From the Bowery to Broadway: Lew Fields and the Roots of American Popular Theatre

In an informative biography-cum-social history, two descendants of Lew Fields chronicle his life in the theater. At the age of 12, in 1879, Fields launched with his partner, Joe Weber, an act that would prove to be one of the most successful in vaudeville. Their fractured English and knockabout comedy, expressions of the immigrant culture from which 20th-century American popular entertainment sprang, were still convulsing nostalgic audiences on a reunion tour in 1932. As an innovative producer and manager (six Broadway theaters bore his name between 1896 and 1927), Fields helped to create the modern American musical by blending such disparate forms as vaudeville, the minstrel show, burlesque and comic opera. With his son, librettist Herbert Fields, and Herbert's pals Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, he presented such classic American musicals as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ; his lyricist daughter Dorothy worked with composers like Cole Porter and Jerome Kern. Fields died in 1941. Although clunkily written, this carefully researched volume contains a treasure trove of material about the evolution of the American theater, both artistically and financially, over more than half a century. Illustrations not seen by PW . (Sept.)