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Greasepaint And Cordite
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Book Synopsis Grease Paint and Cordite by : Andy Merriman
Download or read book Grease Paint and Cordite written by Andy Merriman and published by ReadHowYouWant. This book was released on 2014-03-27 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once the Second World War had broken out, it soon became clear that morale would be crucial in the military effectiveness of our armed forces. And so was born the Entertainment National Services Association, or ENSA - to send the nation's best singers, dancers, musicians and comedians, from Noel Coward to Gracie Fields, to entertain the troops, however far away they might be. Over the course of the war ENSA gave their first break to such postwar stars as Tommy Cooper and Frankie Howerd, as well as enshrining the young Vera Lynn forever as the forces' sweetheart. When Allied troops landed in Normandy in 1944, George Formby followed close behind, while a distinguished troupe under Laurence Olivier was performing Shakespeare to British soldiers in Hamburg within weeks of the German surrender. Now, Andrew Merriman has talked to surviving ENSA veterans from Vera Lynn to Dame Beryl Grey, to piece together the extraordinary adventures of the ordinary men and women sent out across the world - even to inhospitable, dangerous Burma - whose contribution to the war effort was song, dance and laughter.
Book Synopsis Greasepaint and Cordite by : Andy Merriman
Download or read book Greasepaint and Cordite written by Andy Merriman and published by Aurum Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once the Second World War had broken out, it soon became clear that morale would be crucial in the military effectiveness of our armed forces. And so was born the Entertainment National Services Association, or ENSA â?? to send the nationâ??s best singers, dancers, musicians and comedians, from Noël Coward to Gracie Fields, to entertain the troops, however far away they might be. Over the course of the war ENSA gave their first break to such postwar stars as Tommy Cooper and Frankie Howerd, as well as enshrining the young Vera Lynn forever as the forcesâ?? sweetheart. When Allied troops landed in Normandy in 1944, George Formby followed close behind, while a distinguished troupe under Laurence Olivier was performing Shakespeare to British soldiers in Hamburg within weeks of the German surrender. Now, Andrew Merriman has talked to surviving ENSA veterans from Vera Lynn to Dame Beryl Grey, to piece together the extraordinary adventures of the ordinary men and women sent out across the world â?? even to inhospitable, dangerous Burma â?? whose contribution to the war effort was song, dance and laughter.
Book Synopsis Greasepaint and Cordite by : Andy Merriman
Download or read book Greasepaint and Cordite written by Andy Merriman and published by Aurum Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Entertainment National Services Association', or ENSA, under the leadership of Basil Dean, was created to send the nations's best singers, dancers, musicians and comedians, from Noel Coward to Gracie Fields, to entertain the troops, however far away. The war gave a first break to such postwar stars as Tommy Cooper and Frankie Howard, as well as enshrining the young Vera Lynn forever as the forces' sweetheart.
Book Synopsis British and American Musical Theatre Exchanges in the West End (1924-1970) by : Arianne Johnson Quinn
Download or read book British and American Musical Theatre Exchanges in the West End (1924-1970) written by Arianne Johnson Quinn and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-11-08 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph centres on the history of musical theatre in a space of cultural significance for British identity, namely the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which housed many prominent American productions from 1924-1970. It argues that during this period Drury Lane was the site of cultural exchanges between Britain and the United States that were a direct result of global engagement in two world wars and the evolution of both countries as imperial powers. The critical and public response to works of musical theatre during this period, particularly the American musical, demonstrates the shifting response by the public to global conflict, the rise of an American Empire in the eyes of the British government, and the ongoing cultural debates about the role of Americans in British public life. By considering the status of Drury Lane as a key site of cultural and political exchanges between the United States and Britain, this study allows us to gain a more complete portrait of the musical’s cultural significance in Britain.
