Small-Screen Singalongs

Broadway in the Box ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190674014.003.0002 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 13-44

Author(s):

Kelly Kessler

Keyword(s):

Recording Industry ◽

Leonard Bernstein ◽

Television Industry ◽

Ticket Sales ◽

Tin Pan Alley ◽

Musical Genre ◽

Cultural Image ◽

Cultural Legitimacy ◽

Rodgers And Hammerstein ◽

Small Screen

As the television industry struggled to establish its identity in the late 1940s, it looked across town to Broadway and Tin Pan Alley and embraced the deep-rooted, highly lucrative, popular musical and its music as sources of inspiration. It turned to the familiar sounds of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Leonard Bernstein—music which fueled Broadway ticket sales and the recording industry. Focusing specifically on commercial television’s first decade, 1944–1955, this chapter explores how network programming sought to absorb both the sweeping popularity and cultural legitimacy of the musical genre and Broadway stage in pursuit of much-needed viewers and a more established cultural image or cachet. Further, it explores how visuals were transported from Broadway houses to small screens and how the first glimpses of Broadway on television would emerge as the medium set the stage for decades of small-screen singalongs.

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Growing Pains

Dearest Lenny ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190465780.003.0004 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 36-41

Author(s):

Mari Yoshihara

Keyword(s):

Performing Arts ◽

Classical Music ◽

Recording Industry ◽

Leonard Bernstein ◽

White House ◽

Growing Pains ◽

Close Relationship ◽

Lincoln Center ◽

Kennedy Family ◽

International Status

Leonard Bernstein conducting the inaugural concert of the Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1962 symbolized the national and international status he had achieved. Through his close relationship with the Kennedy family and his continued ties to the White House, combined with his unrivaled place in the world of the performing arts, Bernstein was a prime candidate to lead the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. To manage the ever expanding scope of his work, Bernstein’s company, Amberson Enterprises, professionalized and corporatized its operations under Schuyler Chapin. But the popular leaning of the recording industry was beginning to cause some issues even for the foremost leader of American classical music.

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“You Know, Carol, Comedy Variety’s a Man’s Game”

Broadway in the Box ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190674014.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 45-81

Author(s):

Kelly Kessler

Keyword(s):

Popular Culture ◽

American Culture ◽

Television Industry ◽

Cultural Contexts ◽

American Popular Culture ◽

Small Screen

By the mid-sixties, dames of the Broadway and film musical were taking their much-deserved bows as variety’s small-screen headliners, but why? Changes were surely occurring everywhere: the small screen, the Broadway stage, the form of the musical book, and in the American culture at large. This chapter contextualizes the rise of crossover stars like Carol Burnett, Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, and Leslie Uggams, and positions their ascent within larger theatrical, televisual, and cultural contexts. It asks how they and their television appearances differ from the less prominent women of the earlier television era and how changes occurring in Shubert Alley and Hollywood helped to open up this space for the dames of Broadway. Ultimately this chapter addresses why and how television welcomed these divas and how this new embrace spoke to earlier and emergent norms of American popular culture, the musical, and a maturing television industry.

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Mirāt ul-‘Urūs on the Small Screen: Family TV Dramas and the Making of Pious Publics in Pakistan

BioScope South Asian Screen Studies ◽

10.1177/0974927619901046 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 145-163

Author(s):

Elliot Montpellier

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Women's Education ◽

The Novel ◽

Audience Engagement ◽

Television Industry ◽

Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽

Scholarly Attention ◽

Small Screen

This article analyses three Pakistani television adaptations of Nazir Ahmad’s novel Mirāt ul-‘Urūs to better understand the role of television dramas, an entertainment genre, in shaping pious publics. Scholarly attention to the novel, notably Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s work (2018) on the two most recent adaptations, primarily discuss feminine piety, women’s education and modes of instilling middle class values for women in these narratives. This article shifts focus to examine more broadly how dramas contend with family tensions, how they conceptualise familial duty, and how this widened focus on family provides new insights on religion in these adaptations. The article explores the concept of ‘religious-adjacent’ issues (‘ side-chizen’), a category that emerges from ethnographic fieldwork in the Pakistani television industry. This framing helps us understand not only the ways in which narratives are structured around private piety and tensions arising from familial duty, but also the changing forms of circulation and online audience engagement of these dramas, all of which play an important role in shaping religious publics in contemporary Pakistan.

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