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2.6.10Musical Theater: Broadway and the West End of London
Origins
Europeans brought music hall style variety entertainment to America, where music hall became vaudeville. Tin Pan Alley supplied the songs.
By the late 1920s, America had created its own version of music hall entertainment in the form of the Broadway musical, which supplanted the vaudeville show.
Whereas a vaudeville show was a variety revue, a Broadway musical was a full-length, plotted, character-rich story with a central theme and a set of songs written for the show by professional Tin Pan Alley songwriters.
Breakout
The first great Broadway musical was Showboat (Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, 1927). Within a few years, Broadway-style musicals were playing everywhere, including London’s West End and Dodge City’s Wrong Ranch Saloon.