Book Synopsis “Don’t Forget The Pierrots!'' The Complete History of British Pierrot Troupes & Concert Parties by : Tony Lidington
Download or read book “Don’t Forget The Pierrots!'' The Complete History of British Pierrot Troupes & Concert Parties written by Tony Lidington and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first authoritative historical textbook to look at the origins, development and evolution of seaside pierrot troupes and concert parties and their popular performance heritage. It will provide, for the first time, a definition of the pierrot troupe and its evolution from the roots of European popular traditions such as the commedia dell’arte and minstrelsy, to links between music hall and contemporary popular culture. Tony Lidington will explore how pierrot troupes grew from a single idea into a major international cultural industry and how it boosted morale and national identity during the two World Wars, before sublimating into contemporary pop music and comedy. Tony’s continuing practice as research provides an experiential framework for the historical and ethnographic analysis of the form. This book will be of vital interest to students, researchers, and performers of outdoor (al fresco) arts, clowning and comedy, minstrelsy, vernacular music-making and music hall.
Book Synopsis Reframing the Musical by : Sarah K. Whitfield
Download or read book Reframing the Musical written by Sarah K. Whitfield and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critical and inclusive edited collection offers an overview of the musical in relation to issues of race, culture and identity. Bringing together contributions from cultural, American and theatre studies for the first time, the chapters offer fresh perspectives on musical theatre history, calling for a radical and inclusive new approach. By questioning ideas about what the musical is about and who it for, this groundbreaking book retells the story of the musical, prioritising previously neglected voices to reshape our understanding of the form. Timely and engaging, this is required reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of musical theatre. It offers an intersectional approach which will also be invaluable for theatre practitioners.
Download or read book Blithe Spirit written by Noël Coward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-05-04 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Some of [Coward's] most sparkling dialogue ever... This play is about something substantial - the way past relationships come back to haunt us - but it's the gossamer-like nature of the piece, its sheer levity of spirit, that makes it such an enduring achievement" - The Telegraph When socialite and novelist Charles Condomine attends a séance hosted by eccentric medium Madame Arcati, he's only hoping to gather material for his next book: he never expected to be haunted by his temperamental ex-wife, Elvira. Can Charles keep this willful spirit at bay, or will his new marriage to his second wife, Ruth, come to an untimely demise? With unforgettable characters, witty dialogue and farcical situations, Blithe Spirit ran for decades on the West End, becoming one of the most well-known plays in the British canon. This new edition is published in Methuen Drama's iconic Modern Classics series to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Coward's death and features a new introduction by Arianne Johnson Quinn.
Download or read book Fighting Proud written by Stephen Bourne and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this astonishing new history of wartime Britain, historian Stephen Bourne unearths the fascinating stories of the gay men who served in the armed forces and at home, and brings to light the great unheralded contribution they made to the war effort. Fighting Proud weaves together the remarkable lives of these men, from RAF hero Ian Gleed - a Flying Ace twice honoured for bravery by King George VI - to the infantry officers serving in the trenches on the Western Front in WWI - many of whom led the charges into machine-gun fire only to find themselves court-martialled after the war for indecent behaviour. Behind the lines, Alan Turing's work on breaking the 'enigma machine' and subsequent persecution contrasts with the many stories of love and courage in Blitzed-out London, with new wartime diaries and letters unearthed for the first time. Bourne tells the bitterly sad story of Ivor Novello, who wrote the WWI anthem 'Keep the Home Fires Burning', and the crucial work of Noel Coward - who was hated by Hitler for his work entertaining the troops. Fighting Proud also includes a wealth of long-suppressed wartime photography subsequently ignored by mainstream historians. This book is a monument to the bravery, sacrifice and honour shown by a persecuted minority, who contributed during Britain's hour of need.
Book Synopsis The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century British Theatre and Performance by : Claire Cochrane
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century British Theatre and Performance written by Claire Cochrane and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-08 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century British Theatre and Performance provides a broad range of perspectives on the multiple models and examples of theatre, artists, enthusiasts, enablers, and audiences that emerged over this formative 100-year period. This first volume covers the first half of the century, constructing an equitable and inclusive history that is more representative of the nation's lived experience than the traditional narratives of British theatre. Its approach is intra-national – weaving together the theatres and communities of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The essays are organised thematically arranged into sections that address nation, power, and identity; fixity and mobility; bodies in performance; the materiality of theatre and communities of theatre. This approach highlights the synergies, convergences, and divergences of the theatre landscape in Britain during this period, giving a sense of the sheer variety of performance that was taking place at any given moment in time. This is a fascinating and indispensable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, postgraduate researchers, and scholars across theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, and twentieth-century history.
