Dwight Blocker Bowers

Michael Kantor: What do you think is the most important thing for people to understand about the Broadway musical?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, I think it’s very important for people to think about the Broadway musical in terms of a way to be cathartic, to express emotions. It frees us so many ways to watch a musical. To feel the exultation, to feel the depression, to feel a sense of movement. These are things that we project ourselves mentally doing that we see visualized in a musical

Michael Kantor: What about the, where do you see a sort of running musical starting? What’s a good starting?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, it’s easy to see, although there are lots of influences throughout the 19th century, the fellow who brings it all together is Siegfeld. He certainly understands the romance of operetta, the raucousness of vaudeville and variety, and the sense of colloquialness of the musical comedy, and he pulls it all together in a spectacular package.

Michael Kantor: Great. Talk us through, you know, paint a picture of the Ziegfeld followers. Imagine seeing this show. That’s everything we think of now as these components of the Broadway News.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: When the curtain would rise on the Ziegfeld Follies, first and foremost you’d see spectacular settings, the like of which you’d never seen before done by Joseph Urban, shimmering with color and light, with a level of spectacle that we simply hadn’t codified before this So first of all the setting was gorgeous. Then we bring out the ladies of the ensemble. Not only were they beautiful to look at, in the positions that they were arranged The tableauxs were absolutely beautiful, and the costumes, the costumes were perfect by Lucille. There was a level of expertise on every imaginable facet that you hadn’t seen before. The in one performance of the ladies of the ensemble, the full stage spectacle of the production numbers, and the talents, although they were never above the title. The title always was the Ziegfeld Follies with these performers. Imagine an evening like the Zigfald Follys of 1919 where you’d hear and see Burt Williams doing a routine in blackface, but talking about Prohibition where he’d sing You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea, or you’d see Marilyn Miller in a recreation of a minstrel show performing to Mandy, or your you’d here Eddie Cantor doing the comedy material, the kinds of things that… We’d just gotten out of World War I, and he was making jokes about, I’ve got my captain working for me now.

Michael Kantor: Great. The music.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Although the music came from a lot of sources, Ziegfeld was very fortunate to form a partnership with Irving Berlin. Berlin did very well by Ziegfel, Ziegfelt did very by Berlin, and when you have a song like A Pretty Girl, like a melody, to sort of typify what’s going on on stage, the romance, the beauty that could never quite be real, and yet it was the beauty that you wish to attain.

Michael Kantor: Now, help us understand how these are all constituent elements of the Broadway musical that still, you know, if you go to a Broadway show now, you’re still going to, you know in some different measure perhaps, but see there’s girls, there’s the music. And it would only take a few years until the late 20s for Ziegfeld to pull all that together into a book show.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Absolutely. Well these songs, particularly the things that Berlin was writing, but the other members of the Ziegfeld Stable who were contributing to the music and the comedy sketches as well, they were showing us ourselves as perhaps we project ourselves to be. They were also defining us in many ways. And I think the musical in many way does the same thing today. They express that which we internalize but don’t say. That give us release to hear. The songs do express character, even if in the form of the review, they’re only in that one scene. They convey an emotion, they convey a feeling, they convey an atmosphere. And the language is a language that’s so accessible. These people sing as we think we would speak if we were singing the dialog. It’s not our sweet mystery of life. It is a colloquial statement instead.

Michael Kantor: What about the idea that, you know, we have to bear in mind when you think of the birth of the musical lit, whatever else you want to think about it, it’s about money in some sense too.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Absolutely, show business. There’s no business without the show, and there’s no show without the business. Absolutely. It’s predicated to make a dollar. And I think that is why the musical peaks and lulls a bit over the course of the 20th century, because when it ceases to be the blockbuster financially that it was at the beginning of the century, the level of productivity perhaps tapers off a bit. And we’re more selective in what we say. And we also are freed to try things, perhaps. Because the machine is a bit askew. We aren’t looking for the great financial profit. The experimentation that you see in the last 30 years in the musical theater would have never taken place when it was playing it safe by and large. And even though you stretch the formula, the formula was there.

Michael Kantor: Great. Give us some background on Flo Ziegfeld as a producer. Now, where does he come, he comes from a sort of interesting background of the, what’s up with Sam D’Alto?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: The joy of Ziegfeld is that he is his own best creation. When he was reasonably on his way, he had business cards printed up that said, Florence Ziegfel, impresario extraordinaire. So there was virtually no doubt that this man was either in any way modest or any way small time in what he was attempting to do. Coming from Chicago, coming from a largely academic background from his father’s background at least. He was an entrepreneur without equal, with the exception of Barnum, and you have the sense that Barnum and Buffalo Bill were his patron saints. Do it big, do it spectacular. He was, in many ways, the first 20th century figure who would later translate into the movie moguls. The concept of Louis B. Mayer, do big, expensive, and do it on time, that was Ziegfeld’s concept, by and large. He had a healthy understanding that artistic nudity read sex sells and it played an important part in everything that he did, whether you’re talking about Sandow in his G-string or whether you talk about the milk baths that his common law wife Anna Held took on stage or whether it had to do with the undraped beauties in the line. During the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, Ziegfeld makes his first mark, and he does so with a weightlifter, bodybuilder, and gorgeous physiqueed man named Sandow. Virtually took the fair by storm. Women were passing out by touching his muscles. He wore as little as possible to keep the censor out the door, and it was a perfect example of using physical beauty to sell an act.

Michael Kantor: And how does Ziegfeld go from promoting an exhibit like Sandow to the Broadway stage? What’s his sort of path? He gets a little education in Paris.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, Ziegfeld comes to New York City. Obviously, it’s at that time period at the beginning of the 20th century, as a god with theatrical activity. He gets his hands on a property called the Parlor Match. He’s looking for a leading lady. So he goes to Europe, and he finds her there, a Polish, Jewish entertainer of very modest beginnings named Anna Held, whose stage persona is the essence of Gaelic vivacity. She is more French. Than the French could ever presume to be. And through her influence and her presence in this stage piece called A Parlor Match, Siegfeld makes it big. The combination of the two, it’s not that Anna Hell is the most talented human being in the world, it is not that he is the greatest producer in the word, it the chemistry that they bring together, his sense of showmanship and her sense of vivacity. It’s magic on stage.

Michael Kantor: How does Hell, if you fill us in on how she becomes sort of a common wife, or they establish a relationship off the stage, helps prompt into the big venture?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: She was a wonderful, shall we say, mentor of taste for Siegfeld. On their periodic jaunts back to Europe, she would teach him about fashion. She would educate him in terms of the French musical, the English musical, the sense of style, and the naughtiness of it. Siegfield would take this influence, translate it into something for family audiences, just as Tony Pastor had done a generation earlier in making Vaudeville an American form. Turn it into enormous business.

Michael Kantor: How did the follies come about?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: The Follies came about chiefly because the Theatrical Syndicate, which was basically running New York Theater at the time, threw two fellows, Klaue and Erlanger, came to Ziegfeld with the idea of a summer entertainment and their need for one to be at the Jardin de Paris, which is a rooftop theater garden of sorts, atop the New York theater, and they asked Ziegfel to do it. He was an up-and-coming young producer. Certainly had an eye already for Polkertude, as we’ve seen with Anna Held. Why not? Perfect experience, perfect quick moment for him to pull together things he’d always wish to try with the review form that Anna Helt had sort of taught him about, and his own experience with Vaudeville, and launch it he did. Very successful in its run during the summer months. It toured, added to its cast a genuine star, Nora Bayes, and he was off and running as the leader in the producer of American Reviews.

Michael Kantor: What about the two, I was fishing for two other ideas, which is that Anna Held said, well maybe she could think about Foley-Bergère, and then there was this.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Oh yeah, Harry Smith, okay.

Michael Kantor: So, work those in, just think what, you know, Ziegfeld’s given this opportunity.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Ziegfeld’s given the opportunity to do a review and entertainment atop the New York Theater. And Anna Held suggests, well, there is the Folie Berger. That was the influence that certainly had led to her mystique, her persona on stage, their variety performances, the combination of music and beauty and comedy. And added to that, Ziegfeld. Friendly with Harry B. Smith, who is a forgotten name but was perhaps the most prolific librettist of his day. And Harry Smith was also a journalist. He wrote a news column, The Follies of the Day. Follie-Bergère, follies, perfect combination. And that’s really what it was. It was lighthearted, it was inconsequential, it WAS a folly. It might even have been to be seen a little mad as in the sense of the French word folie. But it was wildly entertaining. And the commitment that it asked its audience to make was basically the two hours. What you took out was not every song, not every joke, but a wonderful feeling. And I think it typified this sense of optimism that was taking place in America at that time. We’re at the dawn of a new century.

