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Gypsy (musical)
''Gypsy: A Musical Fable'' is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. It is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business mother." It follows the dreams and efforts of Rose to raise two daughters to perform onstage and casts an affectionate eye on the hardships of show business life. The character of Louise is based on Lee, and the character of June is based on Lee's sister, the actress June Havoc. The musical contains many songs that became popular standards, including "Everything's Coming Up Roses", "Together (Wherever We Go)", "Small World", " You Gotta Get a Gimmick", " Let Me Entertain You", "All I Need Is the Girl", and "Rose's Turn". It is frequently considered one of the crowning achievements of the mid-twentieth century's conventional musical theatre art form, often called the book musical. ...
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Jule Styne
Jule Styne (; born Julius Kerwin Stein; December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was an English-American songwriter and composer best known for a series of Broadway musicals, including several famous frequently-revived shows that also became successful films: ''Gypsy,'' '' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,'' and '' Funny Girl.'' Early life Styne was born to a Jewish family in London, England. His parents, Anna Kertman and Isadore Stein, were emigrants from Ukraine, the Russian Empire, and ran a small grocery. Even before his family left Britain, he did impressions on the stage of well-known singers, including Harry Lauder, who saw him perform and advised him to take up the piano. At the age of eight, he moved with his family to Chicago, where he began taking piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old. Career Before Styne attended Chicago Musical College, he had already attracted the attention o ...
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June Havoc
June Havoc (born Ellen Evangeline Hovick; November 8, 1912 – March 28, 2010) was a Canadian American actress, dancer, stage director and memoirist. Havoc was a child vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother Rose Thompson Hovick, born Rose Evangeline Thompson. She later acted on Broadway theatre, Broadway and in Hollywood, and stage-directed, both on and off-Broadway. She last acted on television in 1990 in a story arc on the soap opera ''General Hospital'', and she last appeared on television as herself in interviews in the "Vaudeville" episode of ''American Masters'' in 1997 and in "The Rodgers & Hart: Thou Swell, Thou Witty" episode of ''Great Performances'' in 1999. Her elder sister Louise gravitated to American burlesque, burlesque and became the well-known striptease performer Gypsy Rose Lee. Early life Ellen Evangeline Hovick was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. For many years 1916 was cited as her year of birth. Havoc acknowledged in her late ...
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Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins (born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz; October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and producer who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television. Among his numerous stage productions were '' On the Town'', ''Peter Pan'', ''High Button Shoes'', ''The King and I'', ''The Pajama Game'', '' Bells Are Ringing'', ''West Side Story'', ''Gypsy'', and '' Fiddler on the Roof''. Robbins was a five-time Tony Award-winner and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He received two Academy Awards, including the 1961 Academy Award for Best Director with Robert Wise for ''West Side Story'' and a special Academy Honorary Award for his choreographic achievements on film. A documentary about Robbins's life and work, ''Something to Dance About'', featuring excerpts from his journals, archival performance and rehearsal footage, and interviews with Robbins and his colleagues, premiered on PBS in 2009 and won both ...
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Harper's Magazine
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, but it did not become monthly until 1921). ''Harper's Magazine'' has won 22 National Magazine Awards. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine published works of authors such as Herman Melville, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. Willie Morris's resignation as editor in 1971 was considered a major event, and many other employees of the magazine resigned with him. The magazine has developed into the 21st century, adding several blogs. ''Harper's'' has been the subject of several controversies. History ''Harper's Magazine'' began as ''Harper's New Monthly Magazine'' in New York City in June 1850, by publisher Harper & Brothers. The company also founded the magazines ''Harper's Weekly'' and ''Harper's Bazaar'', and grew to become Ha ...
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Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman (born Ethel Agnes Zimmermann, January 16, 1908 – February 15, 1984) was an American actress and singer, known for her distinctive, powerful voice, and for leading roles in musical theatre.Obituary ''Variety'', February 22, 1984. She has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage". Over her distinguished career in theater she became known for her performances in shows such as ''Anything Goes'', '' Annie Get Your Gun'', ''Gypsy'', and '' Hello, Dolly!'' She is also known for her film roles in ''Anything Goes'' (1936), ''Call Me Madam'' (1953), ''There's No Business Like Show Business'' (1954), and ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' (1963). Among many accolades, she received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance in ''Call Me Madam'', a Grammy Award for ''Gypsy'' and Drama Desk Award for '' Hello, Dolly!'' Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm" (from ''Girl Crazy''); ...
