It has often been stated that 1943 was a watershed in the evolving world of musical

theatre. Discuss this statement and compare the repertoire and genre of pre-1943
and post-1943 musical theatre.

1943 was an important year for the whole world; the war had reaching a turning point and

it was now clear that Germany had little chance of winning. For the Allies, morale rose. In

America the Great Depression was finally ending and their role as a super-power was well

established. The entertainment industry was booming, with women and people of colour

beginning to find their place on stage and screen. Significant progress was made in

musical theatre throughout the 20th Century, but one can consider 1943 to be the most

significant year, particularly in dance.

The first revolutionary Broadway production began with Florenz Ziegfeld, who was born in

Chicago and managed small vaudeville acts to make money. He sought new acts for his

first Broadway show, and came across singer Anna Held whilst on a trip to Europe in 1895.

She was at the time contracted with a revue show called the Folies Bergere in Paris, and

at her suggestion created his own production, which would eventually be named The

Ziegfeld Follies. Ziegfeld learned early on that “sex sells”, and hired bodybuilder Eugene

Sandow to financially improve his father's nightclub business. Sandow couldn't sing or

dance, but brought in female audiences and saved his father from bankruptcy. When

developing his Follies show, his motto was 'Glorifying the American girl', which “underlines

the Follies' emphasis on choruses of beautiful women in glittering production numbers”

(Wilmeth, 2007). He auditioned girls from all over America to find a showgirl chorus with

his idea of the perfect shape, which included being around six feet tall. The Follies girls

became role models for women – although they were being highly sexualised and used as

patriarchal entertainment, it gave women an opportunity for fame, and something to aspire

towards.
For the most part the Follies girls did not do much dancing, but were seen more as an

attractive background ensemble for the leads: people like George M. Cohan, Bert

Williams, and Fanny Brice. They wore skimpy outfits that highlighted their figures and large

headdresses, with the majority of their movement comprising of elegant walking, posing,

and basic tap steps. Ziegfeld also opened a second, late-night revue show called The

Midnight Frolic, staged in the rooftop level of the New Amsterdam Theatre, where the stars

and chorus girls of the Follies show would dance in a more risqué way. An article written

for the New York Times (1916) stated:

It is a Ziegfeld-Urban-Wayburn show of beautiful women, frocks and

tableaux designed for the business man who is too tired to go home
after the play… One might search the world and not find anything
quite as unique or lavish as this midnight revue.

This indicates that the women were used for aesthetic purposes, reinforced by the

knowledge that Ziegfeld encouraged his audiences to vote for the performer that they

found the most beautiful, and that “the young lady receiving the most votes during the run

of that Frolic series had her salary doubled” (Bhat, 2014). The movement in the shows did

not portray any kind of storytelling, as the Follies series never had any plots.

Sweeping changes occurred in America with the arrival of the 'Roaring Twenties'. This

decade became a luxury period for Americans, despite it also bringing the start of the

Prohibition Era. With alcohol banned, illegal speakeasies erupted in New York, bringing

with them the introduction of jazz music and dancing. Ziegfeld continued to develop his

Follies to suit the dramatic changes that American women were making to their dress

sense and attitudes, bringing in stars such as Marilynn Miller and Al Jolson. However,

other musicals were starting to break through into Broadway's theatres, such as Shuffle

Along and Runnin' Wild. The former was produced in 1921, with music and lyrics by Noble

Sissle and Eubie Blake, and had a very thin, revue-style plot. John Sullivan (2016) writes

in his article for the New York Times that Shuffle Along “is often called the first successful
all-black musical... Langston Hughes said more than once that Shuffle Along was the

beginning of the Harlem Renaissance”.

Shuffle Along undoubtedly pushed boundaries in dance. As David S. Thompson (2004)

states: “Shuffle Along started a decade-long trend toward Negro musicals. As a result

theatre artists and producers looked to African-American expression for inspiration and

dancing to jazz became a standard for chorus girls”. The show was revived on Broadway

for a third time in 2016, and footage from this production demonstrates that the dances

comprised a lot of fierce tap movements and large, swinging Charleston-esque steps –

dramatically different to the preening and strutting of the Follies girls. As Jo Tanner (n.d)

states: “This revue legitimized the African-American musical, proving to producers and

managers that audiences would pay to see African-American talent on Broadway”. Tanner

continues to express that it “featured the first sophisticated, serious, African-American love

story, introducing the song “Love Will Find a Way”... [and] laid the foundation for public

acceptance of African-American performers in other than "burlesques" roles". The

combination of the jazz dance and the jazz music greatly impressed other Broadway

producers, as the resulting style of dance was one that encouraged individual expression,

inspiring the producers to showcase more African-American dancing in musicals (Tanner,

n.d.).

