Description
Best remembered for his role as the Scarecrow in the 1939 MGM musical The Wizard of Oz, Ray Bolger led a rich and extraordinary career in the decade before and more than four decades after the creation of the film. Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow is the first biography of this classic
American entertainer, covering the luminous and forgotten career of the eccentric dancer outside of his burlap mask. The product of a fragmented, working-class Boston Irish family, Bolger learned tap and eccentric dance steps as solace for a difficult life before running away to repertory theater and Vaudeville. From there, he would go on to become a Broadway star, a contract player at Hollywood's major studios,
one of the first performers to tour the South Pacific for the USO, a Tony Award winner, an early sitcom star, and the opening headliner of the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. Using unprecedented access to Bolger's papers and many never-before-published photographs, Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow pieces together the lost story of an itinerant hoofer who survived and thrived during the major media changes of the twentieth century and established himself as a staple of
American pop culture.
Author: Holly Van Leuven
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 03/08/2019
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780190639044
ISBN10: 0190639040
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Entertainment & Performing Arts
- Music | Recording & Reproduction
- Performing Arts | Theater | Broadway & Musicals
American entertainer, covering the luminous and forgotten career of the eccentric dancer outside of his burlap mask. The product of a fragmented, working-class Boston Irish family, Bolger learned tap and eccentric dance steps as solace for a difficult life before running away to repertory theater and Vaudeville. From there, he would go on to become a Broadway star, a contract player at Hollywood's major studios,
one of the first performers to tour the South Pacific for the USO, a Tony Award winner, an early sitcom star, and the opening headliner of the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. Using unprecedented access to Bolger's papers and many never-before-published photographs, Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow pieces together the lost story of an itinerant hoofer who survived and thrived during the major media changes of the twentieth century and established himself as a staple of
American pop culture.
Author: Holly Van Leuven
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 03/08/2019
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780190639044
ISBN10: 0190639040
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Entertainment & Performing Arts
- Music | Recording & Reproduction
- Performing Arts | Theater | Broadway & Musicals
About the Author
Holly Van Leuven is a writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles, California. She is the first researcher to access the personal papers of Ray Bolger. She is the inaugural winner of the Biographers International Organization's Hazel Rowley Prize for first-time authors.