Overview
Betty Comden and Adolph Green were the writers behind such classic stage musicals as On the Town, Wonderful Town, and Bells Are Ringing, and they provided lyrics for such standards as ""New York, New York,"" ""Just in Time,"" ""The Party's Over,"" and ""Make Someone Happy,"" to name just a few. This remarkable duo, the longest-running partnership in theatrical history, also penned the screenplays for such cinematic gems as Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon. In the process they worked with such artists as Leonard Bernstein, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Judy Holliday, and Jule Styne. They Made Us Happy is the first book to tell the full story of their careers, lives, and work, starting with their acclaimed appearances as part of the sketch troupe the Revuers and moving through their bi-coastal lives as a pair of Broadway's top writers and two of Hollywood's most valued scribes. The book takes readers on a trip through almost the entirety of the twentieth century, and along the way there are appearances by the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Greta Garbo, and Charlie Chaplin. Author Andy Propst brings both their produced work to life as well as many of the projects that that never made it to the stage or the screen, including an aborted musical version of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, a bio-pic about director-choreographer Busby Berkeley, and their version of the book for Cole Porter's musical Out of This World. Comden and Green's wit and deft satire inspired laughs during their lives, and their musicals and movies have endured, amusing generation after generation. It's work that will always be making audiences happy.
Full Product Details
Author: Andy Propst (Independent Scholar, Independent Scholar)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 23.60cm
, Height: 3.10cm
, Length: 16.30cm
Weight: 0.544kg
ISBN: 9780190630935
ISBN 10: 0190630930
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 30 May 2019
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
Thank you, Andy Propst, for the memories and for the history and revelations about these two remarkable artists and their time. They Made Us Happy made me so happy! * Penny Fuller, Actor * Andy Propst has done it again! His They Made Us Happy is a love letter to anyone who loves musical theatre, its history, and two of its greatest titans - Betty Comden and Adolph Green. He pulls back the curtain on the life and career of this once-in-a-generation pair of talents with humor, elegance, and grace. I read it in one sitting with Comden and Green's On the Town, Wonderful Town, Singin' in the Rain, Hallelujah Baby!, On the Twentieth Century, and The Will Rodgers Follies playing on my record player. Rest assured - if you don't have a record player, Andy's masterpiece is musical enough. * Will Nunziata, Director * What a lovingly researched journey through the duo-careers of two of our most talented wordsmiths. What good times they provided for us! Carefree, urbane, intelligent, tender hearted, playful - indeed they were 'a party of two.' * Tommy Tune *
Author Information
Andy Propst is an arts journalist and the author of You Fascinate Me So: The Life & Times of Cy Coleman (2014). His career has encompassed work with New York Shakespeare Festival founder Joseph Papp and Tony Award-winning director George C. Wolfe, as well as five years as on-air talent at XM Satellite Radio's XM 28 On Broadway channel. His writing has appeared in The Village Voice, Time Out/NY, Back Stage, and The Sondheim Review, and online at the site he founded, AmericanTheaterWeb.com, as well as TheaterMania.com.
