While I was walking down the street,I decided to take a look at the books.And seen Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable's romantic picture which's taken from the classical hollywood movie 'Gone With The Wind'.Without stopping,I've decided to buy it.When I came home,I started to read the whole book.It was perfect.As I want to be a part of Hollywood,I learn new things from this book about classics.From my personal star Gene Kelly to Bette Davis all the stars are in this book.I recommend it to everyone.Just open the book,and you'll be a part of it then understand the glorious feeling!

This is one of the best one-volume reference books of its kind that I have ever seen, as it gives both technical data (who was producer, director, etc.) as well as a bit of mild insider info. (who turned down the lead and so on). It is current up until the beginning of the Reagan era but by then, only one or two musicals a year were coming out of Hollywood anyway. Lots and lots of photos in this handsome "coffee table" tome.

I got my copy in the mid-eighties at what even then was a reasonable price--under $30. If you are a real movie FANatic, expect to pay top dollar for a mint-condition copy today, or hunt noncommercial sources. Tip: You're not limited to just yard sales. Public libraries that are winnowing their stock, art enclaves, or universities with music departments are good bets. You might also see if your local "art" movie house can put you in touch with a collector. Art-house managers tend to know their steady patrons and their cinematic tastes. Who knows? You might even make a new friend.

I receieved this for my birthday last month and loved it. It gives you three cd's to listen to which have songs from all the musicals that they mention in the book. All of the songs are from the original cast, (most being the best versions.) Book gives background on the creation of the musical and gives the storyline. I would recommend this to anyone who loves broadway musicals, but wants to know more about particular musicals. Also good for someone looking for a good play to go see.

Fans of Broadway musicals will find Song & Dance an outstanding blend of book and music: the book has almost two hundred pages of history detailing the evolution of the Broadway musical from its 19th century roots to modern times. Over a hundred color and black and white photos are included. Music is presented on three compact discs of music packed with examples from different shows, while an accompanying booklet of session notes covers all the tracks. Simply an unbeatable package for any fan of Broadway musical history and events.

The initial customer review is, incorrectly, a critique of Ted Sennett's stand-alone coffee table book-- not of "Song & Dance", the boxed set edition (for which this web-page was created). The new "Song & Dance" includes three CDs containing sixty four songs from sixty four shows--along with an extensive sessionography that enlightens and expands upon Sennett's original work.
No musical theatre retrospective on the market today--neither Sony or BMG's--is as thorough. Each of the aforementioned companies based their retrospectives on the limitations of their catalogues(both own less than half of the canon of Broadway and therefore attempt to limit the readers knowledge of musical theatre history for appearance's sake).
Song & Dance, the boxed set edition dares to stand between these two catalogues and to cull from the best of both--and then some. The process toward insuring the widest historical overview of musical theatre history took nearly three years from licensing to publication.
Written by noted music historian Andrew G. Hager, the boxed set's new in-depth Session Notes are from the perspective of the collaborators who brought each great work to life.
For those who wish to understand not only the historical data behind each work but to look behind the curtain at the great men and women who created your favorite musicals, this boxed set is invaluable.