Book Synopsis Singing in the Age of Anxiety by : Laura Tunbridge
Download or read book Singing in the Age of Anxiety written by Laura Tunbridge and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In New York and London during World War I, the performance of lieder—German art songs—was roundly prohibited, representing as they did the music and language of the enemy. But as German musicians returned to the transatlantic circuit in the 1920s, so too did the songs of Franz Schubert, Hugo Wolf, and Richard Strauss. Lieder were encountered in a variety of venues and media—at luxury hotels and on ocean liners, in vaudeville productions and at Carnegie Hall, and on gramophone recordings, radio broadcasts, and films. Laura Tunbridge explores the renewed vitality of this refugee musical form between the world wars, offering a fresh perspective on a period that was pervaded by anxieties of displacement. Through richly varied case studies, Singing in the Age of Anxiety traces how lieder were circulated, presented, and consumed in metropolitan contexts, shedding new light on how music facilitated unlikely crossings of nationalist and internationalist ideologies during the interwar period.
Book Synopsis Entertaining the Troops by : Kiri Bloom Walden
Download or read book Entertaining the Troops written by Kiri Bloom Walden and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-08-22 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the foundation and work of the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) and other entertainment organisations such as CEMA and Stars in Battledress. These organisations ensured that troops in all theatres of the Second World War were visited by big bands, ballet stars, Shakespearian actors and the most famous popular entertainers of the day in order to raise morale. Many of Britain's biggest stars cut their teeth performing on makeshift stages to homesick soldiers, sailors and airmen and women during the war years, with famous performers including Laurence Olivier, Gracie Fields, George Formby, Vera Lynn, Margot Fonteyn and members of The Goons. This book also details the alternative arrangements made when the entertainment organisations couldn't come – the forces often put on their own shows, with pantomimes and plays written and performed by POWs being a prime example.
Book Synopsis Burma, Kipling and Western Music by : Andrew Selth
Download or read book Burma, Kipling and Western Music written by Andrew Selth and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, scholars have been trying to answer the question: how was colonial Burma perceived in and by the Western world, and how did people in countries like the United Kingdom and United States form their views? This book explores how Western perceptions of Burma were influenced by the popular music of the day. From the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-6 until Burma regained its independence in 1948, more than 180 musical works with Burma-related themes were written in English-speaking countries, in addition to the many hymns composed in and about Burma by Christian missionaries. Servicemen posted to Burma added to the lexicon with marches and ditties, and after 1913 most movies about Burma had their own distinctive scores. Taking Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 ballad ‘Mandalay’ as a critical turning point, this book surveys all these works with emphasis on popular songs and show tunes, also looking at classical works, ballet scores, hymns, soldiers’ songs, sea shanties, and film soundtracks. It examines how they influenced Western perceptions of Burma, and in turn reflected those views back to Western audiences. The book sheds new light not only on the West’s historical relationship with Burma, and the colonial music scene, but also Burma’s place in the development of popular music and the rise of the global music industry. In doing so, it makes an original contribution to the fields of musicology and Asian Studies.
Download or read book Agent Josephine written by Damien Lewis and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Yorker, Best Books of 2022 Vanity Fair, Best Books of 2022 Booklist, Best Books of 2022 Singer. Actress. Beauty. Spy. During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France. Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all “negroes and Jews.” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy. In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers—a cover for her spying work—Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served—the US, France, and Britain. Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, explaining why she fully deserves her unique place in the French Panthéon.
