Word: broadway
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hilda Crane (20th Century-Fox) was originally a series of short stories about an aging and raddled Manhattan career girl who tries to settle down to the straight and narrow in her old home town. In 1950 Author Samson Raphaelson adapted his theme to a Broadway play, starring Jessica Tandy as the lady who finds an overdose of sleeping pills easier to take than smalltown living...
Chapman, who is expected to have a great deal of responsibility in the organization of Harvard drama, is the co-author of "Billy Budd," a drama based on a story by Herman Melville, which appeared on Broadway a few years ago. L.O. Coxe was the other author...
...Most Happy Fella (based on Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted; book, lyrics and music by Frank Loesser) is Frank Loesser's first Broadway show since Guys and Dolls. In style more like an opera than a straight Broadway show, it achieves opera's invariable prime aim: its music stands splendidly foremost. In Broadway terms, The Most Happy Fella boasts an exuberantly rich and varied score that ranges from perky show tunes and bright snatches flung over the shoulder to full-throated romantic duets and choruses that flood the theater...
...then-shine California romance of an aging Italian winegrower and the young waitress he has courted by mail-is at its best where it is lightest or most lightly lyrical. There is a male quartet cocking a very male eye in Standing on the Corner; there is the sheer Broadway frolicking of Big D, with its salute to Dallas; the gay lesson-in-English of Happy to Make Your Acquaintance; the Verdi-gurdy high spirits of Abbondanza and Sposalizio. But there is also the lyrical How Beautiful the Days, with its touch of Bellini-like sweetness, and the quick lilt...
...only things that are suitable are Baritone Robert Weede in the title role, Susan Johnson in a comedy role, much of Joseph Anthony's lively staging and the best of Jo Mielziner's sets. But in working toward something more varied and spacious than the standard Broadway musical, Fella at its worst is a misstep forward; while the music itself is among Broadway's most resplendent in years...