Red, Hot & Blue: The Smithsonian Celebrates American Musicals

  • By Donald Dale Jackson
  • Smithsonian magazine, November 1996, Subscribe
 

 

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    "The great numbers of the musical theater are part of our heritage and collective consciousness, part of what defines and unites us as Americans," says author Don Jackson. "Pick a moment: Carol Channing as Dolly Levi, regally descending that spectacular staircase at the Harmonia Gardens and looking for an empty lap, in Hello, Dolly!; the brass band to end all brass bands parading through River City, Iowa, in The Music Man, with 76 trombones and 110 cornets in the vanguard; the vulnerable, insecure young dancers in A Chorus Line evolving into 'one singular sensation.'" Photographs, posters, set models and show-biz artifacts from these and other Broadway and Hollywood musicals, ranging from Dolly's feathered hat to a top hat and cane from A Chorus Line, are on display in the exhibition: "Red, Hot & Blue: A Salute to American Musicals," which runs to July 1997 at the National Portrait Gallery.

    The exhibition is curated by historians Amy Henderson of the Portrait Gallery and Dwight Blocker Bowers of the National Museum of American History, who have also collaborated on a companion book and a set of recordings. It is divided into five chronological sections that cover the history of American musical theater from its infancy in 1866 to the influence of the great impresarios in the early 1900s, from the decades of the great Broadway and Hollywood creations to its fragmented voice from the 1960s to the present. "What we try to do is recapture the energy that audiences at the great shows must have felt," says Bowers.


    "The great numbers of the musical theater are part of our heritage and collective consciousness, part of what defines and unites us as Americans," says author Don Jackson. "Pick a moment: Carol Channing as Dolly Levi, regally descending that spectacular staircase at the Harmonia Gardens and looking for an empty lap, in Hello, Dolly!; the brass band to end all brass bands parading through River City, Iowa, in The Music Man, with 76 trombones and 110 cornets in the vanguard; the vulnerable, insecure young dancers in A Chorus Line evolving into 'one singular sensation.'" Photographs, posters, set models and show-biz artifacts from these and other Broadway and Hollywood musicals, ranging from Dolly's feathered hat to a top hat and cane from A Chorus Line, are on display in the exhibition: "Red, Hot & Blue: A Salute to American Musicals," which runs to July 1997 at the National Portrait Gallery.

    The exhibition is curated by historians Amy Henderson of the Portrait Gallery and Dwight Blocker Bowers of the National Museum of American History, who have also collaborated on a companion book and a set of recordings. It is divided into five chronological sections that cover the history of American musical theater from its infancy in 1866 to the influence of the great impresarios in the early 1900s, from the decades of the great Broadway and Hollywood creations to its fragmented voice from the 1960s to the present. "What we try to do is recapture the energy that audiences at the great shows must have felt," says Bowers.

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