Book Synopsis Theatre of the People by : Laurence Raw
Download or read book Theatre of the People written by Laurence Raw and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout World War II, audiences in the United Kingdom craved entertainment, even during the country’s darkest days. During this period, actor-manager Donald Wolfit and his theatre troupe toured Great Britain and Europe—often at great risk. After the war, Wolfit broadened his tour, bringing his brand of Shakespearean theatre to North American audiences. Wolfit believed that theatre should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic origins. It was this quality above all that accounted for his huge popularity throughout the fifteen years of his operation. In Theatre of the People: Donald Wolfit’s Shakespearean Productions 1937–1953, Laurence Raw looks at this tenacious personality whose determination to serve the nation by performing Shakespeare inspired audiences and fellow actors. Drawing on a series of hitherto unpublished materials—including letters and interviews—this part biography and part social history creates a vivid picture of what life was like for the touring actor during WWII and beyond. Recreating twelve of Wolfit’s touring dates throughout Great Britain and North America, this volume also demonstrates theatre’s importance as a source of mass entertainment and education, as well as a propaganda tool. Despite Wolfit’s popular appeal at the time, he was doomed to remain on the periphery of the theatrical establishment. This book contends that Wolfit deserves to be recognized for his efforts in maintaining public morale during times of stress. Theatre of the People will appeal not only to those interested in drama but also to students and scholars of history and popular entertainment in the 1940s and 1950s.
Book Synopsis The Road to Ambridge by : June Spencer
Download or read book The Road to Ambridge written by June Spencer and published by Aurum Press Limited. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: June Spencer may well be best known as matriarch Peggy Archer (now Woolley), of one of the UK's best known and longest running soap operas, but aged 90 now, she'd seen and done a lot before (and since) joining the Archers 60 years ago. The only original member of the cast still in The Archers, June has worked in showbusiness since the age of 12, when she wrote and produced her own stage shows for her family. She grew up to become an after-dinner entertainer, finally making her way to radio, starring in classics such as Dick Barton and Children's Hour. Born back when milk was collected in a jug from the local store, June takes us back in time as she affectionately recalls the slower pace of childhood, life during the second world war, a that she hardly knew returning from Burma, and later, his decline due to Alzheimer's and the subsequent identical story line with her fictional husband. June also talks about 60 years of life with the Archers, telling all about characters, classic storylines and her own life, from playing Mary Queen of Scots and bringing up children, to meeting the Queen. Where Peggy is stern and doesn't see the funny side of things, June's endearing story is infused with humour and a joy of life.
Book Synopsis Nazi-Organized Recreation and Entertainment in the Third Reich by : Julia Timpe
Download or read book Nazi-Organized Recreation and Entertainment in the Third Reich written by Julia Timpe and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the activities of the Nazi regime's vast leisure programme. Shortly after coming to power in Germany, it began a large-scale undertaking to bring happiness and a good life to so-called 'Aryan' Germans, carried out by the Nazi leisure organization Kraft durch Freude. Julia Timpe traces Kraft durch Freude's practices and propaganda from 1933 through the Second World War, and analyses Nazi-organized sports classes, entertainment events, and beautification campaigns for industrial sites and the countryside, as well as Kraft durch Freude's activities in entertaining German soldiers and concentration camp guards. Contributing to newer scholarship which focuses on the integratory force of the Nazi promise of a unified 'racial community' of all 'Aryan' Germans, this book highlights that Kraft durch Freude's 'everyday production of joy' was central to Nazism, closely connected to the destructive side of the Third Reich, and ultimately a major reason for Nazism's success among the German population.
Book Synopsis British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950 by : Rebecca D'Monte
Download or read book British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950 written by Rebecca D'Monte and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British theatre from 1900 to 1950 has been subject to radical re-evaluation with plays from the period setting theatres alight and gaining critical acclaim once again; this book explains why, presenting a comprehensive survey of the theatre and how it shaped the work that followed. Rebecca D'Monte examines how the emphasis upon the working class, 'angry' drama from the 1950s has led to the neglect of much of the century's earlier drama, positioning the book as part of the current debate about the relationship between war and culture, the middlebrow, and historiography. In a comprehensive survey of the period, the book considers: - the Edwardian theatre; - the theatre of the First World War, including propaganda and musicals; -the interwar years, the rise of commercial theatre and influence of Modernism; - the theatre of the Second World War and post-war period. Essays from leading scholars Penny Farfan, Steve Nicholson and Claire Cochrane give further critical perspectives on the period's theatre and demonstrate its relevance to the drama of today. For anyone studying 20th-century British Drama this will prove one of the foundational texts.