Michael Kantor: At the beginning of that century, there were pretty intense racial stereotypes. I mean, speak to it. There’s this sort of dynamic on Broadway. The European operetta with Princeton and far away stuff. And then you’ve got the American ethnic entertainments with the loudish Irishmen, the argumentative German, the conniving Jew. Tell us how there are those two camps and how they kind of fuse.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, certainly as you look at the beginning of the 20th century, you see all sorts of influences on the Broadway stage. Certainly you see the heavy debt to Europe and the operetta, obviously typified by the Mary Widow, but countless others. This was a musical theater that was aspirant. This was a musical theater that was some link between the Metropolitan. Hoy Paloy of the Broadway theater. This was a theater that one felt a little more intelligent for going to see. It was a heightened experience. On the other hand, it was also a world where we were driving very strong images of racial stereotypes, primarily because this was an ethnic crossroads. There was constant collisions of culture. It was never a melting pot. It was constant borrowing and appropriating of cultures. In their rawest stage at this time, whether it had to do with the dialect comedian of the knockabout German comedy of Weber and Fields, whether had to with the heavy stereotypes of Harrigan and Hart and the Irish world, or whether it has to do African-American and the descendant of minstrelsy. All of it was there together. It was like a wonderful and yet scary menu where you saw all of humanity march before you, but stereotyped. There was as much stereotype to the types of characters that you saw in Lehar as there were the more human characters that you so of the street culture.

Michael Kantor: Now, tie that together. Ultimately, you don’t have to be specific, but the Broadway musical is going to just throw all the high and low and comedy and music together, and that’s what we think of in the Broadway.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Ultimately what happens with the Broadway musical is that it borrows from everything and it creates something new out of that borrowing, out of the wonderful mixture that’s taking place. The colloquialness that we get from Vaudeville, the dialect comedy that becomes the more accessible lyrics, the romance of the operetta, the lushness of the melody. It all comes together in the Broadway musical as we see its evolution in this very pivotal 20 years between 1900 and 1920. And after the end of World War I, we are starting to define ourselves as a country. We’re starting also to define the American musical as one of the major forces in our artistic expression.

Michael Kantor: So what is commonly considered, though contested, the first Broadway musical, and how did it happen?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Although certainly, first is a dangerous word. Commonly accepted is The Black Crook as the first Broadway musical. It’s certainly the first theatrical work to use music, dance, drama that shows an enormous profit and there is the spine of the American musical. The ability to create something that aspires to art that also turns around and gives you a nice profit as a result. As we understand it, it was based on a play which was largely like the Faust legend, Goethe’s work and de Vrijschoots. And it was written by a playwright who has not entered the annals as one of the great characters. In fact, I find it very interesting that his name is Charles M. Barris, M. Baris, because indeed I think if we read the play today, if we tried to do it, we’d all be embarrassed a bit. It attempted to meld classical dance, formal ballet, with the rawest of melodrama. Now, what made it aspirant, shall we say? What made it aspire to a degree of art was because the ballerinas and the ballernos that were part of the narrative were French. It was a French troupe that had come to perform in the United States, in New York, only to find themselves without a theater. The melding of Even then, terribly dated melodrama and the girls in pink tights produced something quite remarkable and something like we’d never seen before. It was a combination of naughtiness, a combination of romance, and it gave us something new, especially right after the Civil War, as we were really beginning to start to define ourselves.

Michael Kantor: How about helping us understand that if anything lasts from the black crook, it’s basically the idea of the leg or the girls. I mean, it sort of brings us back to Ziegfeld and what he showed us. Exactly. If there’s any lasting thing, it’s got to be that.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Exactly. The black group will never yield a revival in terms of our interest in its music, our interest its story. What we will remember are those wonderful photographs of the dancers and the fact that they showed a great deal of leg and a fair amount of bosom and suddenly created a type, created an archetype for the musical theater that Ziegfeld would capture, and immortalize in glorifying the American girl in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Michael Kantor: What was 10-pin alley and how is it tied to brook?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Tin Panelli is really two things. On one level, it’s a term that means popular music, music that isn’t European art song, that isn’t the parlor song, that doesn’t deal with a degree of nostalgia for a past but the here and the now. It literally would go from perhaps the third person, which we would see in the parlors songs of Europe, to the individual. It was an immediate expression of self, and that was the power of it. As a district, it’s an area in Manhattan that would grow up next to the theater industry. It would supply the music, it would supply people to create the music for the vaudevillians who needed material to perform. Not only did they perform this material in Manhattan theaters, but throughout the country. The demand was voracious because vaudeville was our chief source of entertainment.

Michael Kantor: So how does this, how can Broadway not have happened without the, that team?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: I think not, because the parallel industry… I think Broadway certainly wouldn’t have happened, certainly not the musical would have happened to the degree that it did, simply because the supply of the immediacy of Tin Pan Alley, the need for creating multitudes of material, is probably more that’s awful, that we never want to hear again, than was good. But what was good was so very good. And we had the opportunity to explore.

