" Anna Held (1870?-1918), a petite woman with an hourglass figure, was America's most popular musical comedy star during the two decades preceding World War I. In the colorful world of New York theater during La Belle ?poque, she epitomized everything that was glamorous, sophisticated, and suggestive about turn-of-the-century Broadway. Overcoming an impoverished life as an orphan to become a music-hall star in Paris, Held rocketed to fame in America. From 1896 to 1910, she starred in hit after hit and quickly replaced Lillian Russell as the darling of the theatrical world. The first wife of legendary producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Held was the brains and inspiration behind his Follies and shared his knack for publicity. Together, they brought the Paris scene to New York, complete with lavish costumes and sets and a chorus of stunningly beautiful women, dubbed ""The Anna Held Girls."" While Held was known for a champagne giggle as well as for her million-dollar bank account, there was a darker side to her life. She concealed her Jewish background and her daughter from a previous marriage. She suffered through her two husbands' gambling problems and Ziegfeld's blatant affairs with showgirls. With the outbreak of fighting in Europe, Held returned to France to support the war effort. She entertained troops and delivered medical supplies, and she was once briefly captured by the German army. Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway reveals one of the most remarkable women in the history of theatrical entertainment. With access to previously unseen family records and photographs, Eve Golden has uncovered the details of an extraordinary woman in the vibrant world of 1900s New York.

Gary Morecambe writes: `David J. Hindle is an author and social historian with a particular interest in the genre of music hall and the history of the railways. In this, his latest book, he flags up parallels to be drawn between the origins of railways and music hall. This is an original concept, notwithstanding that long before the age of the automobile, it was the railways that conveyed audiences and performers to the music halls that evolved to become variety theatres. I look no further than my father's experiences to illustrate the point: `A second class train ride between Birmingham and Coventry in 1940 is not the most obvious starting point for the best loved double act in British comedy history. World War Two was well underway in 1940, but not for Morecambe and Wise. Fourteen year old Eric Bartholomew and his best friend Ernie Wiseman were travelling that day with my paternal grandmother, Eric's mum and mentor, Sadie Bartholomew. The star-struck teenagers had been performing in a touring youth theatre as solo acts. As usual the boys were over-excited after the show, and going through their Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy impressions. Sadie, who was trying to sleep, made a suggestion that would change showbiz history for ever. `Why don't you two stop fooling around and put your minds to something else. Why not form a double act of your own?.' For over twenty years Morecambe and Wise learned their craft in Britain's variety theatres whilst travelling extensively throughout the country. When variety effectively died and many theatres went permanently dark in the 1950/60s, they switched to television spectaculars, which were enjoyed by millions throughout the world. The profusely illustrated narrative will offer something more than mere reading enjoyment. David's enthusiasm and expertise on music hall history is unbounded, and, in railway nomenclature, I give this publication the green light.'

A heart-warming nostalgia memoir from a member of the world famous dance troupe, The Tiller Girls. Based in London in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Irene's story will transport readers back to a more innocent, simple way of life. This is the story of a little girl who loved to dance. Growing up in London in the 1930s, dancing was so much more to Irene than just a hobby. It was her escape and it took her off into another world away from the harsh realities of life. A fairytale world away from the horrors of WW2, from the grief of losing her father and missing her mother who she didn't see for three years while she was drafted to help with the war effort. And far away from her cold-hearted grandparents who treated her like an inconvenience. Finally it led to her winning a place as a Tiller Girl; the world's most famous dance troupe known for their 32-and-a-half high kicks a minute and precise, symmetrical routines. For four years she opened and closed the show at the prestigious London Palladium and performed on stage alongside huge stars such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Judy Garland. It was a strange mixture of glamour and bloody hard work but it was certainly never dull. And being a Tiller Girl also gave Irene the opportunity to see firsthand the devastating effects of WW2, both here and abroad. Heart-warming, enlightening and wonderfully uplifting, Irene's evocative story will transport readers back to a time when every town and holiday resort had several theatres and when dance troupes like The Tiller Girls were the epitome of glitz and glamour.

In the mid-1970s, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Andy Kaufman, Richard Lewis, Robin Williams, Elayne Boosler, Tom Dreesen, and several hundred other shameless showoffs and incorrigible cutups from all across the country migrated en masse to Los Angeles, the new home of Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show." There, in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams and laughter, they created an artistic community unlike any before or since. It was Comedy Camelot--but it couldn't last.

