Carefully Taught

American History through Broadway Musicals

Cary Ginell

• Publisher: Applause
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781493065417
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Carefully Taught looks at American history as depicted in forty Broadway musicals. Presented chronologically according to the musical timeframe, award-winning theater critic and author Cary Ginell dissects the stories, characters, and songs to not only examine how Broadway viewed historical events, epochs, and personalities, but also to capture how dramatic license separated fact from fantasy. The chosen musicals fall into a variety of categories: biographies of famous Americans, (Andrew Jackson and Fiorello LaGuardia), stories with national conflicts (Hamilton, South Pacific), events that captured the attention of the American public (Floyd Collins, Newsies), and sociological studies or satires of specific eras (The Music Man, Hair).
Many books have been written about Broadway, but Carefully Taught, from the song "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught"in South Pacific, uniquely approaches American history from two vantage points: the point of view of the playwright and composer accompanied with the context of how these events were seen when they were produced versus how they are seen today. Ginell's research of contemporary theater reviews and in-depth studies of productions' back stories play off his knowledge gained from his quarter century as a theater critic in Southern California.The combination is a complete overview of American history on the stage from the coveted balcony seat.

Table of contents

• Foreword by Doug Reside
• Introduction
• 1776: The Second Continental Congress
• Dearest Enemy: The American Revolution
• Ben Franklin in Paris: Revolutionary War Diplomacy
• Hamilton: The Life of Alexander Hamilton
• Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson: The Life of Andrew Jackson
• Big River: Mark Twain’s America
• Bloomer Girl: The Women’s Reform Movement and the Underground Railroad at the Dawn of the Civil War
• Shenandoah: The Civil War
• The Civil War: The Civil War
• Miss Liberty: The Construction of the Statue of Liberty
• Annie Get Your Gun: The Life of Annie Oakley
• Show Boat: The Era of Floating Theaters in the American Frontier
• Newsies: The Newsboys’ Strike of 1899
• 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: The White House and Its Occupants during the Nineteenth Century
• Teddy & Alice: President Theodore Roosevelt and His Daughter Alice
• Ragtime: Racism and Immigration at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
• Oklahoma!: Territorial Oklahoma before Statehood
• The Music Man: Life in Small-Town America in 1912
• Parade: The Trial of Suspected Child Murderer Leo Frank
• Fiorello!: The Rise to Fame of Fiorello La Guardia
• Gypsy: Gypsy Rose Lee and the Demise of Vaudeville
• Chicago: Chicago Murderesses Beulah May Annan and Belva Gaertner
• Floyd Collins: Floyd Collins in Kentucky’s Sand Cave
• The Scottsboro Boys: The 1931 Trial of Nine Black Teenagers Accused of Rape
• Baby Case: The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping
• Of Thee I Sing / Let ’Em Eat Cake: Politics in the 1930s
• The Will Rogers Follies: The Life of Will Rogers, Framed by American Vaudeville
• Pins and Needles: The Labor Movement of the 1930s
• South Pacific: Racial Prejudice during World War II
• Allegiance: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II
• Bandstand: GIs Returning Home after World War II
• Finian’s Rainbow: Racism in Postwar America
• Million Dollar Quartet: Four Rock ’n’ Roll Legends Meet in Memphis
• Li’L Abner: Cold War Politics During the 1950s
• Bye Bye Birdie: Elvis Presley Is Drafted
• Fly Blackbird: The Civil Rights Movement
• Freedom Riders: The Civil Rights Musical: The Civil Rights Movement
• Hair: San Francisco’s “Human Be-In” and the Hippie Lifestyle in New York’s East Village
• Assassins: Presidential Assassins, Successful and Foiled, throughout History
• Selected Bibliography