Michael Kantor: What was her great talent?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: I think Fanny Brice’s chief strengths were an ability to make you laugh uncontrollably and then she could turn around and make you cry. She was a tragedian of song, but she was a hysterical comedian with the right kind of material and certainly strongly inflected with Yiddish humor, even if it was somewhat acquired rather than her birthright.

Michael Kantor: Where did she sort of hone her comic chops?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Fanny Brice got her schooling, at least theatrically, in the world of burlesque. Now, this was a world of low comedy, rather than undraped females at this time. It was the era of the turkey bladder hit, rather strongly against the face, the slapstick and physical humor. It mattered less that you understood what she said or what the comics said around her, than how she moved, what the physical reaction was, the concept of the skull, the look, the double take. That was the language that she learned, and she certainly used it throughout all of her career.

Michael Kantor: Make that a broader point, if you would, that, you know, what the earliest comics in the Broadway musical comedy are people who have acquired this ability to be funny, not necessarily even through language.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, as you think of New York City as the hub of the entertainment industry at the beginning of the 20th century and certainly the beginnings where the musical would go, with the comedy element that would play such a role in the development of this form, what you had were comics that were types. They developed business. Their business was broad and physical. It mattered less that you understood the Irish dialect of Harrigan and Hart or the German knockabout comedy of Webber and Field. Then you understood what the physicality of their jokes were. And they were playing for an audience that would not of all spoken English anyway. So physical comedy plays a very large role in the evolution of this form. It was broad, it was wildly entertaining, and probably seriously stereotypical at one level, but incredibly funny.

Michael Kantor: You mentioned before, it serves as a sort of shorthand for audiences. It wasn’t about plot development or what have you.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, the type of comedy that you saw on the New York stage and in America at this time period in professional theater was sort of like the descendant of the Commedia dell’arte, the business, the lotsy that they did, that which you began to depend upon from either that performer or that type of performer. It became a shorthand where they communicated their comedy. You didn’t need words, you didn’t set up, you didn’t need character. You just needed the delivery, the reaction, and the bang. And that’s where the lamps were.

Michael Kantor: Great. Why would Ziegfeld want Fanny Brice in his show?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: It’s very interesting to find Ziegfeld as Fanny Brice’s chief supporter when she represented very little of what we thought and what we understand to be he sought in his concept. Let’s go back. It’s interesting to see Fanny Bryce as a Ziegfel star and a Zygfel discovery when you think that Ziegfels mantra for the American woman was beauty, silent beauty. And here was a garrulous certainly not by any standards, physically beautiful woman whose humor was all based on the pratfall, the wide eyes, the raucous delivery. Although in retrospect, for those who knew Fanny Bryce, offstage she was one of the most elegant women in the world, but she translated her persona, this character that she created, whether it was Rose of Washington Square. Or any other variants on the urban rose concept into one of the funniest personas we’ve ever seen on stage. And what I think Ziegfeld was very interested in was she was sort of one of a kind. Women comics, per se, were not as plentiful and certainly not as versatile as Fanny Bryce was that she could sing a ballad like Manon, My Man. Then she could turn around and do, Becky is back in the ballet, is hysterical. This is enormous versatility. He got two for one with Fanny Brice, and Siegfeld was never one to miss a bargain.

Michael Kantor: So again, why would Ziegfeld want Fanny Brewer?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: On one level, she is the strangest choice he could have possibly made. She’s certainly no silent beauty, no mannequin who’s just standing as a statue on stage. On the other hand, she was a rather frantic comedian. But what you got with Franny Brice was two levels. You got a wonderful singer who could break your heart, and you got an hysterical comedian. Siegfeld got a two-for-one with her. She was a sine qua non. He knew a bargain when he saw one.

Michael Kantor: Cohan, why is George M. Cohan so important to the development of the

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Cohen is important because he develops an American character type for the American musical. The tough little upstart with rather strong ethnic origins, who succeeds, who triumphs, particularly in little Johnny Jones because the triumph is over England. It’s over our origin. He triumphs over a country that we were in awe of. Certainly Gilbert and Sullivan still rang in our ears. And here he was creating a character. That was recreating what our ideas were about the American musical.