William Knoedelseder, then a cub reporter covering the scene for the "Los Angeles Times," was there when the comedians--who were not paid for performing--tried to change the system and incidentally tore apart their own close-knit community. In "I'm Dying Up Here" he tells the whole story of that golden age, of the strike that ended it, and of how those days still resonate in the lives of those who were there.

A massive international celebrity, at fifty-three Kevin Nealon thought he had it all. But like every other overindulged superstar, the perpetually insatiable Nealon wanted more: a little addition that drooled, burped, and pooped (no, not a Pomeranian).

In Yes, You're Pregnant, but What About Me? Nealon courageously reveals the truth about confronting first-time dadhood at an age when most fathers are packing their kids off to college. In hilariously vivid detail, he carries the reader through all the emotional stages of pregnancy--discomfort, denial, hunger, exhaustion, self-consciousness, hungrier, confusion, crankiness, not-quite-as-hungry-but-still-craving-something, sweatiness, covered in cookie crumbs--while addressing the major worries that fathers everywhere have been dealing with for centuries: Can I duct-tape a crib together? How often can I reuse a disposable diaper? What if the baby looks like me and not my wife?

1920s Cairo: singers were pressing hit records, dramatic troupes were springing up and cabarets were packed - a counterculture was on the rise. In bars, hash-dens and music halls, people of all backgrounds came together as a passionate group of artists captivated Egyptian society. Of these performers, Cairo's biggest stars were female, and they asserted themselves on the stage like never before. Two of the most famous troupes were run by women; Badia Masabni's dancehall became the hottest nightspot in town; pioneer of Egyptian cinema Aziza Amir made her stage debut; and legendary singer Oum Kalthoum first rose to fame. It is these women, who knew both the opportunities and prejudices that this world offered, who best reveal this cosmopolitan and raucous city's secrets. Midnight in Cairo tells the thrilling story of Egypt's interwar nightlife and entertainment industry through the lives of its pioneering women. Introducing an eccentric cast of characters, it brings to life a world of revolutionary ideas and provocative art - one which laid the foundations of Arab popular culture today. It is a story of modern Cairo as we have never heard it before.

The dual biography of the great British comedy double-act and the rise and fall of mass audience television by the respected biographer of Cary Grant . Following the success of Cary Grant - A Class Apart, Graham McCann has now created an intricate portrait of Eric Morcambe and Ernie Wise, possibly the most famous Bristish comedy double-act of all time. This book charts the progress of the duo from a conventional working class music hall act to a mass-audience television team to a national institution. From northern working men's clubs at the beginning of their career to the 1977 Christmas special that had an audience of 28 million, Morecambe and Wise were a double act continually changing the dynamics of their relationship to reflect their influences and their times. Their shows were like nostalgic reflections on a century of popular entertainment, an entertainment that was inclusive to a wide audience and paid homage to the past. McCann's study is also an investigation in the background of mass audience entertainment from which Morecambe and Wise rose. Morecambe & Wise is the definitive biography of one of the most-loved double acts as well as a history of their times.

(Limelight). "This is a riotous story which is reasonably mad and as accurate as a Marx brother can make it. Despite only a year and a half of schooling, Harpo, or perhaps his collaborator, is the best writer of the Marx Brother. Highly recommended." Library Journal "A funny, affectionate and unpretentious autobiography done with a sharply professional assist from Rowland Barber." New York Times Book Review

Gigs provides a fascinating account of a unique victory for musicians against repressive entertainment licensing laws. It provides a much-needed study of the social, political, cultural and legal conditions surrounding a change in law and public attitudes toward vernacular music in New York City. This second edition includes a new preface by Hamish Birchall and an introduction by the series editors, Guy Osborn and Steve Greenfield, as well as an afterword by the author, and it will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of social attitudes toward the popular arts and the use of constitutional litigation for social change.

A couture of the risque evolved on a bridge of fashion from Paris nightclubs to Las Vegas casinos. A one-time writer for sexy magazines and on style, the author, with contributions from many experts on topics from Paris to feathers and sequins explores that entertainment story, and the hedonism behind it. For over a century, France exported costumes and millinery, as well as whole productions from the Moulin Rouge, the Lido, and Folies Bergere in Paris to the United States and the world. French has meant luxury, sexuality and fashion. In large part, the concept of glamour itself was founded in what French courtesans and French burlesque performers wore in Paris. Where did the costume typifying showgirls originate and from what? Whereas fashion implies change, the iconic showgirl costume stabilized into feathers, sparkle and revealing clothes by 1910. A tall pretty girl wearing a headdress, nude core with spangles, high heels, and dramatic makeup came to be a Gallic symbol. She performed a role of the dissimulation of sexual availability with now venerable features. She was the fizz on intoxication with no hangover, and by the 1920s, the trademark of Hollywood musicals. More recently, while showgirls are an endangered species, the scanty French cabaret clothes have translated into today's day, sport and evening clothes.

