Author: Craig Timberlake Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing ISBN: 178912204X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 694
Book Description
First published in 1954, THE BISHOP OF BROADWAY chronicles the life of David Belasco (1853-1931), an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright who became the first writer to adapt the short story Madame Butterfly for the stage, thereby launching the theatrical career of many actors, including Mary Pickford, Lenore Ulric and Barbara Stanwyck. David Belasco also pioneered many innovative new forms of stage lighting and special effects in order to create realism and naturalism. Owing to his austere, clericlike dress and personal manner, David Belasco came to be known as the “bishop of Broadway.” Born in San Francisco, California, the son of Sephardic Jewish parents who had moved from London, England during the California Gold Rush, Belasco began his illustrious theatre career with a wide variety of jobs in in a San Francisco theatre, and gaining first experience as a stage manager while on the road. This eventually led to a role as stage manager, and he learned the business inside out. A gifted playwright, David Belasco went to New York City in 1882 to work as stage manager for the Madison Square Theatre, and the old Lyceum Theatre while writing plays. By 1895, the “bishop of Broadway” was so successful that he set himself up as an independent producer. During his long creative career, stretching between 1884 and 1930, David Belasco either wrote, directed, or produced more than 100 Broadway plays including Hearts of Oak, The Heart of Maryland, and Du Barry—making him the most powerful personality on the New York city theater scene. Written by fellow Broadway actor, Craig Timberlake, THE BISHOP OF BROADWAY provides an in-depth glimpse into the life and times of this remarkable Broadway figure of the early twentieth century. Beautifully illustrated throughout with black & white photographs.
Author: Kim Marra Publisher: University of Iowa Press ISBN: 1587297418 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 379
Book Description
Autocratic male impresarios increasingly dominated the American stage between 1865 and 1914. Many rose from poor immigrant roots and built their own careers by making huge stars out of “undiscovered,” Anglo-identified actresses. Reflecting the antics of self-made industrial empire-builders and independent, challenging New Women, these theatrical potentates and their protégées gained a level of wealth and celebrity comparable to that of Hollywood stars today. In her engaging and provocative Strange Duets, Kim Marra spotlights three passionate impresario-actress relationships of exceptional duration that encapsulated the social tensions of the day and strongly influenced the theatre of the twentieth century. Augustin Daly and Ada Rehan, Charles Frohman and Maude Adams, and David Belasco and Mrs. Leslie Carter reigned over “legitimate” Broadway theatre, the venue of greatest social cachet for the monied classes. Unlike impresarios and actresses in vaudeville and burlesque, they produced full-length spoken drama that involved special rigors of training and rehearsal to sustain a character’s emotional “truth” as well as a high level of physical athleticism and endurance. Their efforts compelled fascination at a time when most people believed women’s emotions were seated primarily in the reproductive organs and thus were fundamentally embodied and sexual in nature. While the impresario ostensibly exercised full control over his leading lady, showing fashionable audiences that the exciting but unruly New Woman could be both tamed and enjoyed, she acquired a power of her own that could bring him to his knees.Kim Marra combines methods of cultural, gender, and sexuality studies with theatre history to explore the vexed mutual dependency between these status-seeking Svengalis and their alternately willing and resistant leading ladies. She illuminates how their on- and off-stage performances, highly charged in this Darwinian era with “racial” as well as gender, sexual, and class dynamics, tapped into the contradictory fantasies and aspirations of their audiences. Played out against a backdrop of enormous cultural and institutional transformation, the volatile romance of Daly and Rehan, closeted homosexuality of Frohman and Adams, and carnal expiations of Belasco and Carter produced strange duets indeed.
Author: Lise-Lone Marker Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400870267 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
A pioneer of stage naturalism, David Belasco has come to be universally recognized as one of the first important directors in the history of the American stage. Lise-Lone Marker's book is a full-length stylistic analysis and re-evaluation of his scenic art. Based on a rich body of primary sources, among which are Belasco's promptbooks and papers, the book synthesizes the aims, methods, and techniques inherent in the naturalistic production style that Belasco developed during the six decades of his career. The elements of that style—the magic reality of his stage settings, his innovations in plastic lighting, his directorial method—are also seen in the context of theatrical developments elsewhere. On the basis of this synthesis. Professor Marker reconstructs and analyzes four of Belasco's most important productions, each representative of a distinct phase of his directorial art. Her explorations uncover much new information about Belasco and the American theatre around the turn of the century. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Craig Timberlake
Author: Kim Marra
Author: Lise-Lone Marker
Author: William Winter
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