There are three main cornerstones in the American
entertainment world: Hollywood, Nashville (aka “Music City”), and New York City,
especially the Broadway theatre district.
However, over the past 50 years, the Broadway of Irving
Berlin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Mary
Martin and Ethel Merman, had seen its share of triumphs, setbacks and
tragedies. And when there were times that it looked like Broadway would
collapse into obscurity, shows like “A Chorus Line”, “Cats”, “Phantom of the
Opera” and “The Lion King” would come around and snatch it from the jaws of
that eminent collapse.
And during those 50 years, the struggles to keep Broadway
alive and relevant – especially when it was butting heads with the City of New
York and its municipal administration – would sometimes provide more drama than
what was being offered onstage in many of its historical theatres along the
Great White Way.
New York Post theatre columnist Michael Riedel has been a
keen observer of the Broadway theatre scene for over 20 years, and he brings
his passion for the American theatre and its famous home on Broadway – not to
mention its countless demises and rebirths – in an immensely readable backstage
account called Razzle Dazzle.
The central characters that make up the narrative in Razzle Dazzle are Bernard Jacobs and
Gerald Schoenfeld, two New York lawyers who were hired during the 1950s to
represent the Shubert Organization, which was run by the aging J.J. Shubert,
who founded with his brothers Sam and Lee in 1900 a company that would produce
Broadway shows and own and operate Broadway theatres, which by the 1920s became
a virtual entertainment empire on the American theatre scene.
And when J.J. died in 1963, both Jacobs and Schoenfeld took
over the Shubert Organization (and its subsequent Shubert Foundation), and
quickly became the most powerful men on Broadway. And from the moment they
assumed control, they were greeted with their first scandal: a full-fledged
investigation by the New York State Attorney General into a controversial financial
practice regarding show ticket sales, in which ticket brokers and other high
ranking individuals sold tickets to popular Broadway shows of the time at outrageously
inflated prices, in which they would pocket the difference (which was known as
“ice”).
And the turbulent directorship of Messrs. Schoenfeld and
Jacobs didn’t end there. There
were other events that coloured this new era, such as good old boy Irving
Goldman, who managed to finagle a $1 million contract for his paint company
(and was later appointed as New York’s cultural commissioner); the pitched
battle to save three legendary Broadway theatres – the Helen Hayes, the Morosco
and the Bijou – from demolition (the Marquis Theatre now stands on the site of
these three theatres); how Broadway handled the growing AIDS crisis of the
1980s; the bitter rivalry between “Dreamgirls” and “Nine” to see who would win
the most Tony Awards in 1982; the fearful, powerful influence of New York Times
drama critic Frank Rich to make or break a new show; the ratio of a half-dozen
or so flops for every Broadway hit show; the rivalry between the Shuberts and
the Nederlander organization to get the best shows to fill their theatres; the
Shubert Organization’s lengthy battle to transform Times Square from a centre
of sleaze to a glitzy tourist attraction; how producer David Merrick turned the
untimely death of director Gower Champion into a front page media event and
helped make the musical “42nd Street” a major hit; how the influence
of several British writers, producers and directors (i.e. Andrew Lloyd Webber)
and the Disney Company turned Broadway into what it is today; not to mention
all the power plays, bruised egos, hurt feelings and vindictive reactions that
went along with it.
And look at the end result of all the above – and more –
that are reported in the book and how it affected the Broadway theatrical world
today: by the end of the 2000s, an average of 12 million people saw a Broadway
show every year, with an annual box office gross of over $1 billion, and Broadway
theatres and its offshoots contribute to 11 percent of the entire economic
output of New York City.
What I enjoyed about Razzle
Dazzle is Riedel’s penchant for giving the story behind the story, and
whatever happened to New York City – good or bad – mirrored the well being of
Broadway. This was well represented with the story of New York City’s near
financial collapse in 1974-75 (in which then-President Gerald Ford flatly
refused any financial assistance to the city), and as a result of the financial
downturn and Times Square and the surrounding area getting increasingly seedy
and dangerous, many Broadway theatres remained empty and theatergoers were
discouraged from walking the streets of New York after 6 p.m., which hurt
overall theatre attendance. However, it took the creative mind of the late
Michael Bennett to develop an out-of-the-box musical about a group of aspiring
singers and dancers who were auditioning for coveted roles in a Broadway
musical called “A Chorus Line” – and the faith of Bernie Jacobs – that helped
improve the fortunes of both New York as a viable tourist attraction, and
Broadway as a show business institution (and “A Chorus Line” became one of the
most popular musicals ever, which ran on Broadway for 15 years).
Razzle Dazzle is
probably one of the best books about Broadway’s illustrious, yet sometimes
flawed, history since critic Brook Atkinson’s monumental history Broadway and William Goldman’s behind
the scenes study of a typical year on Broadway called The Season (which were both published in 1970). It’s a penetrating
look at how two unlikely people with a passion for the theatre fought tooth and
nail over the past 50 years to keep the Broadway theatre scene to its legendary
glory, and to make sure that the lights on the Great White Way were never
dimmed.
(This piece originally appeared in the April 9, 2016 edition of the Montreal Times).
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