Adoption allows families to modify, either overtly or covertly, what is considered to be the natural order. Cures for Chance explores how early modern English theatre questioned the inevitability of the biological family and proposed new models of familial structure, financial inheritance, and gendered familial authority. Because the practice of adoption circumvents sexual reproduction, its portrayal obliges audiences to reconsider ideas of nature and kinship. This study elucidates the ways in which adoptive familial relations were defined, described, and envisioned on stage, particularly in the works of Shakespeare and Middleton. In the plays in question, families and individual characters create, alter, and manage familial relations. Throughout Cures for Chance, adoption is considered in the broader socioeconomic and political climate of the period. Literary works and a wide range of other early modern texts - including treatises on horticulture and natural history and household and conduct manuals - are analysed in their historical and cultural contexts. Erin Ellerbeck argues that dramatic representations of adoption test conventional notions of family by rendering the family unit a social construction rather than a biological certainty, and that in doing so, they evoke the alteration of nature by human hands that was already pervasive at the time.

In the early years of his performing career, Will Rogers was a vaudeville performer of limited prominence. Around the age of thirty-five, however, this Oklahoma cowboy philosopher shed his role as local stage entertainer and moved toward fame as a Broadway star and nationally beloved humorist. This documentary history, volume four in the definitive five-volume Papers of Will Rogers, reveals Rogers's personal and professional transformation during what may have been the most productive period of his diverse career. Between 1915 and 1928 - the years covered by this volume - Rogers developed his unique monologues of topical humor, sampled the relatively new medium of radio, and pursued a career in silent films. He also tried his voice in sound recordings, witnessed his work as a writer reach millions of readers of daily newspapers, became one of the most sought-after speakers on the dinner circuit, and embarked on a three-year tour of the nation's lecture halls. In addition to Rogers's personal correspondence with family members and friends, editors Steven K. Gragert and M. Jane Johansson present more than one hundred letters and telegrams to and from people Rogers touched both inside and outside public life, including prominent figures in politics, show business, literature, industry, government, publishing, and the arts. Much of this material, gleaned from private collections, interviews, manuscripts, and sound recordings, has never before been published.

From New York Times bestselling author of The French Photographer 'A glamorous, transporting read' Woman's Weekly . . . IN 1920s NEW YORK, EVERYONE IS CHASING A DREAM . . . The Roaring 20s - a time for glamour, frivolity and freedom for women. But for Evie Lockhart, a small-town girl who is determined to become one of the first female doctors, it means turning her back on her family and the only life she's ever known. In a desperate attempt to support herself through Columbia University's medical school, Evie auditions for the infamous late-night Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. But if she gets the part, what will it mean for her new relationship with Upper East Side banker Thomas Whitman - a man Evie thinks she could fall for, if only she lived a less scandalous life . . . Captivating and inspirational, A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald is a love story starring a woman ahead of her time, set against the backdrop of Jazz Age New York. Perfect for fans of Lucinda Riley and Kate Furnivall. 'If you're mad about the roaring twenties and all things Gatsby, this romance will have you enchanted' WOMAN'S DAY PRAISE FOR NATASHA LESTER: 'A fantastically engrossing story. I love it' KELLY RIMMER 'Intrigue, heartbreak... I cannot tell you how much I loved this book' RACHEL BURTON 'A gorgeously rich and romantic novel' KATE FORSYTH 'If you enjoy historical fiction (and even if you don't) you will love this book' SALLY HEPWORTH 'Utterly compelling' GOOD READING

Drag is transformation, communication, and, above all, exaggeration, where gender non-conformity is the plat du jour. This fearless book observes this increasingly complex world by exploring drag's journey – from the surprising, to the sophisticated, to the utterly bizarre – through the twentieth century and up to the present day.

With witty text, dazzling photography, and corralled into thematic chapters, this is the first flamboyant and poignant survey of drag culture. Drag is not just for fabulous queens and drag enthusiasts, but for anyone interested in gender fluidity and the culture surrounding it.

Simon Doonan is a former drag queen who impersonated Queen Elizabeth. A veteran in the fashion industry, he has won every fashion award on Earth including the CFDA Award. Today, Simon is the Creative Ambassador for Barneys New York and a judge on the NBC television show Making It, co-hosted by Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman.

The first full-length study of comedy on the burlesque stage, this book takes the reader inside the burlesque houses of the 1930s, looks at the role comedy played in an entertainment form known mostly for striptease, and explores how these sketch performers approached their craft.

Shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize; former prime minister John Major takes a remarkable journey into his own unconventional family past to tell the story of the British music hall. John Major shares memories of his performer father Tom and then shines the spotlight on the story of the music hall itself, from its Victorian heyday to its demise. In this fond look back at characters such as Marie Lloyd, Little Tich and Vesta Tilley, these faded stars take their place in the limelight once more. Packed with colourful anecdotes, 'My Old Man' is a warm-hearted account of a golden and bygone age.

"Babylon Girls" is a groundbreaking cultural history of the African American women who performed in variety shows--chorus lines, burlesque revues, cabaret acts, and the like--between 1890 and 1945. Through a consideration of the gestures, costuming, vocal techniques, and stagecraft developed by African American singers and dancers, Jayna Brown explains how these women shaped the movement and style of an emerging urban popular culture. In an era of U.S. and British imperialism, these women challenged and played with constructions of race, gender, and the body as they moved across stages and geographic space. They pioneered dance movements including the cakewalk, the shimmy, and the Charleston--black dances by which the "New Woman" defined herself. These early-twentieth-century performers brought these dances with them as they toured across the United States and around the world, becoming cosmopolitan subjects more widely traveled than many of their audiences.

Investigating both well-known performers such as Ada Overton Walker and Josephine Baker and lesser-known artists such as Belle Davis and Valaida Snow, Brown weaves the histories of specific singers and dancers together with incisive theoretical insights. She describes the strange phenomenon of blackface performances by women, both black and white, and she considers how black expressive artists navigated racial segregation. Fronting the "picaninny choruses" of African American child performers who toured Britain and the Continent in the early 1900s, and singing and dancing in "The Creole Show" (1890), "Darktown Follies "(1913), and "Shuffle Along" (1921), black women variety-show performers of the early twentieth century paved the way for later generations of African American performers. Brown shows not only how these artists influenced transnational ideas of the modern woman but also how their artistry was an essential element in the development of jazz.

The most iconic concert hall in the world celebrates 150 years with a stunning review of history's finest performances and performers. Opening with a personal letter from Queen Elizabeth II, this beautiful book celebrates 150 moments that have shaped The Royal Albert Hall over the last century and a half. From The Beatles to the Suffragettes, Albert Einstein to Winston Churchill, Mohammed Ali to B.B. King, few other buildings have housed such a stunning variety of era-defining people and events. This gorgeous, illustrated guide takes you behind the scenes of one of the most well-loved concert halls in the world, offering insights into the building's iconic architecture, as well as its lesser-known quirks such as the reinforced toilets designed for Sumo wrestlers. This book features events ranging from the world's first sci-fi convention in 1891 to the annual Cirque du Soleil, which requires the auditorium to be transformed into a gymnasium. Autographs and candid comments from incredible performers who have appeared on its stage, like Russell Howard, Eric Clapton and Katie Derham, give a unique insider's perspective on an esteemed and beloved British institution. With never-before-seen images, insights and more, this is the ultimate celebration of a British architectural icon which continues to inspire artists and audiences from around the world.

In this book Brooks McNamara explores the world of the concert saloon in New York from the Civil War to the early years of the twentieth century. A concert saloon is defined as an establishment offering various kinds of entertainment, including alcohol, with some also providing gambling and prostitution. All of these saloons employed 'waiter girls' to sell drinks and sit with male customers and all had bad reputations. McNamara focuses on the theatrical aspects of the concert saloon and examines the sources of saloon shows, the changes in direction during the century, the performing spaces and equipment, as well as the employees and patrons. McNamara paints a picture of a lively and theatrically fascinating environment and his work sheds light on our understanding of American popular theatre. The book contain informative illustrations and will be of interest to historians of theatre, popular culture and American social history.

Acclaimed through three editions for its uniquely informative and entertaining style, this fourth edition of Stanley Green's "World of Musical Comedy" updates and enlarges the theatrical scope to include such recent shows as "A Chorus Line, Barnum, They're Playing Our Song," and "Annie," In a format that provides biographies of all the leading figures in the musical's development, Stanley Green manages to convey the spirit of the Broadway stage, its musical make-believe, and yet remain objective about the creative swings in its history and the careers of its individual creators. Everyone is here: Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Frank Loesser, Lerner and Loewe, Stephen Sondheim, Cy Coleman, Marvin Hamlisch, and many others--not in a quick run-through but in vivid detail accompanied by pertinent interviews and photographs.This latest edition contains an expanded appendix that lists the casts, credits, songs, and recordings of every Broadway musical written by these illustrious and industrious composers and librettists. As always in a Stanley Green book, the research is exhaustive and impeccable, the presentation enjoyable, the judgments fair. From America's foremost theater historian, here is another edition of a classic theater chronicle.

