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There it was in a used bookstore, a fifty-cent paperback that had been released in 1960, now understandably tattered. But my eyebrows zoomed up as high as an elephant’s forehead when I saw this copy of MY STORY by Mary Astor. Whoa! I’d long heard that this was the great grandma of tell-all books. So I paid […]

Have you ever heard the score to PHANTOM? Your answer may well be “Who hasn’t heard Andrew Lloyd Webber’s biggest hit?” No, my question was meant literally. I wasn’t using THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA’s shortened name. I was asking “Have you ever heard the score to PHANTOM?” – the full title of the musical […]

You can’t say that HEAD OVER HEELS is your standard-issue jukebox musical. Broadway musicals that employ existing songs usually set them in the here-and-now: PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT; MAMMA MIA! Others revert to the era when the songs were actually written. Hence JERSEY BOYS, LENNON and MOVIN’ OUT all concentrated on the ‘60s. And […]

Now, right here on Masterworks Broadway, you can listen to “Dance with You (Emma’s Version)” from THE PROM. The song comes from the new musical that starts previews on Oct. 23. It opens on Nov. 15 at the Longacre Theatre, where we hope it’ll have a long run. So we do know the name of […]

Last week, I mentioned that august musical theater scholar Laurence Maslon had written a terrific new book: BROADWAY TO MAIN STREET: HOW SHOW TUNES ENCHANTED AMERICA (Oxford University Press, $34.95) Let me count the ways it is indeed terrific. Although most of the tome centers on original cast albums, Maslon takes us back to the […]