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David Merrick
David Merrick (born David Lee Margoulis; November 27, 1911 – April 25, 2000) was an American theatrical producer who won a number of Tony Awards. Life and career Born David Lee Margulois to Jewish parents in St. Louis, Missouri, Merrick graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, then studied law at the Jesuit-run Saint Louis University School of Law. In 1940, he left his legal career to become a successful theatrical producer. His first seven productions were hits, starting with ''Clutterbuck'' in 1949, which he produced in partnership with Irving Jacobs, and he set a precedent in 1958 of having four productions on Broadway simultaneously; all hits: ''Look Back in Anger'', '' Romanoff and Juliet'', ''Jamaica'' and '' The Entertainer''. He often was his own competition for the Tony Award, and he frequently won multiple nominations and/or wins in the same season. Merrick was known for his love of publicity stunts. In 1949, his comedy ''Clutterbuck'' was running out of s ...
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Clive Barnes (critic)
Clive Alexander Barnes (13 May 1927 – 19 November 2008) was an English writer and critic. From 1965 to 1977, he was the dance and theater critic for ''The New York Times'', and, from 1978 until his death, ''The New York Post.'' Barnes had significant influence in reviewing new Broadway productions and evaluating the international dancers who often perform in New York City. Life and career Born in Lambeth, London, Barnes was educated at Emanuel School in Battersea and St Catherine's College, Oxford. He was the dance and drama critic at the ''New York Post'' from 1978 until 2008, and senior consulting editor at ''Dance Magazine'', where he wrote a monthly column called "Attitudes." He also contributed regularly to the British journal ''Dance Now;'' he edited and wrote for British newspapers such as ''The Times,'' ''The Daily Express'', and the weekly magazine '' Spectator''. Barnes authored and contributed to numerous books related to theater and the performing arts, particul ...
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Frank Rich
Frank Hart Rich Jr. (born 1949) is an American essayist and liberal op-ed columnist, who held various positions within ''The New York Times'' from 1980 to 2011. He has also produced television series and documentaries for HBO. Rich is currently writer-at-large for '' New York'' magazine, where he writes essays on politics and culture and engages in regular dialogues on news of the week for the "Daily Intelligencer". He served as executive producer of the long-running HBO comedy series ''Veep'', having joined the show at its outset in 2011, and of the HBO drama series '' Succession''. Early life Born on June 2, 1949, Rich grew up in Washington, D.C. His mother, Helene Fisher (née Aaronson), a schoolteacher and artist, was from a Russian Jewish family that originally settled in Brooklyn, New York, but moved to Washington after the stock market crash of 1929. His father, Frank Hart Rich, a businessman, was from a German Jewish family long-settled in Washington. He attended publ ...
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Ben Brantley
Benjamin D. Brantley (born October 26, 1954) is an American theater critic, journalist, editor, publisher and writer. He served as the chief theater critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1996 to 2017, and as co-chief theater critic from 2017 to 2020. Life and career Born in Durham, North Carolina, Brantley received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1977, and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Brantley began his journalism career as a summer intern at the ''Winston-Salem Sentinel'' and, in 1975, became an editorial assistant at ''The Village Voice''. At ''Women's Wear Daily'', he was a reporter and then editor (1978-January 1983), and later became the European editor, publisher, and Paris bureau chief until June 1985. For the next 18 months, Brantley freelanced, writing regularly for ''Elle'', '' Vanity Fair'', and ''The New Yorker'' before joining ''The New York Times'' as a Drama Critic (August 1993). He was elevat ...
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Book Musical
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre work ...
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Rose's Turn
"Rose's Turn" is a song from the musical ''Gypsy''. It has been performed by such actresses as Bette Midler, Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Patti LuPone, Bernadette Peters, and Imelda Staunton. The song is often regarded as the pinnacle of the eleven o'clock number. Synopsis The song "occurs at the point when Mama Rose realizes the frustrations of having little to show for the sacrifices that have left her with two seemingly ungrateful children." At this point in the show, Mama Rose is "a character whose dreams were too strong and whose heart held her own feelings hostage to make those dreams come true." She "finally drops her facade and admits her frustration and despair." ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' argues the "unmasking of her psyche" takes place during the song. Production The song was written by Jule Styne with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. As the finale, it contains a number of callbacks to songs from earlier in the show. Bette Midler, who performed the show in the te ...
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Let Me Entertain You (Gypsy)
"Let Me Entertain You" and "May We Entertain You?" are two songs from the musical ''Gypsy''. The former is the more popular reprise of the latter. "May We" is performed by Baby June and Baby Louise, while "Let Me" is performed by Louise. The song was written by Jule Styne (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) Synopsis ''The Register Citizen'' wrote, "Baby June (Morgan Perschy) and Baby Louise (Sofia Singer) crisscross the country, with June as the headliner dancing and singing 'Let Me Entertain You' while Louise – the future Gypsy – is just another backup dancer in the shadow cast by June's spotlight." ''The Citizen'' also wrote, "The reprise of 'Let Me Entertain You' takes on new meaning as Louise – now billed as Gypsy Rose Lee – tantalizes male audiences while never actually taking off much more than a white glove." ''DC Theatre Scene'' added "this 'diehard' song shows her turning from a scared girl into an assured, star-class performer." Analysis ''Creat ...
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