In this episode I continue my review of Broadway’s Nostalgia Craze of the 1970s and beyond. Many of the musicals that emerged in the late 60s and very early 70s were also influenced by the incipient Nostalgia Craze, even if overall their shows were decidedly modern. HAIR, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Applause all included musical sequences that recalled the Vaudeville era and Silver Age of Broadway. So nostalgia was in the air, and then No, No, Nanette sent it into ...
Jun 26, 2025•26 min
In this episode Albert Evans and I explore the origins of Broadway’s “Nostalgia Craze of the 1970s” — where it came from, and what artistic, social and cultural forces came together to spark this unlikely phenomenon. We trace its origins in the counterculture youth rebellion of the 1960s, the rediscovery of films from the 1930s and 40s on television, and the popularization of gay camp culture via the off-off Broadway mega hit DAMES AT SEA. All of this would lead to the triumphant 1971 Broadway r...
Jun 19, 2025•32 min
This episode is adapted from a section of my new upcoming book, Broadway Nation — How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical, which will be released on July 24 (and can be preordered now everywhere books are sold.) In 1919, two gifted young Queer theater artists — Hassard Short and John Murray Anderson —both made their Broadway directing debuts and quickly established themselves as significant forces in the development of the Broadway musical. Even though their...
Jun 12, 2025•30 min•Season 3Ep. 170
This week’s episode of Broadway Nation is the second half of my conversation with author Ron Fassler, whose latest book is titled The Show Goes On — Broadway Hirings, Firings, and Replacements. Among the outstanding Broadway performers and creatives who are at the center Ron’s fascinating stories include Abe Burrows, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Comden & Green, Cynthia Erivo, Fantasia, Frank Loesser, Gower Champion, Harold Prince, Howard Keel, Iva Withers, Jane Russell, Jeff Conaway, Jer...
Jun 05, 2025•43 min•Season 3Ep. 175
My guest is author Ron Fassler, whose latest book is titled The Show Goes On — Broadway Hirings, Firings, and Replacements, a fascinating collection of insider theater stories that range from as far back as the 1930s and go right up to today. The performers and creatives referenced in this episode include Andrea McArdle, Ann Miller, Anne Bancroft, Barbra Streisand, Cameron MacIntosh, Carol Burnett, David Merrick, Dorothy Louden, Hal Lindon, Harold Prince, Helen Gallagher, Jerry Zaks, John Cullum...
May 29, 2025•53 min•Season 3Ep. 174
I, along with the rest of the musical theater world, was saddened to learn that composer CHARLES STROUSE, one of the last of the great creators from the Golden Age of Broadway had passed away last week at the age of 96. Of course, Strouse and his three Tony Award-winning “Best Musicals": Bye Bye Birdie, Applause, and Annie — have been discussed frequently on this podcast. So over the weekend, I dug deep into the archives of Broadway Nation and newly adapted a section of my upcoming book regardin...
May 20, 2025•45 min•Season 3Ep. 176
It's hard for me to believe that I launched this podcast exactly five years ago this week, and even harder for me to comprehend that, to date, more than 279,000 people, from nearly every country in the world, have listened to at least one, and in many cases all, of the 175 episodes! So, today it seemed fitting to rerelease the episode that started it all — the very first episode of Broadway Nation: George M. Cohan and the Immigrants Who Invented Broadway. As you will hear, at the time, we were s...
May 13, 2025•33 min
This is the third and final segment of my conversation with Michael Owen, author of the recent book, Ira Gershwin — A Life in Words. On this episode, Michael and I focus on the period of Ira Gershwin’s career following the death of his brother George, during which he had success on Broadway and in Hollywood with composers such as Kurt Weill, Jerome Kern, Arthur Schwartz, and Harold Arlen, and shows and movies such as Lady In the Dark, The Barkleys Of Broadway, and A Star Is Born, If you missed t...
May 06, 2025•52 min•Season 3Ep. 175
This is the second episode of my three-part conversation with author, historian, researcher, and archivist, Michael Owen, whose recent book, Ira Gershwin — A Life in Words, is the first full-length biography devoted to that outstanding artist who penned the words for many of the greatest songs of the 20th Century. If you missed part one, you may want to catch up with that before listening to this one. Michael Owen is also the author of Go Slow — The Life of Jule London and the editor of The Gers...
Apr 29, 2025•37 min
My guest today is Michael Owen, whose recent book Ira Gershwin—A Life in Words is the first full-length biography devoted to the other Gershwin. In this book, Owen at last brings Ira Gershwin out from behind the long shadow cast by his younger and more famous brother, George. Drawing on extensive archival research, Owen often uses Ira’s own words to create a captivating portrait of a shy and retiring artist who, nevertheless, penned the words for many of the greatest songs of the twentieth centu...
Apr 22, 2025•51 min
This is the second half of this week's Encore presentation of my conversation with Tony-award-winning lighting designer Ken Billington. Last week, Ken received rave reviews for his lighting design of the new Broadway musical SMASH, which amazingly is his 108th Broadway production. So, I thought it was an ideal time to revisit this fascinating conversation about the history of lighting design on Broadway and Ken’s own tremendous contribution to it. If you missed part one you may want to catch up ...
Apr 20, 2025•30 min
This is a special encore episode of my 2022 interview with Tony-award-winning lighting designer Ken Billington. This past week, Ken received rave reviews for his lighting design of the new Broadway musical SMASH, which amazingly is his 108th Broadway production. So, I thought it was an ideal time to revisit this fascinating conversation about the history of lighting design on Broadway and Ken’s own tremendous contribution to it. This is a two-part conversation and I will be rereleasing both part...
Apr 15, 2025•43 min
Since announcing last week that Broadway Nation has teamed up with Like Minds Travel to create a series of unique Broadway and Broadway history-related travel experiences specially designed for fans of this podcast, I have been receiving a number of questions, so I thought I createdd this mini bonus episode to answer them. As you probably know by now, we are kicking off this initiative with a whirlwind weekend in New York City, September 11—15, 2025, filled with Broadway musicals, Broadway theat...
Apr 14, 2025•8 min
My guest this week is the three-time Tony award-winning Broadway orchestrator Doug Besterman, whose 31 Broadway musicals include The Producers, Fosse, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and his very first show, the 1991 revival of Damn Yankees, to name only a few. During this current Broadway season, Besterman will achieve something unheard of in his field: he will have three big musicals — Death Becomes Her, Boop!, and Smash — all running simultaneously on Broadway. Making it even more remarkable, two o...
Apr 08, 2025•59 min
This is thee second part of my conversation with author Joshua Rosenblum about his new book CLOSER THAN EVER — THE UNIQUE SIX-DECADE SONGWRITING PARTNERSHIP of RICHARD MALTBY, JR, and DAVID SHIRE. We dicuss Maltby's work on the musicals Ain't Misbehavin', Fosse, Song And Dance, Miss Saigon, and The Pirate Queen, and the Maltby/Shire shows, Baby, Closer Than Ever, BIG, and Waterfall. Travel to NYC with David Armstrong and Broadway Nation For information this new Broadway Nation initiative, go to:...
Apr 01, 2025•55 min
My guest today is Joshua Rosenblum, author of Closer than Ever — The Unique Six-Decade Songwriting Partnership of Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire. This remarkable new book chronicles the sixty-six-year (and counting) partnership of two of the most gifted songwriters of our time and provides us with full behind-the-scenes accounts of their musicals interspersed with deep-dive analyses of some of their standout individual songs. To tell their story, Rosenblum draws on his extensive experience ...
Mar 20, 2025•49 min•Season 3Ep. 167
You may not know Trude Rittmann's name, but you have heard her music. During the "Golden Age of Broadway" (and beyond), she composed music for 33 Broadway musicals, including Carousel, Brigadoon, South Pacific, Fininan’s Rainbow, The King and I, My Fair Lady, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Peter Pan, The Sound of Music, and Camelot. In this episode, Albert Evans and I tell the story of one of the least known, but most significant, women who invented the musical. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...
Mar 13, 2025•30 min
On this episode, I have a big announcement, so I asked my buddy, friend, colleague, and Broadway Nation’s favorite co-host and guest host, ALBERT EVANS, to join me today to turn the tables on me and ask me the questions rather than me being the interviewer. As you may have guessed from the episode title, the announcement is that I have a book coming out called BROADWAY NATION (sound familiar?) and the subtitle will be similar to what you've heard before as well: HOW IMMIGRANT JEWISH, QUEER AND B...
Mar 06, 2025•35 min
On this episode, Albert Evans returns to Broadway Nation to discuss a topic we don't often broach on this podcast: Movie Musicals. Of course, movie musicals go hand in glove with Broadway musicals and many film musicals originated as Broadway musicals including several we talk about here because our principal topic is Movie Musicals that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Coming up this weekend we, of course, have the possibility of the blockbuster Wicked becoming another Broadway musical t...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 3Ep. 168
My guest again this week is Christopher S. Connelly, author of the fascinating new book HELEN MORGAN — THE ORIGINAL TORCH SINGER AND ZIEGFELD'S LAST STAR. On this episode, Christopher and I look at Helen Morgan's life and career during the 1930s, both in Hollywood and on Broadway. And we delve a bit into her personal story, including the love of her life and her several marriages. we end by looking at her extraordinary legacy, including the two filmed biographies of her life that both came out i...
Feb 20, 2025•36 min
My guest again this week is Christopher S. Connelly, author of the fascinating new book HELEN MORGAN — THE ORIGINAL TORCH SINGER AND ZIEGFELD'S LAST STAR. The topics discussed in this episode include: Morgan's follow up to Show Boat, the 1929 hit musical Sweet Adeline — a star vehicle created especially for her by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. The 1932 revival of Show Boat and subsequent tour. Morgan's career as a nightclub hostess and entertainer at a series of night spots named for her...
Feb 13, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 166
This week my, guest is Christopher T. Connelly, the author of the fascinating new book HELEN MORGAN — THE ORIGINAL TORCH SINGER AND ZIEGFELD'S LAST STAR. There are a number of individuals who were very big Broadway stars back in what I call the Silver Age of Broadway (the 1920s and 30s), But who today are mostly overlooked and left out of the conversation. Performers who were on a level with Jolson and Cantor and Fanny Bryce, but whose fame has almost entirely faded. Of course most musical theat...
Feb 06, 2025•46 min•Season 3Ep. 157
The progressive and disruptive social movements of the 1960s and 70s had a huge impact on the Broadway Musical and were reflected back into the culture by them. These include the Civil Rights movement, Women’s Liberation, Black Power, and the Gay Liberation Movement. The Stonewall Rebellion in 1969 brought gay issues into the mainstream and during the 1970s LGBTQ+ people would become “out, loud, and proud” in significant numbers. Of course, it makes sense that this new visibility and feeling of ...
Jan 30, 2025•30 min
This is the final episode of a three-part conversation with author Elizabeth T. Craft regarding her recent book, Yankee Doodle Dandy — George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage, the first book major work about Cohan in fifty years. If you missed the first two episodes in this series, you may want to catch up with those before listening to this one. In this episode, Elizabeth Craft and I discuss the final decades of Cohan’s remarkable career, during which he continued to establish and define the ver...
Jan 23, 2025•33 min•Season 3Ep. 164
This is the second of a three-part conversation with author Elizabeth T. Craft regarding her recent book, Yankee Doodle Dandy — George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage, which is the first book about Cohan in fifty years. If you missed the first episode in this series you may want to catch up with that one before listening to this one. This week, Elizabeth and I begin with a discussion of Cohan, the entertainer. He was, without a doubt, one of the first brand-name celebrities in the modern sense, ...
Jan 16, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 166
My guest today is author Elizabeth T. Craft, whose terrific new book, Yankee Doodle Dandy — George M. Cohan and the Broadway Stage, is the first book about Cohan in fifty years. No one looms larger in the history of early Broadway than the Irish American writer, composer, lyricist, director, choreographer, producer, actor, singer, dancer, and musical theater legend George M. Cohan — who is often called “the father of musical comedy.” It is no mistake that Cohan’s is the one and only statue of a ...
Jan 09, 2025•48 min•Season 3Ep. 162
This is a Special Encore of the 100th episode of Broadway Nation which was first posted in March of 2023. To celebrate I invited Albert Evans to join me to discuss, debate, and decide once and for all who is the Greatest Broadway Musical Star Of All Time! It is impossible to look back on the past year without thinking of CHITA RIVERA and the tremendous legacy she leaves behind. SPOILER ALERT! Chita figures prominently in this episode! As you will hear, we had a lot of fun with this one, and I ha...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 100
This is the second of two special holiday bonus episodes of Broadway Nation. Just like the first, this is an audio version of a Broadway Nation Live! performance that was given in December of 2019 at the Vashon Center For The Performing Arts on Vashon Island, WA. If you prefer to watch a video of this performance you can stream it on their website at: vashoncenterforthearts.org In Part One we looked at how the Jewish-Russian immigrant songwriter, Irving Berlin -- in addition to being one of the ...
Dec 29, 2024•43 min
This is a special holiday reprise of one of Broadway Nation's most popular episodes: It's an audio version of a Broadway Nation Live! performance that was presented in December of 2019 at the Vashon Center For The Performing Arts on Vashon Island just outside of Seattle, WA. Several previous episodes of Broadway Nation have explored the crucial role that the Jewish Russian immigrant songwriter, Irving Berlin, played in the invention of the Broadway Musical. This time I share the story of how he ...
Dec 26, 2024•34 min
This is the second half of my recent conversation with author Doug Reside, whose fascinating new book is titled Fixing The Musical — How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory. Today, Doug shares with us how cast recordings, movie versions, and even illegal bootlegs on YouTube have shaped the American musical as an art form and defined the Broadway repertory as we know it. If you missed part one you may want to catch up with that before listening to this one. And of course, many listeners to...
Dec 19, 2024•54 min•Season 3Ep. 161
