Broadway Melody - by Jack Viertel (Hardcover)

About the Book

A show business romance crossing 7000 miles and 70 years. Broadway Melody stitches three lives - and three hearts - into the fabric of an endlessly compelling tale of the American theater.

Book Synopsis

For more than a century the Broadway theater has been a landing strip for characters on the run - from their upbringing, from the unwelcoming communities they grew up in, even from their parents. So it seems for the obsessively gifted trumpet player Ike Harris, who leaves behind a most peculiar childhood and a chaotic life on the road for the orchestra pit of the Winter Garden Theater. There, in the dark confines beneath the stage he falls hopelessly in love with a young ingenue in a catastrophic flop that leaves all concerned searching for happier outcomes. All, that is, except for Vincent Donnelly, who has been training his number two follow spot on the very same young performer - Aurora Shelton - and wishing he could fall through its lighted beam and land securely against her heart. Vincent, it first appears, gets what he wants. Or perhaps not.

Broadway Melody traces three lives through the early ambitions and unlikely pathways that landed all of them in the same place at the same time - 1960s Broadway. Woven through its pages are the hits and flops, the making and breaking of careers, the destruction of three historic theater buildings, the plague of AIDS, the machinations of union bosses and producers, and, of course, the world outside this insular community - the audience that looks to Broadway for emotional thrills, for enlightenment, and for pure entertainment.

Laced with humor and sadness, portraits of historical characters from The Street and a long view of the rise, fall and revival of Times Square itself, Broadway Melody stitches three lives - and three hearts - into the fabric of an endlessly compelling tale of the American theater.

Review Quotes

Jack Viertel weaves three separate and fascinating show biz lives into a complex but realistic triangle, set against the backdrop of seventy years of jazz and Broadway. Populated by characters famous and forgotten, some authentic and others lightly cloaked in anonymity, Broadway Melody makes a page-turningly compelling tale.

-Steven Suskin, author of The Sound of Broadway Music and Offstage Observations

Broadway Melody kept me up at night and extended my lunch hours over and over again - I couldn't tear myself away from it. The characters are so vivid and compelling, the evocation of Broadway so palpable, and the story so captivating. Jack Viertel is able to do something many authors cannot: evoke the magic of a piece of music, whether real or imagined. It made me proud to be a pianist, and to see my lifelong obsession with songwriting put into such elegant, clear words. I love this book. It sings.

- Steven Blier, Artistic Director, New York Festival of Song

Jack Viertel takes us on a journey - nostalgic, sentimental, tough, romantic - that is fiction, but takes place in a very real Broadway. His characters - the people who actually make Broadway happen - are his own creation, but anyone with a passion for Broadway and its history will smile with recognition at many of the details. You'll recognize much here. But there is also a passion, both personal and cultural, that moves the story swiftly along to its bittersweet ending. I delighted in yielding to Broadway Melody - and you will too.

-Ted Chapin, author of Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies, former President of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization