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Before the advent of cable and its hundreds of channels, before
iPods and the Internet, three television networks ruled America's
evenings. And for twenty-three years, Ed Sullivan, the Broadway
gossip columnist turned awkward emcee, ruled Sunday nights. It was
Sullivan's genius to take a worn-out stage genre-vaudeville - and
transform it into the TV variety show, a format that was to
dominate for decades. "Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!" tells the
complete saga of "The Ed Sullivan Show" and, through the voices of
some 60 stars interviewed for the book, brings to life the most
beloved, diverse, multi-cultural, and influential variety hour ever
to air. Gerald Nachman takes us through those years, from the
earliest dog acts and jugglers to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and
beyond. Sullivan was the first TV impresario to feature black
performers on a regular basis-including Nat King Cole, Pearl
Bailey, James Brown, and Richard Pryor - challenging his
conservative audience and his own traditional tastes, and changing
the face of American popular culture along the way. No other TV
show ever cut such a broad swath through our national life or cast
such a long shadow, nor has there ever been another show like it.
Nachman's compulsively readable history, illustrated with classic
photographs and chocked with colorful anecdotes, reanimates "The Ed
Sullivan Show" for a new generation.
In the late 1920s radio exploded almost overnight into being
America's dominant entertainment, just as television would do
twenty-five years later. Gerald Nachman, himself a product of the
radio years, takes us back to the heyday of radio, bringing to life
the great performers and shows, as well as the not-so-great and
not-great-at-all. Nachman analyzes the many genres that radio
exploited or invented, from the soap opera to the sitcom to the
quiz show, zooming in to study closely key performers like Jack
Benny, Bob Hope, and Fred Allen. Raised on Radio is a generous,
instructive, and sinfully readable salute to an extraordinary
American phenomenon.
Showstoppers! is all about Broadway musicals’ most memorable
numbers—why they were so effective, how they were created, and
why they still resonate. Gerald Nachman has interviewed dozens of
iconic musical theater figures to get their inside stories for this
book, including Patti LuPone, Chita Rivera, Marvin Hamlisch, Joel
Grey, Edie Adams, John Kander, Jerry Herman, Sheldon Harnick, Tommy
Tune, Harold Prince, Donna McKechnie, and Andrea McArdle,
uncovering priceless previously untold anecdotes and details.
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