Irving Berlin on Broadway

FAIN: FA-51620-05

Jeffrey Magee
Trustees of Indiana University (Bloomington, IN 47405-7000)

Irving Berlin's career as a musical theater composer forms a microcosm of Broadway's development in vaudeville, revues, and musical comedy over more than half a century. My book, under contract for Yale University Press, traces Berlin's contributions to the genre using a wide range of primary source material only recently made available at the New York Public Library and Library of Congress. Integrating song and script analysis in dramatic and historical context, the book explores the contemporaneity of Berlin's shows, the features that distinguish his songwriting from his peers, and the ways in which his work might be construed as a distinctively American Jewish contribution.

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