Michael Kantor: Where does, uh, give me a little bit more background on where Cohen comes from and how Broadway will sort of be the end all for him and so forth.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well again, when you think of Cohen, here is a character that invented himself, and that’s important to the American musical pretty much up until now. It allows you to create a persona that is larger than life and more energetic than perhaps someone that you’d want to encounter on the street. Cohen begins his career touring the country with his family. He’s born into a theatrical family, certainly claims the 4th of July is his birthdate, although other records indicate otherwise. Child star, and I think has every earmark of what is wrong with child performers in his development, full of confidence, to the point that he works his way to Broadway and not only stars in the show, but writes, directs them, and probably sweeps up afterwards. This is someone who is totally of the theater and whose expression is something like we haven’t heard before. His musicals do make sense in terms of their stories. But the songs they sing are in everyday language. Not only can you hum this music, you can say these lyrics very easily. And I think that is his greatest gift.

Michael Kantor: He also did something, I think, in focusing on Broadway and sort of extolling, you know, every other song being about Broadway and America. He sort of made Broadway into something… I don’t know that it wasn’t, but he indelibly linked those patriotism and Broadway and…

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, he starts the idea that the American musical mythologizes America, and therefore New York, and therefore Broadway. He speaks of a world that we wish it to be. And at the beginning of the 20th century, the musical was a perfect expression for that. It was all about optimism, because the country was all about a sense of finding itself, of giving away its allegiance to European roots, of making something that was our own. And what Cohen was trying to do was, for the most part, promote America. He was a perfect commercial for what was going on in America at that time period. You didn’t have to even know where Broadway was when you heard Give My Regards to Broadway. You knew it was a pretty special place.

Michael Kantor: Create the musical from European influences.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, when you think of Broadway at the time period that Cohen was starting out as an author and director and actor and general factotum, Broadway was largely being dominated by the European influences, whether it was Von Suppe, whether was the style of the great diva like Lillian Russell. We were transported to other places that never existed by and large in these operettas. They spoke in heightened tones that we would never speak in our homes. What Cohan was doing was making the settings intensely American, or at least the settings for his characters intensely American. They were rough. They were upstarts. They were ambitious. They were the Horatio Alger, get rich quick, I will succeed myth, turned into stage presences. And the songs they sang were full of energy. This was not a reflective romantic moment. This was I will get and I will have and I will be. I will be there ere long.” It was all about finding your destination, finding your place, and winning.

Michael Kantor: Coney had never really… Did anything for film that we have, so how can we best get a sense of his style?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: It is regrettable that Cohen never captured on film the kind of energy that he conveyed on stage. But when you look at what Jimmy Cagney does in the biographical movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, you get that energy. The dancing on the side of the proscenium, the sharp little character, the energy, the pugnaciousness, it’s there. And you get the sense of what Cohen was trying to convey. The all-American character is there.

Michael Kantor: What’s Victor Herbert’s big contribution, and you said it against, say, a phone’s layer. Thank you very much for your time, and I’ll see you next time.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: At the beginning of the 20th century, Broadway was still in love with the melodies of Europe. Very much so. The romance, what we aspired to is something like a higher level of art than we saw in vaudeville. Franz Leher, the Mary Widow, Vonsupé, the kinds of music that made us feel sort of a heightened degree of intelligence, sort of like light classical music for want of a better term. Victor Herbert comes along and largely Americanizes this sound. Now, Irish by birth and a trained cellist, and yet his real career lies in writing for the musical theater. He creates relentlessly beautiful flows of melody. Sometimes these are for stories that are pure fantasy, sometimes they’re rooted in historical fact, like the Irish Revolution and the musical Eileen, but if Herbert did He created a musical foundation for the American musical. A legacy that would be picked up and taken to another level by Kern, by Rogers, and perhaps even by Sondheim today.

Michael Kantor: Great. Just very briefly talk about how Times Square emerges and how

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Oh gosh, that’s a tough one. How does Times Square emerge?

Michael Kantor: There’s a business here, a real estate business, an owning theater business, and it’s one that maybe the jewel is the New Amsterdam.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Oh, right. Oh, that’s easy. Okay. Well, certainly, if you think of the beginnings of Broadway and of the musical, Times Square plays an important role in that. You don’t need to look any further than the New Amsterdam Theater with all its splendor, all its glamor, the beauty of what was presented both on the stage and the structure that surrounded it. With the theatrical syndicate and It’s monopolizing of what went on in the Broadway theater. You have two upstarts. You have the Schubert brothers, also creating their own dynasty of real estate of theaters and legacy of theatrical performances. And suddenly we have a locus for entertainment on Times Square.

