New York Times Bestseller: "Both revelatory and entertaining . . . Along the way, Viertel provides some fascinating Broadway history." — The New York Times Book ReviewAmericans invented musicals—and have a longstanding love affair with them. But what, exactly, is a musical? In this book, longtime theatrical producer and writer Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, and occasionally despairs over their more emba...

For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in actors, and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical?In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel takes th...

From America's most trusted and highly visible film critic, 100 more brilliant essays on the films that define cinematic greatness.Continuing the pitch-perfect critiques begun in The Great Movies, Roger Ebert's The Great Movies II collects 100 additional essays, each one of them a gem of critical appreciation and an amalgam of love, analysis, and history that will send readers back to films with a fresh set of eyes and renewed enthusiasm—or perhap...

“I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don’t seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.”–Larry Moss, from the IntroductionWhen Oscar-winning actors Helen Hunt and Hilary Swank accepted their Academy Awards, each credited Larry Moss’s guidance as key to their career-making performances. There is a two-year waiting list for his advanced acting classes. But now everyone–professionals and amateurs alike–can discover Moss’s passionate, in-depth teachin...

Outrageous, outspoken, and uninhibited, Tallulah Bankhead was an actress known as much for her vices -- cocaine, alcohol, hysterical tirades, and scandalous affairs with both men and women -- as she was for her winning performances on stage. In 1917, a fifteen-year-old Bankhead boldly left her established Alabama political family and fled to New York City to sate her relentless need for attention and become a star. Five years later, she crossed the Atlantic, immediately taking her place as...

Controversial, a global icon, a diva among divas---Barbra Streisand, the last genuinely unique show business personality of the twentieth century is the most honored entertainer in the world today. But along with the Tony, two Oscars, six Emmys, eight Grammys, ten Golden Globes, fifty gold albums, and wild acclaim have come wildly diverse reactions to a personality as outsized as her talent. In the words of Streisand herself, "I'm a liberal, opinionated Jewish feminist---I push a lot of bu...

In the first full-scale life of the mostimportant composer-lyricist at work in musical theatre today, Meryle Secrest, the biographer of Frank Lloyd Wright and Leonard Bernstein, draws on her extended conversations with Stephen Sondheim as well as on her interviews with his friends, family, collaborators, and lovers to bring us not only the artist--as a master ofmodernist compositional style--but also the private man.Beginning with his early childhood on New York's pros...

John Lahr's stunning and complex biography of his father, the legendary actor and comedian Bert LahrNotes on a Cowardly Lion is John Lahr's masterwork: an all-encompassing biography of his father, the comedian and performer Bert Lahr. Best known as the Cowardly Lion in MGM's classic The Wizard of Oz, Lahr was a consummate artist whose career spanned burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood. While he could be equally raucous and polished in p...

Great art comes from great pain.Or that's the impression left by these haunting profiles. Pieced together, they form a revealing mosaic of the creative mind. It's like viewing an exhibit from the therapist's couch as each entry delves into the mental anguish that afflicts the artist and affects their art.The scope of the artists covered is as varied as their afflictions. Inside, you will find not just the creators of the darkest of dark literature, music, a...

A master film critic is at her witty, exhilarating, and opinionated best in this career-spanning collection featuring pieces on Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, and other modern movie classics“Film criticism is exciting just because there is no formula to apply,” Pauline Kael once observed, “just because you must use everything you are and everything you know.” Between 1968 and 1991, as regular film reviewer for The New Yorker, Kael used ...

The star of Hitchcock's Rope and Strangers on a Train "recalls life onstage and in film in an engaging, colorful memoir" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).Synonymous with the golden age of Broadway, the dazzling lights of Hollywood, and the rise of television arts, Farley Granger's charm and talent captivated the acting community and audiences alike. Working with creative visionaries like Alfred Hitchcock, Luchino Visconti, and Nick Ray, G...

Brimming with advice and techniques, this essential reference for book- and songwriters clearly explains the fundamentals of the three crafts of a musical-book, music, and lyrics. Using copious examples from classic shows, Frankel has created the quintessential musical writers' how-to. Among the topics:definitions of musical theater; differences between musical books and straight plays and between poetry and lyrics; what a score is and how it develops; how to write for the voice; and how t...