Gerald Nachman

The comedians of the 1950s and 1960s were a totally different breed of relevant, revolutionary performer from any that came before or after, comics whose humor did much more than pry guffaws out of audiences. Gerald Nachman presents the stories of the groundbreaking comedy stars of those years, each one a cultural • Mort Sahl, of a new political cynicism• Lenny Bruce, of the sexual, drug, and language revolution• Dick Gregory, of racial unrest• Bill Cosby and Godfrey Cambridge, of racial harmony• Phyllis Diller, of housewifely complaint• Mike Nichols & Elaine May and Woody Allen, of self-analytical angst and a rearrangement of male-female relations• Stan Freberg and Bob Newhart, of encroaching, pervasive pop media manipulation and, in the case of Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding, of the banalities of broadcasting• Mel Brooks, of the Yiddishization of American comedy• Sid Caesar, of a new awareness of the satirical possibilities of television• Joan Rivers, of the obsessive craving for celebrity gossip and of a latent bitchy sensibility• Tom Lehrer, of the inane, hypocritical, mawkishly sentimental nature of hallowed American folkways and, in the case of the Smothers Brothers, of overly revered folk songs and folklore• Steve Allen, of the late-night talk show as a force in American comedy• David Frye and Vaughn Meader, of the merger of showbiz and politics and, along with Will Jordan, of stretching the boundaries of mimicry• Shelley Berman, of a generation of obsessively self-confessional humor• Jonathan Winters and Jean Shepherd, of the daring new free-form improvisational comedy and of a sardonically updated view of Midwestern archetypes• Ernie Kovacs, of surreal visual effects and the unbounded vistas of videoTaken together, they made up the faculty of a new school of vigorous, socially aware satire, a vibrant group of voices that reigned from approximately 1953 to 1965.Nachman shines a flashlight into the corners of these comedians’ chaotic and often troubled lives, illuminating their genius as well as their demons, damaged souls, and desperate drive. His exhaustive research and intimate interviews reveal characters that are intriguing and all too human, full of rich stories, confessions, regrets, and traumas. Seriously Funny is at once a dazzling cultural history and a joyous celebration of an extraordinary era in American comedy.From the Hardcover edition.

In the late 1920s radio exploded almost overnight into being America's dominant entertainment, just as television would do twenty-five years later. Gerald Nachman, himself a product of the radio years, takes us back to the heyday of radio, bringing to life the great performers and shows, as well as the not-so-great and not-great-at-all. Nachman analyzes the many genres that radio exploited or invented, from the soap opera to the sitcom to the quiz show, zooming in to study closely key performers like Jack Benny, Bob Hope, and Fred Allen. Raised on Radio is a generous, instructive, and sinfully readable salute to an extraordinary American phenomenon.

Showstoppers! is all about Broadway musicals’ most memorable numbers—why they were so effective, how they were created, and why they still resonate. Gerald Nachman has interviewed dozens of iconic musical theater figures to get their inside stories for this book, including Patti LuPone, Chita Rivera, Marvin Hamlisch, Joel Grey, Edie Adams, John Kander, Jerry Herman, Sheldon Harnick, Tommy Tune, Harold Prince, Donna McKechnie, and Andrea McArdle, uncovering priceless previously untold anecdotes and details.

Before the advent of cable and its hundreds of channels, before iPods and the Internet, three television networks ruled America's evenings. And for twenty-three years, Ed Sullivan, the Broadway gossip columnist turned awkward emcee, ruled Sunday nights. It was Sullivan's genius to take a worn-out stage genre-vaudeville-and transform it into the TV variety show, a format that was to dominate for decades. Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! tells the complete saga of The Ed Sullivan Show and, through the voices of some 60 stars interviewed for the book, brings to life the most beloved, diverse, multi-cultural, and influential variety hour ever to air. Gerald Nachman takes us through those years, from the earliest dog acts and jugglers to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and beyond. Sullivan was the first TV impresario to feature black performers on a regular basis-including Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey, James Brown, and Richard Pryor-challenging his conservative audience and his own traditional tastes, and changing the face of American popular culture along the way. No other TV show ever cut such a broad swath through our national life or cast such a long shadow, nor has there ever been another show like it. Nachman's compulsively readable history, illustrated with classic photographs and chocked with colorful anecdotes, reanimates The Ed Sullivan Show for a new generation.

Book by Nachman, Gerald

Wit, Humor

Just as American showbiz has always mirrored the society of its time, so does this selection of newspaper and magazine columns from the 1960s to the 1990s by the veteran journalist Gerald Nachman superbly capture American showbiz of the last half of the twentieth century. In the new introductions he wrote to these columns, Nachman joins his present-day readers in a nostalgic look back on this fertile period of idiosyncratically American entertainment, returning us to what it felt like for the first time to experience iconic performers like Eleanor Powell, Fred Astaire, Betty Garrett, Bob and Ray, Michael Feinstein, and many others. Enduring highlights and passing fads alike come to life again in these columns about showbiz celebrities and the live shows, radio, and theater they made so exciting subjects that were once the common currency of the time. For first-time readers and old fans alike, these columns reveal what made all of Gerald Nachman s quotidian writing so special unstinting admiration of talent, wherever he encountered it; devastating callouts of entertainment industry "excesses and idiocies ; and always, underlying every word, a profound and enduring love for all things theater.