The Great White Way

Race and the Broadway Musical

By Warren Hoffman

Rutgers University Press

Broadway musicals are one of America’s most beloved art forms and play to millions of people each year. But what do these shows, which are often thought to be just frothy entertainment, really have to say about our country and who we are as a nation?

Now in a new second edition, The Great White Way is the first book to reveal the racial politics, content, and subtexts that have haunted musicals for almost one hundred years from Show Boat (1927) to Hamilton (2015). This revised edition includes a new introduction and conclusion, updated chapters, as well as a brand-new chapter that looks at the blockbuster musicals The Book of Mormon and Hamilton.

Musicals mirror their time periods and reflect the political and social issues of their day. Warren Hoffman investigates the thematic content of the Broadway musical and considers how musicals work on a structural level, allowing them to simultaneously present and hide their racial agendas in plain view of their audiences. While the musical is informed by the cultural contributions of African Americans and Jewish immigrants, Hoffman argues that ultimately the history of the American musical is the history of white identity in the United States.

Presented chronologically, The Great White Way shows how perceptions of race altered over time and how musicals dealt with those changes. Hoffman focuses first on shows leading up to and comprising the Golden Age of Broadway (1927–1960s), then turns his attention to the revivals and nostalgic vehicles that defined the final quarter of the twentieth century. He offers entirely new and surprising takes on shows from the American musical canon—Show Boat (1927), Oklahoma! (1943), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), The Music Man (1957), West Side Story (1957), A Chorus Line (1975), and 42nd Street (1980), among others. In addition to a new chapter on Hamilton and The Book of Mormon, this revised edition brings The Great White Way fully into the twenty-first century with an examination of jukebox musicals and the role of off-Broadway and regional theaters in the development of the American musical.

New archival research on the creators who produced and wrote these shows, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, and Edward Kleban, will have theater fans and scholars rethinking forever how they view this popular American entertainment.

From Show Boat to Hamilton, from Oklahoma! to The Book of Mormon, Warren Hoffman provides an engaging and insightful analysis of how race has shaped 20th and 21st-century musical theatre. His perceptive and persuasive readings foreground normative whiteness and underline how every musical is ‘about’ race. Required reading for the musical theatre student and aficionado alike. Stacy Wolf, author of Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical

Warren Hoffman’s new edition of The Great White Way remains as provocative, smart, challenging and entertaining as the original publication. Hoffman’s book is, in some sense, like a Broadway musical itself — surprising in its many and varied elements, opinions, defenses and prosecutions. The role of race in the history of Broadway has, I’m sure, never been more thoroughly or more judiciously explored. And it’s a terrific read.’ Jack Viertel, author of The Secret Life of the American Musical

Warren Hoffman delivers a comprehensive and robust examination of the American musical as a purveyor of white identity and privilege. Easy to read and adept at elucidating the complexities of race in performance, The Great White Way is straightforward and unapologetic. Within it, Hoffman contextualizes the racial disparities embedded in the art form and acknowledges the musical’s powerful and irresistible place in the public imagination. This book belongs on the shelf of any theater maker or scholar who seeks to decolonize sites of theater production and pedagogy. Rena M. Heinrich, University of Southern California

This revised edition brings The Great White Way fully into the twenty-first century with an examination of jukebox musicals and the role of off-Broadway and regional theaters in the development of the American musical. Broadway World

There have been musicals produced on Broadway that have had subject matter that reflect diversity but it is Hoffman’s analysis that Broadway has yet to fully embrace diversity or taking risks. It seems that the non-profit theatre companies are more likely to take such risks. Hoffman’s analysis is worth pondering. Mark Kappel Dance

As ‘West Side Story’ returns to Broadway, it has a lot to say about race in America,' by Warren Hoffman
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/20/west-side-story-returns-broadway-it-has-lot-say-about-race-america/ Washington Post

MAXAMOO BOOK CLUB: THE GREAT WHITE WAY – RACE AND THE BROADWAY MUSICAL' podcast interview with Warren Hoffman
http://www.maxamoo.com/podcast/maxamoo-book-club-the-great-white-way-race-and-the-broadway-musical/ Maxamoo Book Club podcast

Broadway Radio interview with Warren Hoffman Broadway Radio

The Lost Origins of Broadway's West Side Story,' an excerpt from The Great White Way
https://therevealer.org/the-lost-origins-of-broadways-west-side-story/ The Revealer

White Supremacy and the Broadway Musical' by Warren Hoffman
https://medium.com/@whoffman18/white-supremacy-and-the-broadway-musical-a44ebd1b0f08 Medium

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught' BBC 2 interview with Warren Hoffman BBC 2 - "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught"

WARREN HOFFMAN, PhD, is the author of The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture. He has worked professionally in the theater for more than ten years as a program director, producer, theater critic, and playwright.

Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
Overture: All Singin’! All Dancin’! All White People?
Act One: 1927–1957
1 Only Make Believe: Performing Race in Show Boat
2 Playing Cowboys and Indians: Forging Whiteness in Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun
3 Trouble in New York City: The Racial Politics of West Side Story and The Music Man
Act Two: 1967–2019
4 Carbon Copies: Black and Interracial Productions of White Musicals
5 A Chorus Line: The Benetton of Broadway Musicals
6 Everything Old Is New Again: Nostalgia and the Broadway Musical at the End of the Twentieth Century
7 Blockbuster Musicals in the Age of Obama: The Book of Mormon and Hamilton
Exit Music
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Permissions
Index

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