Michael Kantor: Um, Jerome Kerr. It’s sort of a little bit, because he’s so great it’s a little hard to pinpoint, but how would you say he’s important to the development of the musical? Don’t go to the princess shows. Keep us before there.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Jerome Kern is an interesting link and a vital link between the European sounds of operetta of Leihard and certainly the Americanized versions that we see and hear in Herbert and the evolution of an American, a modern musical. By no means is he a poor immigrant, he’s a wealthy, for the most part, second generation American, German American by birth. Represents a level of conservatory training that we’ve not seen from the Tin Panalli School of Songwriters. His aspiration is constantly to improve his skills as a writer of music, and he goes through many of the similar trials and errors and successes that the Tin-Panalli artists do. But Kern seems to constantly challenge himself with everything he’s writing, whether it has to do with the interpolations he’s written for various reviews and such. His trip to Europe, to England, to contribute to reviews there, which curiously enough gets him a reputation in America as being perhaps an Englishman, to his step into thinking of a musical theater that actually can tell a coherent story through its songs in an intimate way. Not only in an imminent way, a generation later in the 1920s, he would take this nucleus of ideas and turn it into the great American epic, Showboat.

Michael Kantor: Kern in the Cinderella musical, he also sort of seizes upon something very popular and takes that to the hilt.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, the Cinderella musical sort of dominates that era between 1918 and 1928, 29, when largely the woman is coming into her own as a character in the American musical. No longer is she either a snappy soubrette or a faraway princess, but is largely an independent character. Now, certainly the musical Irene. Gives us a sense of where that character can go. We have a nice little Irish upstart who becomes a great success in an urban environment. But what Kern does, largely in collaboration with Ziegfeld, certainly on Sally, and Marilyn Miller, who plays a major role in the evolution of this character, is turn that character into something really memorable, primarily through his songs. The want song evolves. It’s a major theme in the American musical. You can find one in every generation in every major musical that evolves, whether it’s Wouldn’t It Be Loverly, or in this instance, Sally’s Look for the Silver Lining. They’re defining themselves. And it’s the sense of why women are going to Europe to marry a princess at this time. It’s why you have a sense of liberation going on, by Women are entering the workforce, perhaps not to the level they did in World War II. But certainly our contenders.

Michael Kantor: 1919 is a sort of interesting year. I think maybe it’s the greatest of all. But it’s also a year that I want to point to as defining where we are now with union. Help sort of place us in that year briefly.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, 1919 on Broadway is pivotal in many ways, good and bad. We’re beginning to see Irving Berlin come into his own with the Ziegfeld Follies and writing a number of songs that will define that form. Irene is there as a musical, certainly giving Edith Day the best role she’ll ever have in the musical theater and evolving a type. But the Follys is also interesting because it’s involved heavily in the unionization and the strike of that union. Shutting down Broadway for a while and forcing it to think about the business and The people who create that business as well as the art that they’re making. Yes, they delight us But they also deserve the kind of care that we’re also applying to other levels of business So we’re reminded as much as we’re having flights of fantasy when we sit down in those theater seats That first and foremost, this is American industry Not only should we be proud of it, we’ve got to nurture it. We’ve got take care of these people who create that magic, and that is something that happens in 1919. We’re cognizant of that fact.

Michael Kantor: Lay out just, you know, super clearly that 1919 is the year that actors equity, union, you know, there’s unions, right, the theater business which you went into there is unionized and that’s going to have ramifications up to today certainly give us you know there were strikes and there was pushback and there were shows like you know the sort of fake shows but just place us in in that sort of just that specific

Dwight Blocker Bowers: In 1919, actors had a certain degree of unrest, no protection for wages, certainly no protection for rehearsals, and no assurance that that job would be there tomorrow, hence the foundation of actors’ equity. This was earth-shaking. This was a union for performers. These were delightful people. Why did they need a union? Of course they needed a union. They needed protection. Shows would close because of the actor’s strike for the formation of this union. It would virtually change how the Broadway theater, and most particularly the Broadway musical, would evolve. Suddenly, there were actors’ rights, something that probably would have completely shocked Lillian Russell to learn that she might have had. Suddenly, we were creating a generation that were aware of the craft that they were practicing, of the contribution they were making to American society. The same as those people who built a railroad. They were building the American character on stage.

Michael Kantor: Why was it only Ziegfeld who could imagine shit?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: For all of his playing it safe with the Follies, Ziegfeld was also something of a chance taker. In his evolution of the review, he raised our expectations of what could happen, and therefore our sense of expectation of the glamor, the integrity of what went on in the FOLLIES was a logical precursor to his reaching for what Showboat became. Showboat was all about taking chances, but it was also a big American story.

