Broadway

Even though the roadway named "Broadway" extends the length of the New York City borough of Manhattan, the name has come to indicate the area, in midtown Manhattan, in which a majority of the city's primary theaters are located. The word "Broadway" has come to represent bright, flashing lights and oversized billboards towering over playgoers as they crowd around theater entrances most every evening just before 8 p.m. (and on Wednesday and Saturday for matinees, or afternoon performances). For those who choose to devote their life to the stage, appearing on Broadway is a significant accomplishment and starring on the Broadway stage is a dream come true.

New York City's status as the hub of American theater dates to 1826, when the three-thousand-seat Bowery Theatre opened; it was the first playhouse to feature glass-shaded gas-jet lighting. By the 1880s, "Broadway" had become the general term for American theater, and the New York theater district was nearby the street, only farther downtown, at East 14th Street and Union Square. As the city expanded, clusters of playhouses opened further uptown, in what today is midtown Manhattan. Eventually, most were constructed in the crosstown streets of the West Forties, by and directly above Times Square. The first major playhouse in the area arrived in 1893, when the American Theatre opened on West 42nd Street.

In the early twentieth century, revues featuring music, dance, and comedy were especially popular on Broadway. As the American musical theater evolved, scores of significant composers and performers earned fame writing music for and appearing in Broadway hits. Before radio (see entry under 1920s—TV and Radio in volume 2) and television (see entry under 1940s—TV and Radio in volume 3), countless popular songs originated on Broadway. For example, during World War I (1914–18), "Over There," a patriotic national rallying cry composed by George M. Cohan (1878–1942), was introduced at the New Amsterdam Theatre before becoming a hit record. Musical theater flourished on Broadway during a good portion of the twentieth century, but serious dramas and nonmusical comedies were increasingly staged. One notable Broadway dramatist who emphasized realism in his writing was Eugene O'Neill (1883–1953), who during the 1920s authored The Emperor Jones, Anna Christie, and Strange Interlude.

Many film actors started out on Broadway. Marlon Brando (1924–), for one, became a theater legend in 1947 with his riveting performance as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Brando made his screen debut in 1950, replayed Kowalski in the film version of Streetcar the following year, and never came back to Broadway. Meanwhile, other actors preferred stage over screen, even though a successful movie actor will have far more international fame than a counterpart on the stage. Such Broadway legends as Laurette Taylor (1884–1946), Eva Le Gallienne (1899–1991), Katherine Cornell (1893–1974), Alfred Drake (1914–1992), and the husband-and-wife team of Alfred Lunt (1892–1977) and Lynn Fontanne (1887–1983) became major stage personalities, while barely, if ever, appearing on screen.

For several decades, theater-lovers have lamented the general decline in quality of the American theater. Yet Broadway—also known as the Great White Way—remains one of New York's top tourist attractions and symbolizes American theater.

—Rob Edelman

For More Information

Atkinson, Brooks. Broadway. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

Blum, Daniel. A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1860–1970. New York: Crown, 1969.

Brown, Gene. Show Time: A Chronology of Broadway and the Theatre from Its Beginnings to the Present. New York: Macmillan, 1997.

Dunlap, David W. On Broadway: A Journey Uptown over Time. New York: Rizzoli, 1990.

Frommer, Myrna Katz, and Harvey Frommer. It Happened on Broadway: An Oral History of the Great White Way. New York: Harcourt, 1998.

League of American Theatres and Producers. The Internet Broadway Database.http://www.ibdb.com (accessed April 16, 2002).