New York
The Black Crook ’s origin story is a Broadway tale in itself: With a pair of booked shows — one a French ballet rife with silk-stockinged women, the other a melodrama involving a man selling his soul to the devil — but only one theater, the two were combined to form an extravaganza that historians consider Broadway’s first ‘book musical’ (in which songs are integrated into a show’s story, thus being at least slightly realistic). Vaudeville, a popular theater form incorporating song, dance, comedy and burlesque, made its way to Broadway from France in the late 1800s. Immensely popular shows like Lightnin’ (1918) and Abie’s Irish Rose (1922) set records of 1,291 and 2,327 performances, respectively, as long-running productions became commonplace. George M. Cohan (1878–1942) became Broadway’s first superstar, appearing in more than 30 musicals and securing his legend by composing Yankee Doodle Boy , Give My Regards to Broadway and Over There . Musical comedies evolved from low-brow entertainment to the heights of American genius with the rise of writer/composers like Irving Berlin, Richard Rogers, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin. Even as live theater flourished and the Great White Way shone brighter than ever, by the late 1920s Hollywood had moved beyond silent films and was releasing 800 movies a year. Broadway responded
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