The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PODCAST The musical story of the Cotton Club, the most famous (and infamous) nightclub of the Jazz Age. The Cotton Club, Harlem’s most prominent nightclub during the Prohibiton era, delivered some of the greatest music legends of the Jazz Age — Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, Ethel Waters, the Nicolas Brothers. Some of the most iconic songs in the American… Read More
PODCAST The musical story of the Cotton Club, the most famous (and infamous) nightclub of the Jazz Age. The Cotton Club, Harlem’s most prominent nightclub during the Prohibiton era, delivered some of the greatest music legends of the Jazz Age — Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, Ethel Waters, the Nicolas Brothers. Some of… Read More
On Sunday The Bowery Boys join up with The Ensemblist to present a special cabaret event at 54 Below — a tribute to the great St. James Theatre! Perhaps some of you may be asking — why do a live show about a individual theater? The St. James Theatre (246 West 44th Street) was prominently… Read More
The new Disney film Tomorrowland which opens tomorrow will feature scenes set at the 1964-65 World’s Fair, one of the most popular historical destinations for blockbuster films in recent years. But this is only the latest show called Tomorrowland to present a flashy, futuristic vision of America. The first actually arrived in New York City in 1905, courtesy one of… Read More
PODCAST Mae West (star of I’m No Angel and She Done Him Wrong) would come to revolutionize the idea of American sexuality, challenging and lampooning ideas of femininity while wielding a suggestive and vicious wit. But before she was America’s diamond girl, she was the pride of Brooklyn! In this podcast, we bring you the origin… Read More
Bowling Green, at the very tip of Manhattan island, is a small oval park so calm in comparison to its surroundings that it’s hard to believe this is one of the oldest sections of the city of New York. Here are ten facts about Bowling Green, accompanied by ten images and photographs from various periods in… Read More
Tonight NBC’s unveils its live theatrical experiment Peter Pan with Girls star Alison Williams in the cross-dressing role of the boy who never grows up. We can all have our debates about who’s been the greatest stage Peter Pan in history. Â Most will say Mary Martin, a sizable minority will claim Sandy Duncan, and a… Read More
Linus the Lion-Hearted at the 1964 Macy’s Parade The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade of 1963 had been a downer of a parade. President John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated a few days before but, deciding that cancelling the event would be “a disappointment to millions of children,” the parade went on as planned. Leading… Read More
Lauren Bacall, the cinema and stage legend who died yesterday at age 89, was once the less enigmatic Betty Joan Perske, a New York girl with a lot of moxie. As a sixteen year old, she ventured downtown from her home on the Upper West Side (84th Street, under the elevated train) to look for work… Read More
Frequent collaborators PG Wodehouse, Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern (Pic courtesy Broadway Scene) — Here’s another ‘deleted scene’ from our last podcast, Episode #159 The Broadway Musical: Setting the Stage. In this excerpt, I’m talking about the unique challenge that was faced by young songwriter Jerome Kern when he began working at the Princess Theatre… Read More
Above: The new Superman movie might be great, who knows? But it doesn’t have Linda Lavin in it, like the 1966 Broadway musical ‘It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman’ which played at the Alvin Theatre (today’s Neil Simon Theatre). Encores! recently did a revival of this forgotten musical gem earlier this year. We… Read More
Next week is the 100th birthday of the opening of the Woolworth Building. The classic skyscraper designed by Cass Gilbert changed everything about perceptions of tall buildings in Manhattan — for good and ill. Suddenly, towers could be as graceful and important as monuments, and as playful and enigmatic as castles. New Yorkers were anxious… Read More
The second film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture was hardly a movie at all. ‘The Broadway Melody’, a frothy Hollywood revue about the mounting of an frothy Broadway revue, was a total celebration of every strength and weakness of the early Broadway stage, and a hopeful sign that the New York… Read More
Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, in a rare shot with his pince-nez lowered. Checking the mailbox was a frightening experience for some New Yorkers almost a century ago. Some found extortion notes — threatening letters, demanding large sums of money or else — courtesy Italian gangsters collectively referred to in the press as The Black Hand.… Read More
Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, in a rare shot with his pince-nez lowered. Checking the mailbox was a frightening experience for some New Yorkers almost a century ago. Some found extortion notes — threatening letters, demanding large sums of money or else — courtesy Italian gangsters collectively referred to in the press as The Black Hand.… Read More