The show greatly influenced Irving Berlin and the Gershwins – George Gershwin was

stimulated by black American jazz music, capturing the energy of the 1920s when writing

Lady, Be Good (1924). Shuffle Along was the beginning of a plethora of African-American

musicals that opened between 1921 and 1924, including Runnin' Wild (1923), which

featured James Johnson's famous composition, The Charleston. The catchy tune sparked

an international dancing fad, becoming famous on Broadway. George Gershwin

“acknowledged his high esteem for Johnson and the enormous influence Johnson’s work

had on his own by including the “Charleston” theme in his Concerto in F” (Pick, 1997).

After the Wall Street Crash in 1929, musicals began to reflect reality and social issues,

unlike the fancifully comedic revues of the previous decade. As demonstrated in Michael

Kantor's television miniseries Broadway: The American Musical (2004), musical theatre

became the only outlet for more thematically realistic songs, especially with the American

anthem “Brother Can You Spare Me A Dime”, but musicals such as Anything Goes (1934)

gave people hope throughout the Great Depression. Ethel Waters, a talented singer and a

star of African-American musicals, was hired by Irving Berlin for a new revue show called

As Thousands Cheer (1933). The show consisted of satirical sketches and songs based

off newspaper headlines, and made an enormous impact on audiences with regards to

racial issues. It was the first Broadway production to give an African-American performer

equal billing to white actors (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, 2016), and Waters sang a

poignant ballad about a woman lamenting her husband who was lynched by a mob, called

'Supper Time'. This song became a huge hit and opened the eyes of the New Yorkers who

didn't believe that lynching actually happened in the southern states (Kantor, 2004).

The show was originally choreographed by Charles Weidman, “one of the giants of

American modern dance and a pioneer in the development of the art form” (Charles

Weidman Dance Foundation, n.d). Along with Doris Humphrey, Weidman established new

techniques “involving gravity, fall and recovery, sustained, suspended, and vibratory

movement”, creating a uniquely American style of dance, heavily influencing all following

modern dance (Mendelsohn & Brooks, 1990). By viewing The Weidman Foundation's re-

staging of his famous dance piece “Lynchtown”, one can see how his style is still being

used in contemporary dance today. One can infer from this information that As Thousands
Cheer was likely to have had grounded modern dance routines, although there is no

footage of what they may have looked like, which would've been new to Broadway

audiences after the fierce tap and jazz routines of the previous decade, e.

1943 is often considered a watershed in the development of musical theatre for a number

of reasons. Taking the perspective of dance evolution, Rogers and Hammerstein's

Oklahoma! took the use of dance in musicals to new levels. Oklahoma! had a simplistic

story that broke new ground by exploring character relationships through naturalistic, plot-

driven scenes. It was one of the first times dance had been used for storytelling in

mainstream musicals - the songs, dances and characters belonged to Oklahoma! alone,

which made it appear fresh and different.. Agnes de Mille was the choreographer for the

show, and came up with the idea of putting in a 15 minute dream ballet at the end of Act 1.

In a lecture series produced by PBS (Conversations About The Dance, 1979), de Mille was

asked why putting the dream ballet in was so important to the development of musical

theatre at the time. She responded:

Well, it was new. It was new because it had a lot of emotional impact
and content, and because all of the people in the dances were
people, and they were characters in the play, and they kept their
characters right through the play... and all the gestures and
movements belonged to that musical, and couldn't possibly have
belonged to any other show.

This reinforces the idea that the storytelling through the dancing was so integral to the

show as a whole, making the characters more interesting and relatable for audiences. The

show was an enormous success, and when asked why she thought that was, de Mille

explained that with the show taking place during the war, American soldiers found the

show extremely emotional because it symbolised their homes and what they were going to

die for.

In the mid-1930s, a lot of simplistic musicals relied on following a 'Cinderella story' – a

young girl would go from rags to riches and fall in love on the way. This template is

followed in Gershwin's Porgy And Bess (1935), which follows “a conventional narrative:

boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy resolves to get her back” (Taylor & Symonds, 2014).

Oklahoma! introduces characters like Laurey, who initially refuses to fall in love with Curly,

and sings empowering songs like “Many A New Day”. This was a turning point for women,

and the theme of introducing feminism into musicals was continued with On The Town in

1944. On The Town was based off Jerome Robbins' ballet Fancy Free, who then

collaborated with Leonard Bernstein to turn it into a musical. On The Town had strong

female characters – they were amusing, had traditionally male jobs such as being a taxi

driver, had confident sex drives and were assertive, a far cry from the “Cinderella story”

plot template of the previous decade. The women did as much pursuing and seducing as

the men, with raunchy numbers such as “Come Up To My Place” and “I Can Cook Too”.