1939 is hailed as one of the greatest years in the golden years of Hollywood, with the studios at the height of their power and productivity, and before the United States became involved in WW2. Sennett's book pays homage to what he considers 17 seminal titles, as well as adding notes on other notable films released that year. The obvious ones are here like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, but there are also a few surprises, and Sennett's anaylsis thankfully isn't all praise. He is prepared to note the perceived weaknesses in the films. His coverage begins with an overview of the attraction of the title, whether it be the director, the star or the source material, provides some preproduction notes, then a lengthly plot description, and finally post-production box office results. Sennett's writing is accessible, though he presumes no knowledge of these films and therefore a lot of what he details is well-known to film students and movie buffs. Considering that Gone with the Wind has been written about exhaustively, he sometimes sets himself an impossible goal, however occasionally he comes up with something new and interesting. Midnight featured the casting problems of Mary Astor's advancing and evident pregnancy, John Barrymore's alcoholic forgettfulness which required prompt cards, and Claudette Colbert's infamous demand to be photographed only by her left side. There was also antipathy between the flamboyantly gay director Mitchell Leisen and screenwriter Billy Wilder. Wilder complained that Leisen spent more time on worrying about the pleat on a skirt than the script, and Leisen said Wilder was so arrogant that he screamed if one line of his dialogue was altered. Sennett tells us that at one time William Wyler wanted to do Wuthering Heights with Bette Davis, but the end of their affair also ended that. It also made Davis despondent enough to play the lead in Dark Victory perfectly, though she was so despondent that she had to be talked out of withdrawing from the film. Wyler also nixed Laurence Olivier's request for Vivien Leigh to play Cathy, which freed her to do Gone with the Wind. Wyler was known to demand as many as 60 takes of a given scene, and the animal trainer who provided ducks and geese for the barnyard scenes cut their vocal chords to keep them from honking noisily during filming. One feels Garbo was right to turn down Dark Victory, if with the prospect of George Cukor directing her in it, and Bette Davis is said to have practiced the simulation of loss of sight by driving at night. The story of Rita Hayworth visiting a restaurant where Howard Hawks and Harry Cohn were dining to make an impression for Only Angels Have Wings, seems silly since she was already under contract to Cohn. Pre-star Humphrey Bogart was fired from The Old Maid and replaced by George Brent, and Davis is quoted saying "Miriam Hopkins is a perfectly charming woman socially. Working with her is another story". The firing of George Cukor from Gone with the Wind allowed for Ernst Lubitsch to be transfered from The Women to Ninotchka, and Cukor to replace him. And Melvyn Douglas tells that even he didn't know whether it was Garbo's laugh that was dubbed for her in the restaurant scene, since she was unable to laugh in the take Lubitsch accepted in Ninotchka.

This is a well written and researched book on one of the great early shows that was on US television. As such, it offers a fascinating look into a medium that was evolving and how a group of great innovators molded the process.

Creating great comedy is not just about funny guys doing strange things. As with all true innovators, great comedians also tend to be members of great teams. Their goals are similar to those of visionary businessmen, scientists, and designers: they want to achieve something revolutionary and they want to advance their careers and, by extension, make money. That is why Your Show of Shows, a 1950s American television comedy series starring Sid Caesar, offers fascinating lessons on one of the most successful creative teams in TV. Not only did Caesar's writers challenge the standard practices of a new and rapidly evolving industry, but they did so consistently over a number of years with seemingly impossible deadlines every week.

How did they do it? In a nutshell, Sid Caesar put a group of phenomenally talented writers into an empty room and let them be themselves while offering subtle, if occasionally brutal, hints at how they should work together rather than directing (or "micro-managing") them. Caesar nurtured an environment to spawn creativity and he had a great producer behind him who knew how to line up corporate support. Amazingly - and typical of the audacity that went into this show - the first few shows were aired without sponsorship and yet were unprecedented in their production costs.

The group included Mel Brooks, who went on to create a number of pioneering comedies. Woody Allen also got his big break as part of Caesar's team and later came into his own as an Oscar-winning scriptwriter and filmmaker. In addition, there was the celebrated producer, director, writer, and comedian Carl Reiner (creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show) as well as Larry Gelbart, who created of the M*A*S*H television series and the Broadway play City of Angels. Finally, prior to becoming one of America's most successful Broadway playwrights, Neil Simon began his writing career on the Caesar show. In spite of their huge egos and now-famous eccentricities, this group worked as a team, sometimes offering solo performances, but always as a part of something bigger than themselves alone.

These personalities stand out in the book, in all their quirkiness and egotism and talent. The pressure on the team was enormous: not only would they have to meet the highest standards of sophistication, quality, and originality as set by Caesar and Liebman, who did not want the ordinary slapstick that was popular then, but every week Caesar and the other performers would have to entertain a live audience during a 90-minute, nationwide broadcast. Caesar describes it as putting on half of a Broadway play - new - each week, and doing it in real time. As such, it is also a facinating study of leadership, even if by a comedian.

Nonetheless, there are long sections of descriptions of the shows' content. I found that boring, but it is a matter of taste and what you are expecting. I was looking more for a histrry of TV and how an innovative team worked, and I got it in this book very satisfactorily. I did not want tv criticism or recapitulations of things that are better seen than analysed.

Recommended.