Jack Cardiff tells the story of his life in films, first as a cameraman and then as a director. He was one of the first to use the Technicolor film camera, and the book provides a record of how colour cinematography developed in Britain. He also provides a humorous account of his days on the music-hall circuit during the 1920s and '30s, and anecdotes about his experiences photographing actresses such as Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe.

On the night of Sunday, April 23, 1961 Judy Garland made history. That's no hyperbole. Surrounded by a throng of ecstatic fans (3,165 to be exact), the legendary performer delivered a concert in Carnegie Hall the live recording of which became, upon release, an unlikely pop cultural phenomenon. Judy at Carnegie Hall, the two-disc set that captured all 25 numbers she performed that night, went on to spend more than 70 weeks on the Billboard charts, win four Grammy Awards--including Album of the Year (making it the first live music album and the first album by a female performer to win the category)--and become, in the process, the fastest-selling two-disc set in history. What the recording highlights, and what's made it an enduring classic in a class of its own, is the palpable connection between the songstress and her fans. "Indeed," The New York Times reported in its review of the evening's proceedings, "what actually was to have been a concert--and was--also turned into something not too remote from a revival meeting." By looking at her song choices, her stage banter, the album's cultural impact, and her place in the gay pantheon, this book argues that Judy's palpable connection with her fans is precisely what her Capitol Records' two-disc album captured.

Liz Goldwyn's lifelong fascination with the inimitable glamour of classic burlesque inspired her to spend the past eight years corresponding with, visiting, interviewing, receiving striptease lessons from, and forming close relationships with the last generation of the great American burlesque queens. In "Pretty Things", Goldwyn invites us to step back into an era when the hourglass figure was in vogue and striptease was a true art form. Meet Betty 'Ball of Fire' Rowland, who was known for her flaming red hair and bump-and-grind routines (it turns out she once sued the author's grandfather, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., for using her stage name and costume in his Hollywood picture, Ball of Fire). Meet Sherry Britton, who, with her long black hair and curvy, trim physique, was among the most stunning of the burlesque stars before Mayor LaGuardia outlawed burlesque in New York. Meet Zorita, whose sexually explicit Consummation of the Wedding of the Snake dance (performed with a live snake) and other daring performances earned her legendary status. Goldwyn draws back the curtain to reveal the personal journeys of yesteryear's icons of female sexuality and power, restoring their legacy to an age that has all but forgotten them - despite today's resurgence of the art of burlesque. 'Lovingly documented' ("W Magazine") Goldwyn draws from hundreds of archival photographs, costume sketches, newspaper clippings, and mementoes that she has collected along the way. "Pretty Things" is at once a feast for the eyes and a tale of fleeting stardom and self-discovery.

Joan Rhodes would leave audiences speechless as she bent steel bars with her teeth, ripped large phone books into quarters, and lifted two men at a time. But what she did was real. Joan had a superstrength, forged out of desperation to survive. Born into poverty in 1920s London and abandoned by her parents, Joan endured a spell in the workhouse. Despite the worst possible start, she made it to the top of her profession to rub shoulders with the likes of Fred Astaire, Bob Hope and Sammy Davis Jnr. Joan's crowning glory was to perform for the Queen at Windsor Castle, and along the way she made lifelong friendships with Marlene Dietrich, Quentin Crisp and Dame Laura Knight. Biographer Triona Holden met Joan in her later years. When Joan passed away, Triona set out to secure her friend's place in history. She appeared on the show The Repair Shop to tell the strongwoman's story, and sifted through archives to retrace her journey to stardom. Joan saw herself as a freak, but in truth she was a champion for the so-called fairer sex. At a time when women were still groomed for marriage, An Iron Girl in a Velvet Glove tells the fascinating and tumultuous story of a woman who followed her own unique path.

For over a decade, Magnus Hastings has been photographing the world's greatest drag superstars and asking each of them a simple question: Why drag? The result is this mesmerising volume in which the queens strut their stuff and reflect on their shared passion through a mixture of quips and philosophising. Subjects include icons of reality TV and underground drag royalty, and photographs range from the divine to the trashy. Featuring the likes of Bianca Del Rio and Courtney Act, this collection is a beautiful celebration of drag as an art form and an exhilarating exploration of what drag means to its greatest artists.