The show integrated dance into the storytelling in the same way that Agnes de Mille had

done with Oklahoma!, and Robbins choreographed a number of balletic dance sequences

for the show, including “Miss Turnstiles”, “Lonely Town pas de deux”, “Times Square Ballet”

and “Imaginary Coney Island Ballet”.

Robbins made a bold statement with his casting, insisting on a racially diverse company,

imagining an “alternative to the segregated US military of World War II... offered an early

case of what has become known as color-blind casting” (Oja, 2014). There were six

African-American performers in the cast, and while that seems like a small number today,

the roles they were cast in directly challenged racial stereotypes. The show “eschewed

blackface, steering clear of bandanas, maids, and butlers. It did not segregate the black

performers on stage... but rather it modeled an integrated citizenry” (Oja, 2014). The

bravest casting choice involved hiring Japanese-American dancer Sono Osato as the lead

female Ivy Smith, a role encompassing “All-American Girl” values, a controversial decision
towards the end of the second World War, where Japan and America were on opposing

sides. The show opened in December of 1944, only a few months after the second Pearl

Harbor attack, and her “beauty queen” character meant “audiences saw a Japanese-

American woman taking a role onstage that was off-limits to her in real life” (Oja, 2015).

This challenged social norms, but as Carol J. Oja (2015) states, Sono's professional ballet

experience made it “possible for the creative team to realize its vision of building a musical

out of dance” and ultimately helped to progress racial diversity in theatre.

Other notable musicals following On The Town include Brigadoon (1947) and Guys And

Dolls (1950). The former was choreographed by Agnes de Mille, featuring traditional

Scottish folk dances, including a sword dance, a wedding dance, and a funeral dance,

which was yet another step forward for storytelling through dance. She won the Tony

Award for Best Choreography at the very first Tony Awards, an award also won by Michael

Kidd for Guys And Dolls – he had wanted to capture the bustling vibe of New York City in

his dances, so Runyonland, the opening was simply a montage of ceaseless activities

performed by the ensemble.

Dance was also popular in Hollywood. Singin' In The Rain (1952) was choreographed by

and starred Gene Kelly, and contains revolutionary dance sequences such as the title

number, “Moses Supposes” and “Good Morning”. It is now considered one of the best

movies of all time, according to the British Film Institute (Christie, 2012). West Side Story

(1957) is also considered to contain iconic dance sequences, again originally

choreographed by Jerome Robbins and winning the Tony Award for Best Choreography.

The sassy, raunchy, high-kicking talented dancers in West Side Story are so different from

the Follies girls, showing how much dance in musical theatre has changed in almost half a

century.
By collating and analysing the above evidence, it is perhaps fair to say that 1943 was

indeed a watershed in the world of musical theatre. This judgement is primarily from a

dance perspective, as it is clear that Agnes de Mille sparked a new era of storytelling

through dance, beginning with her dream ballet in Oklahoma!. It was a brand new concept

for audiences, and the dances had much more of an emotional impact than in previous

shows. One could also conclude that the characters in Oklahoma! brought new ideas for

female roles, making them much more interesting by being assertive and independent,

which was another turning point for musical theatre.

However, it could be argued that there are many other watersheds in musical theatre

development, such as Shuffle Along (1921) and Show Boat (1927). Shuffle Along greatly

pushed boundaries in both dance and racial progression in theatre. Referring again to

David Thompson (2004), he states that “a genuine love plot with an unburlesqued love

song featuring an African-American couple was unheard of”, making Shuffle Along one of

the first of its kind. Soraya McDonald (2016) writes about how Shuffle Along paved the way

for musicals such as Hamilton and The Colour Purple, where the majority of the cast are

people of colour. She explains that the retelling of Shuffle Along's history in the 2016

Broadway show talks about how being oneself onstage was brand new for performers

used to working in blackface, and that the show “provides context for just what a big deal

that is for black artists”. Shuffle Along was the first step towards achieving the kind of

revolutionary status that Hamilton has gained, where not only are the leading roles played

by actors of multiple ethnicities, but they are portraying white historical figures like

America's founding fathers.

Thompson (2004) also states that “theatre historians point to the opening of Show Boat in
1927 as the true watershed moment in the development of the American musical”. Show

Boat had radical new themes regarding race as well, and tackled serious topics which was

brand new to musical theatre, compared to the light-hearted trivial revue shows that had

come before it. Show Boat integrated songs with the storytelling, using the songs to

advance the plot or character development, and “treating serious material in a genre

considered light entertainment”, qualities that Thompson (2004) claims that Shuffle Along

shares, although he agrees that Shuffle Along does not rival Show Boat in its “ability to

advance plot and reveal character through song”. Despite the progress made here

however, Oklahoma! opened new doors for performers, choreographers and writers in

1943, and is still a show that is regularly put on to this today, which can’t be said for most

others that came before it.

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