Theatre Journal: October 23, 2004
The American Musical on PBS - A Fact Check
by John Kenrick
It is one thing when political debates require fact checks. After all, we expect politicians to lie. But it is sad when a PBS documentary needs a fact check.
The six-hour documentary Broadway: The American Musical debuted on PBS this week, offering a spectacular visual presentation. But good as it looked, this documentary did not always bother to get its facts right. Most of the on-screen experts and professionals knew their stuff, and it was grand to see some amazingly rare photos and film clips. It was the narration that was littered with clumsy inaccuracies. (Imagine a script that turned the divine Julie Andrews into a liar?) One has to wonder why the writers and producers did not bother to check their facts. It would not have taken much time -- in fact, none of the information in question is hard to come by.
Appalled by what I was seeing and hearing, I jotted down mistakes as the episodes ran by, then posted them nightly on Talkinbroadway.com's All That Chat board. At the suggestion of several other "chatterati," I am posting a full list of those gaffs here:
- It is ridiculous to suggest the American musical "took shape" "a century ago" at The New Amsterdam Theatre when it housed Ziegfeld's Follies. The first Follies was produced in 1907 at the Jardin de Paris (a summertime rooftop theatre), and did not move to the New Amsterdam until 1913 -- so this claim is, at best, vague (by a full decade) in its timing. As to the "shape" of the American musical, that was created by Harrigan & Hart, Victor Herbert, George M. Cohan and a slew of others before 1907 -- Ziegfeld's early book musicals were forgettable at best, and made no contribution to the "shape" of the art form.
- Florenz Ziegfeld was most certainly NOT "the first great impresario of the American musical." Long before Ziegfeld, men like Edward Rice, Ned Harrigan and others were major producers of multiple historic musicals. I can understand that the producers of Broadway: The American Musical had time limitations, but that does not mean they had the right to pretend musical theatre did not exist before Ziegfeld. Claiming that the Follies were the beginning of American musical theatre is pure malarkey.
- When depicting the European operettas of the early 1890s, this documentary used a film clip of The Vagabond King. Excuse me? The Vagabond King is an American musical, written in 1921. The European operettas of the 1890s bore little artistic resemblance to The Vagabond King. Forcing film clips to fit the narration is a misrepresentation -- in other words, a lie.
- George M. Cohan did NOT "make it" on Broadway in Little Johnny Jones (1904). That was Cohan's third Broadway musical. He had already "made it" in The Governor's Son (1901 - 32 performances) and Running For Office (1903 - 42 performances), both of which had brief New York runs followed by profitable national tours. Little Johnny Jones ran just ten performances longer that its predecessor, then repeated the pattern of making its fortune on the road.
- Irving Berlin did NOT "lead the way" for Victor Herbert. Berlin published his first song in 1907, by which time Herbert already had eighteen Broadway musicals and hundreds of published songs to his credit. Berlin and Herbert eventually became co-founders of ASCAP, but if anything, it was Herbert who led the way for men like Berlin.
- Al Jolson did NOT get his start in minstrelsy. He joined a traveling circus in 1898, and began touring in vaudeville (in various acts) as of 1901. He was a respected solo vaudeville star by the time he joined Dockstader's minstrel troupe for just two seasons, 1908-1910.
- Newspaper ads for Cameron Macintosh productions have never included quotes? Try again! They did not do it on a regular basis, but like every other musical on Broadway, Macintosh's shows have occasionally used quotes in their print ads.
- Arthur Laurents (legend that he deservedly is) falsely claims that "Song on the Sand" from La Cage Aux Folles was "the first time on the Broadway stage that two men sang a love song to each other." He knows better than that. The first gay love duet in a Broadway musical was "Why Can't The World Go and Leave Us Alone?" in Dance a Little Closer, which played Broadway earlier in the same season that La Cage opened.
Eight mistakes in six hours -- no big deal, you say? Well, I disagree. If you are going to teach the history of an art form, investing several years and substantial bucks in the process, you owe it to your subject and the public to get your basic facts right. Did Ken Burns get confuse dates in The Civil War, or claim that Babe Ruth created the "shape" of Baseball?
I applaud the producers and writers of Broadway: The American Musical for an often stunning presentation. They clearly moved mountains to uncover some marvelous material. But I cannot understand why they cheapened their efforts with careless research.