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Ray Bolger: More than a Scarecrow
- Author: Leuven, Holly van
The book is most engaging in reconstructing the creation of shows, with offstage difficulties set in counterpoint to onstage creativity. Summing up: Recommended
Ray Bolger: More than a Scarecrow
- Author: Leuven, Holly van
Purchase product
The book is most engaging in reconstructing the creation of shows, with offstage difficulties set in counterpoint to onstage creativity. Summing up: Recommended
About
Best remembered for his role as the Scarecrow in the 1939 MGM musical The Wizard of Oz, Ray Bolger led a rich and extraordinary career in the decade before and more than four decades after the creation of the film. Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow is the first biography of this classic American entertainer, covering the luminous and forgotten career of the eccentric dancer outside of his burlap mask. The product of a fragmented, working-class Boston Irish family, Bolger learned tap and eccentric dance steps as solace for a difficult life before running away to repertory theater and Vaudeville. From there, he would go on to become a Broadway star, a contract player at Hollywood's major studios, one of the first performers to tour the South Pacific for the USO, a Tony Award winner, an early sitcom star, and the opening headliner of the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. Using unprecedented access to Bolger's papers and many never-before-published photographs, Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow pieces together the lost story of an itinerant hoofer who survived and thrived during the major media changes of the twentieth century and established himself as a staple of American pop culture.
Contents
- Introduction The Timeless Wanderer
- Chapter 1 : "What Will You Be? It's Up to You!"
- Chapter 2 : Entering Show Business
- Chapter 3 : Steppin' in Society
- Chapter 4 : Depression Days
- Chapter 5 : Broadway Goes West
- Chapter 6 : Jupiter Forbid
- Chapter 7 : Soldiers in Greasepaint
- Chapter 8 : Where's Charley?
- Chapter 9 : The New Triple Threat Man
- Chapter 10 : All American Epilogue: No Sad Songs
- Index
Awards and reviews
The book is most engaging in reconstructing the creation of shows, with offstage difficulties set in counterpoint to onstage creativity. Summing up: Recommended
