were happy with what they were doing.

It's very interesting to try to get in the minds of the writers that period. And then I think once you get to the stock market crash, everything's up for grabs. I don't know. I don't think there was a stop in this push toward more refined, cohesive storytelling that Showboat embodies because Hammerstein himself continues to do that, in particular with the show I discussed in the book Rainbow. It doesn't come together in the way that Showboat does. Vincent Humans is perhaps not the dramatic composer, a brilliant composer, who extraordinary, by the way. Let me just say across the board. Exceptional composer. However, the score for Rainbow is not deeply substantial. And one wonders if he did not have the dramatic or dramaturgical weight for that show.

I mean, that's not the only thing to mention about that particular show, but I don't know. I think Showboat was definitely sort of a revolution and perhaps an anomaly. I think it had an influence. I think it was also people continuing to find their way, and how do we execute that? And I think you make a very good point also that if Rainbow had been successful, two shows back to back doing this new thing, the way we eventually had Oklahoma and then Little Girl and Carousel and Exactly.

[32:10] David Armstrong: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a lot to talk about when we come back. Ben West, it has been fabulous to have you here today on Broadway Nation to talk about your new book, The American Musical.

[32:20] Ben West: Thank you for having me.

[32:21] David Armstrong: Thank you for having me. Great to speak with you.

[32:23] Ben West: Absolutely. Thank you.

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