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Art, Glitter, and Glitz Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America
Arthur Gewirtz, James J. Kolb, ed.
ISBN: 0-313-32467-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-32467-3
264 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 10/30/2004
List Price: $76.95 (UK Sterling Price: £53.95)
Discount Price: $38.48 Sale Price for U.S. Customers Only. Save 50%. Ends 12/31/2009.
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: The theatre and drama of the 1920s reflects a great synergy of art, glitter, and glitz—a decade of experimentation and incubation for mainstream American playwrights coexisting with important revivals of European playwrights and Shakespeare, a flourishing commercial theatre, and the vibrant worlds of burlesque, musical comedy, Revues and Follies.

The 22 essays gathered by Gewitz and Kolb reflect recent scholarship and research, including several provocative, new readings of the plays of Eugene O'Neill, contrasting essays for and against the significance of Philip Barry, and considerations of less well-known plays by Elmer Rice and Sidney Howard. Essays also address the continuing relevance of Anderson and Stallings' What Price Glory?, the impact of George Pierce Baker on the playwrights of the 1920s, an analysis of the commercial success, Broadway, and a thoroughly detailed account of the Dramatists Guild and its negotiation of a minimum basic agreement. Essays on the popular theatre cover an extraordinary gamut from the popularization of Shakespeare in the hands of John Barrymore to the contrasting acting styles of Jeanne Eagels and Pauline Lord, the one-night Revue presented by members of the Algonquin Circle, grand-guignol, Ring Lardner on Broadway, the Ziegfeld Follies, downtown burlesque, the travesty act of Barbette, the production history of A. H. Woods, and the early musical comedy of Rodgers and Hart. An important resource for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with 20th-century American theatre and drama.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction by Arthur Gewirtz and James J. Kolb
    Mainstream Playwrights
    (Re)Claiming O'Neill's Strange Interlude As a Modernist Theatre Text by Thomas R. Adler
    Stillborn Future: Dead and Dying Infants and Children as a "Secondary Image" in the Plays of Eugene O'Neill: An Analysis of the Image in Desire Under the Elms by Linda L. Herr
    "De New Dat's Moiderin' de Old": Oedipal Struggle as Class Conflict in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape by Julia Walker
    Tempest in Black and White: The 1924 Staging of Eugene O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings by Glenda Frank
    "Not Enough"?: The High Comedy of Philip Barry by Leonard Ashley
    Philip Barry's Holiday: High Comedy as Morality Play by Harry B. Parker
    The Subway: Sophie as Elmer Rice's Ms. Zero by Cynthia McCown
    "Without a Plot, Idea, Hero, or Heroine": The Unlikely Strategy of Sidney Howard's Lucky Sam McCarver by Cynthia McCown
    "Some Kind of Damned Religion": A Reading of What Price Glory? by Maxwell Andersen and Laurence Stallings by Stanley Brodwin
    Baker's "Boys": The Legacy of George Pierce Baker by Lue Morgan Douthit
    Broadway, The Elements of Success: An Analysis of Jed Harris's 1926 Production of the Play by Philip Dunning and George Abbott by E. James Zeiger
    Playwrights and Power: The Dramatists Guild's Struggle for the 1926 Minimum Basic Aggreement by T. J. Walsh
    Popular Theatre
    John Barrymore & Company, 1920-25: American Standard-Bearers of the Shakespeare Company by Michael A. Morrison
    When Actors Were Still Players by Ronald H. Wainscott
    No Sirree! A One Night Stand with the Algonquin's "Vicious Circle" by Jay Malarcher
    The Grand-Guignol in New York City: October-November, 1923: Violence Fails to Draw an Audience by John M. Callahan
    The Other Worlds of Ring Lardner: Popular Entertainment and the Legitimate Theatre by Richard Pioreck
    Feathers, Finals, and Frou-Frou: Florenz Ziegfeld's Exoticized Follies Girls by Ann Marie McEntee
    Gags, Girls, and Guffaws: Burlesque in Downtown New York in the 1920s by William Green
    Barbette: That Daring Young [Wo]Man on the Flying Trapeze by Joe E. Jeffreys
    A. H. Woods, Producer: A Thrill a Minute, a Laugh a Second! by Julian M. Kaufman
    The Girl Friends: Lew Fields and the Early Musicals of Rodgers, Hart, and Fields by Jason Rubin
    Bibliography
    Index
About the Author: ARTHUR GEWIRTZ is Associate Professor of English Emeritus at Hofstra University. Among his earlier publications is Restoration Adaptations of Early 17th-Century Comedies.

JAMES J. KOLB is Professor of Drama at Hofstra University. He is a frequent stage director and a regular lecturer on American musical theatre.
LCC Class: 812
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