Multi-hyphenate Tony winner Harvey Fierstein recounts his storied career from Brooklyn community theater to the Broadway stage in I Was Better Last Night. He also candidly recalls his personal struggles along the way, including an eccentric nonconforming childhood and the tumultuous early years of the AIDS crisis. Though enduring decades of addiction and despair, Fierstein ultimately triumphed, earning acclaim for shows such as Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage aux Folles, Hairspray, Fiddler on the Roof, and Kinky Boots in an astonishingly colorful and meaningful life.
Bernard F. Dick builds on his previous book, That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical, and traces the career of Darryl F. Zanuck in The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck. Beginning with The Jazz Singer (1927) and 42nd Street (1933), Zanuck revolutionized the movie musical in a career that took him from Warner Bros. to his own Twentieth Century-Fox. This is the first book devoted to the producer’s profound impact on the genre and his role in nurturing the careers of such musical stars as Shirley Temple, Betty Grable, and Marilyn Monroe.
Robert W. Schneider and Shannon Agnew have edited a collection of guest essays that explore the creation and impact of Fifty Key Stage Musicals. This round-up of landmark shows that have altered the landscape of musical theater ranges from The Black Crook (1866), often identified as the first musical, to Tony winner Dear Evan Hansen (2016). Contributors include musical luminaries Stephen Mo Hanan, Rupert Holmes, Bruce Kimmel, and Bill Russell as well as noted musical theater critics and historians Peter Filichia, Thomas S. Hischak, Scott Miller, and Rick Pender.
In his memoir Facing the Music, music director and arranger David Loud recounts his “wildly entertaining and deeply poignant trek through the wilderness of his childhood and the edge-of-your-seat drama of a career on, in, under, and around Broadway,” including his struggles with Parkinson’s and his triumphs with an extraordinary cast of theater legends that includes Kander & Ebb, Angela Lansbury, Chita Rivera, Roger Rees, Marin Mazzie, Scott Ellis, Bock & Harnick, Garth Drabinsky, and Barbara Cook, among others. It is a remarkable love letter to musical theater.