Michael Kantor: It’s going to ultimately hurt later.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Ziegfeld always had the Barnum aspiration for gargantuan productions. Showboat was promising to be the great American epic. It had everything, variety entertainment, large casts of both African Americans and Caucasian Americans on the stage, casts of over a hundred, multiple sets, multiple eras to convey here, cost levels. Probably that would have staggered virtually anyone else in the theater at that time period. And although there is some documentation that shows that he doubts certain efforts of its evolution, such as he becomes concerned, is Hammerstein the right person to write the script? Should we bring in Dorothy Donnelly or someone like that who was involved in operetta? Nonetheless, I think he knew that this would be both the beginning and the end an era, both for him and for the musical. Suddenly the musical could say something with an integrity that it hadn’t quite said before, thanks to Kern, thanks to Hammerstein, thanks the performers, but mostly thanks to Ziegfeld who made it possible. But it was a hard act to follow. And the cost that Showboat involved that Ziegfel translated to his later productions, it was literally the end of his era. Suddenly, there wasn’t the cash to present great American epics, and with the encroachment of the Depression, the Siegfeld era becomes a memory, a good memory, but nonetheless in wait for another generation to pick up that splendor.

Michael Kantor: Talk us through the crash and how, you know, according to Billy Burks, it just breaks Ziegfeld. He’s a broken man. I think, uh, I don’t know if Patricia Ziegfield-Stevenson told us, but he dies, I think two million and dad or something.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Ziegfeld never lived small, so therefore with the effects of the crash, one feels that there is a disbelief that it will really stop him, continues to spend money, to the end, dies heavily in debt. In fact, Billy Burke will sell the title, The Ziegfield Follies, to Schubert, who will then produce their own versions of The Zigfeld Follie for another generation. In many ways mythologize Siegfeld even more. Their arch-rival, Florin Siegfield, inadvertently the Schubert’s will create a monument to this who created the basis for the American musical. Although he dies in complete debt. Largely a forgotten character because with the depression the focus will shift. Film will become the outlet for the American musical for a while because Broadway is largely shuddered or struggling. Ziegfeld will remain the name on a theater for a while. And curiously enough, how do we know him best? In the MGM film that’s roughly based on his life. Suddenly, someone else did what Ziegfelt had done all his life, somebody else glorified him and made him a legend.

Michael Kantor: Um. Describe the Exodus to Hollywood after the crash. Everyone got this, right? And yet they meet with different, sort of, different end results.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Well, the lure of Hollywood, particularly when it was tough to get a show on Broadway, was very enticing to practically every writer. To people whose success was very limited, it was a wonderful new oasis. People like Harry Warren, the composer, who had had minimal success writing for the theater, suddenly became the voice of the American musical. On the other hand, creative artists like Rogers and heart go to Hollywood. Rogers seems a fair bit more content with the atmosphere than Hart does. They have limitless opportunity, sorry, Rogers and Hart go to Hollywood and they seemingly have limit less opportunity with no results. What they have to show for their efforts are largely a lot of songs that are on the cutting room floor of films or the musicals, Love Me Tonight and Hallelujah, I’m a Bum, which are at best, wonderful footnotes in the evolution of the American musical. In other words, they’re wonderful moments, but they don’t spawn other types of work. This was not, for the most part, an atmosphere that encouraged subtlety in writing. This was for big screens, for big personalities, and for big emotions.

Michael Kantor: Great, let’s go back to a couple of those big personalities. And we can’t think of Broadway evolution and the 20s in particular without Al Jolson.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Very interesting with Hollywood, point to make. Very interesting, with Hollywood when you see two great stars, Ziegfeld’s Marilyn Miller and Al Jolson both going to Hollywood largely at the same time. Miller will make film versions rather prettily of her stage works and then fade completely. Jolton on the other hand not just because of the revolutionary effects of the jazz singer becomes a white hot vision on the screen. This is a vivid personality that matches the lack of subtlety, by and large, that the early musical does require. It’s a diamond-hard talent that glows very much on the screen, as does Eddie Cantor. When you think of an entire career ago, he was a Ziegfeld star. Throughout the 30s and the early 40s, he is the personification of the comic on through Samuel Goldwyn films. Probably both will rise to much greater levels of notoriety, stardom, success through their film work than they would have had they continued on the stage.

Michael Kantor: So in a way, Hollywood is the ideal showcase, not for writers and composers, but performers.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Performers who somehow understood what the lens of the camera could do. Curiously enough, Jolson made you feel when you were watching him in the theater, as I understand it, as if he was singing directly to you. So therefore, the lens at the camera was perfect to translate that kind of a persona to a wide audience. The same was true of Cantor, by and large. Curiously enough, performers like Fanny Brice and Marilyn Miller didn’t make the same transition, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the vehicles that they had. It was simply that magic that happens between the camera and the performer. Jolson and Kanner sure had it.

