Two prominent figures in the American arts world have released a new book titled Broadway in Black and White: The Untold Story of the American Musical. The collaboration brings together John Mauceri, a former leader of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and recipient of Tony, Olivier, and Grammy Awards, and John McWhorter, a Columbia University professor of linguistics and New York Times columnist. Their work explores the foundational role that Black and white artistic traditions have played in shaping the American musical.
McWhorter explains that the general public often perceives show tunes as a predominantly white enterprise. However, he argues that the true history of the genre reveals a deep intermingling of Black and white art forms. According to McWhorter, without the Black presence in nineteenth-century United States, the American musical would lack its current international influence and artistic quality.
Mauceri reflects on the cultural impact of the 1949 production South Pacific. Although he was only a child when the show first premiered, he participated in a high school production years later. He highlights the song You've Got to Be Taught as a pivotal moment in theatrical history. In that number, the character explicitly addresses the concept of learned racial prejudice, a theme that was not always so directly presented on stage prior to 1949.
The authors note a significant difference in how Hollywood and Broadway handled racial integration during the mid-twentieth century. Mauceri points out that film studios often treated Black characters as optional, allowing them to cut scenes if a Black performance number did not fit the narrative. In contrast, Broadway integrated these elements from the beginning, making race a central component of the storytelling rather than a peripheral addition.
The book also addresses the controversy surrounding Porgy and Bess, a work composed by the Gershwin brothers. McWhorter acknowledges that the opera was written by white men, which raised questions about cultural authenticity. However, he maintains that George Gershwin successfully captured the essence of Black musical culture by spending time in the Sea Islands. Despite the initial context of cultural appropriation, the work is now widely cherished by Black audiences and is considered a classic of American art.
Another example of shifting norms discussed in the text is the 1962 musical No Strings. Mauceri notes that the production featured a white male lead and a Black female lead, yet the script never explicitly mentioned their race. This casting choice was met with mixed reactions from critics, some of whom were hesitant to address the racial dynamic in their reviews. The authors observe that while the show was progressive, the 1960s were not yet fully prepared to accept such integration as a standard norm.
In a personal anecdote shared in the book's epilogue, Mauceri discovered a letter from a military man named McWhorter. The writer expressed his enjoyment of South Pacific but felt that the song You've Got to Be Taught went too far. Mauceri found the coincidence of sharing a surname with his co-author to be ironic. Upon learning the connection, McWhorter noted that his family likely had formerly owned slaves, a detail that Mauceri admits he should have considered earlier. The exchange served as a personal reminder of the careful teaching of history that the book aims to document.
The new book is available for purchase and offers a detailed look at how the American musical evolved through the intersection of different cultural identities. It challenges the common assumption that the genre developed in a vacuum, instead presenting it as a product of complex social and artistic exchanges.
