Broadway Melody- A Conversation with Jack Viertel

The Drama Book Shop presents, in association with Jay Michaels Global Communications, “Broadway Melody”  with Jack Viertel - A talkback, signing, and live podcast recording.

About the book

A show business romance crossing 7000 miles and 70 years, Broadway Melody lands securely in the confines of Times Square and the Theater District, as a crackerjack trumpet player and a blue-collar spotlight operator vie for the love of an aspiring ingenue who holds them both in thrall for their entire lifetimes. Filled with theater lore and history, vivid characters both real and imagined, and a great number of songs in its heart, this novel delivers the ultimate valentine to Broadway then and now.

For more than a century the Broadway theater has been a landing strip for characters on the run - from their upbringing, from the unwelcoming communities they grew up in, even from their parents. So it seems for the obsessively gifted trumpet player Ike Harris, who leaves behind a most peculiar childhood and a chaotic life on the road for the orchestra pit of the Winter Garden Theater. There, in the dark confines beneath the stage he falls hopelessly in love with a young ingenue in a catastrophic flop that leaves all concerned searching for happier outcomes. All, that is, except for Vincent Donnelly, who has been training his number two follow spot on the very same young performer - Aurora Shelton - and wishing he could fall through its lighted beam and land securely against her heart. Vincent, it first appears, gets what he wants. Or perhaps not.

Broadway Melody traces three lives through the early ambitions and unlikely pathways that landed all of them in the same place at the same time - 1960s Broadway. Woven through its pages are the hits and flops, the making and breaking of careers, the destruction of three historic theater buildings, the plague of AIDS, the machinations of union bosses and producers, and, of course, the world outside this insular community - the audience that looks to Broadway for emotional thrills, for enlightenment, and for pure entertainment.

Laced with humor and sadness, portraits of historical characters from The Street and a long view of the rise, fall and revival of Times Square itself, Broadway Melody stitches three lives - and three hearts - into the fabric of an endlessly compelling tale of the American theater.

About the author:

Jack Viertel began his professional career playing National bottleneck steel guitar behind Bonnie Raitt, Son House, and The Pointer Sisters. He soon graduated to the theater world, where he spent seven years as a critic, two as the dramaturg for the Mark Taper Forum, and the succeeding three decades as Creative Director/Senior Vice President of Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns and operates five Broadway theaters. In that capacity he worked with myriad artists including August Wilson, Tony Kushner, David Henry Hwang, Maury Yeston, Cy Coleman, Stephen Sondheim, George C. Wolfe, Jerry Zaks and many others. For two of those decades (2001-2021) he was also the Artistic Director of New York City Center’s Encores! series, producing 65 musical revivals. On Broadway he produced the Patti Lupone revival of GYPSY and conceived the long-running Smokey Joe’s Café, the critically acclaimed After Midnight, and served as the dramaturg for Hairspray, Dear Evan Hansen, and The Outsiders. The musical and movie The Prom were developed from his original concept. He taught musical theater at NYU Tisch School of the Arts for a decade and is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Secret Life of The American Musical. He lives with his wife Linda in Tarrytown, New York and Little Deer Isle, Maine.

About the event

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