Michael Kantor: So how did the second generation of Broadway show folk differ from the first?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: The first generation in the 20th century Broadway creators were finding their voice. Sometimes it was by design, sometimes it was totally by accident. They were inventing forms, they were inventin’ archetypes by and large. We were creating types of performers that would influence performers in generations to come. Types of writing that would influence writing in generations come. The second generation certainly caught up in the speed and the energy. Of the 1920s and the 1930s. The next generation, the generation that follows these individuals that are sort of finding the forms, finding the models, largely are capturing the energy of the city, capturing the urban energy that’s all around us, the speed of jazz, the urgency that comes with that. They’re forming a language. Now we’ve evolved colloquial speech over the 19th century. We’ve had ethnic dialects influence us. We’ve had folk culture influence us. We’ve that high and low culture influence us, but suddenly, particularly in the Gershwins, I like to reach into a song like, ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I found you, as the expression that Herbert and Rita Johnson Young would say in 1910. But George and Ira Gershun would say, it’s wonderful. And it would come out of the voices of the estares, who would be the last word in modernity and flippancy. A commitment to a certain amount, but it was an emotion of sophistication. We’d grown. We’d grow in complexity in how we expressed ourselves.

Michael Kantor: Back to sort of the transition from New York to Hollywood, who was Busby Berkeley and how did he take this idea that took from your book that, you know, the audience there’s two eyes and the camera has one.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Busby Berkeley had had some career on the Broadway stage. He’d worked with Herbert Fields and with Richard Rogers and Lawrence Hart on a couple of musicals and had had success as a dance director because the term choreographer hadn’t been coined yet. But when he went to Hollywood first for Samuel Goldwyn and made the film version of Whoopi with Eddie Cantor, he discovered the effects of the camera. In fact, Goldwyn encouraged him, walk around, learn what happens on a soundstage. Learn what the cameraman does. Learn what lighting designers do. Learn how that camera translates the experience into something for the audience. It’s very different from what you do on the stage. That one eye allows you to totally focus what an audience will see. There’s no random choice on their part. You’re the dictator. And indeed, that was the case with Berkeley. Whether it was by design or whether it was by what was in the air. He was adapting the… Ballet mechanists that were going on with Russian constructivism, by and large. I’m sure it was not intended to be intended. There was no intentional involvement there at all. He knew nothing from the Meyerholz and the Wachtankos. Busby Berkeley, with virtually no serious dance training, had done some very nice work on Broadway, worked with Rodgers and Hart on a couple of shows, and had done reasonably well-received work. Nothing spectacular. But nicely staged dances. When he makes the journey to California, he revolutionizes what happens on the screen. Suddenly his vision is through the camera. Suddenly the fantasies that he stages, by and large, could only happen on the the screen, but those fantasies could have never happened without the beginnings that he had in the Broadway theater.

Michael Kantor: Al Jolson in blackface. Why is it that blackface is just so popular? I mean, how can we understand that? That here’s this guy who sort of just becomes, is it, that he’s becoming larger in the life and that’s just the mask?

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Part of it is the freeing of the stereotype that we have already a preconceived notion of what blackface can do for a performer in that it reduces him to a certain degree of a single emotion, of a single reaction. That’s the pejorative side of it. Like the Kabuki mask, it also frees the performer to be wildly expressive, as in the case of Al Jolson. Without that mask. Particularly when we see him try to inhabit a character. Without that mask, when we seem try to inhabit a characters on film, he’s never quite as vibrant as when he’s wearing the black face. It’s as if it frees him. It allows him to create a persona that perhaps he doesn’t have the confidence to achieve without that makeup.

Michael Kantor: How bad was it? You know, the reason everyone’s going to Hollywood is 25,000 actors are idle. Two out of five theaters are dark. Just, you know, post-crash. And then people like Siegfeld and the big producers, Cohan and Bluefield, they’re not, you now, there’s no capital to invest.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: Indeed, there is no capital to invest after there is a result. I’m losing it, I’m sorry.

Michael Kantor: No, it’s the bright light.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: All right.

Michael Kantor: I have to decrypt.

Dwight Blocker Bowers: After the crash, there’s no money to produce on Broadway. Suddenly those backers that were standing in line to invest in a Sally or a showboat or a Follies aren’t there anymore. If those that didn’t jump out of windows are desperately trying to keep their acts together by selling apples on streets. And the kind of cash that it took to produce a musical was only evident in Hollywood, by and large, at this time. The studios had discovered sound. Sound needed. Voices. Voices needed music, primary color, because indeed the playback equipment pretty much allowed music to communicate much better than words.