Word: 80s
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Another heavy blow in the '80s was deregulation of rail, truck, bus and airline service, along with the breakup of the Bell system. These changes permitted corporations to abandon service or increase rates in thousands of small towns. H.E. ("Ned") Valentine, owner and editor of the Clay Center Dispatch (circ. 3,800), finds the outcome ironic: "Both Presidents Carter and Reagan espoused small-town American values. Both were admired for it. But Carter's deregulation program, amplified by eight years of Reagan, has taken its toll here...
...crop of National League pitchers during the 1980s has been impressive. But only one National Leaguer has pitched 10 shutouts in one season during the '80s. Name...
...Imogene Coca, Alfred Drake and a young dancer named Jerome Robbins. This week -- 50 years later and four blocks south, at the Imperial Theater -- Broadway welcomes another revue, Jerome Robbins' Broadway, with another cast of young hopefuls. But everything else about this show is bigger, riskier and very late '80s. For one thing, its co-sponsor is a Japanese liquor firm. For another, it carries an all-time-high ticket price of $55. And the cost of its opening is $8 million, a thousand times that of The Straw Hat Revue...
...sold-out houses to break even, and its backers are audibly apprehensive. "Robbins has an economic interest too," says co-producer Bernard Jacobs, president of the Shubert Organization, "but artists are very peculiar. Finally, we are all in his hands." They are also in the hands of the '80s Broadway babies, raised on body mikes, synthesizers and musicals with no dance numbers. Will they care about a showman who hasn't staged a new show in 25 years...
...Broadway misses Robbins. For a decade or so after his abdication, the American musical was dominated by choreographer-directors in the Robbins mold: Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Tommy Tune. Today, though, Broadway is little more than a posh road stop for the British musical; the '80s' three signature smashes (Cats, Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera) were born in London. Jacobs tacitly acknowledges this when he proclaims Robbins "a genius, probably the genius of our time," then adds, "God pity me if Andrew Lloyd Webber hears that...