Broadway and Hollywood: Backstage Stories

Nearly all movie musicals start out on Broadway: “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady,” “Chicago,” “Fiddler on the Roof”—and about a million others. Broadway also creates stars who are then lured to Hollywood: Bette Davis (her Broadway play: “Broken Dishes”), Humphrey Bogart (in “Drifting,” Bogie as a Japanese butler), the Marx Brothers (“I’ll Say She Is”), Marlon Brando (“A Streetcar Named Desire”)—and about a million others.

We’ll begin with “Broadway: The Golden Age,” full of fascinating interviews including Stephen Sondheim, Angela Lansbury, Carol Burnett and Carol Channing, reflecting on what life was like on Broadway in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. The second week features “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy,” exploring the genius and influence of Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim. In the final week, “The Celluloid Closet” shows the change from the stereotypical—but open—portrayals of gay characters in the 1930s, to censored and coded depictions in the ’40s through the ’60s.

Lynda Tisdell, a former high school English teacher, saw “Peter Pan” at the age of six and has never forgotten it. Passionate about movies, she has studied them, discussed them endlessly, and dreamed about them. She has previously taught many Great Movie courses, recently “The Power of Film,” “Great Movie Comedies,” “Children and Their Families,” “Monsters and Villains,” “The Way We Used to Be,” and many more.