Step into Ernst Wolzogen's Motley Theater, Max Reinhardt's Sound and Smoke, Rudolf Nelson's Chat noir, and Friedrich Hollaender's Tingel-Tangel. Enjoy Claire Waldoff's rendering of a lower-class Berliner, Kurt Tucholsky's satirical songs, and Walter Mehring's Dadaist experiments, as Peter Jelavich spotlights Berlin's cabarets from the day the curtain first went up, in 1901, until the Nazi regime brought it down. Fads and fashions, sexual mores and political ideologies--all were subject to satire and parody on the cabaret stage. This book follows the changing treatment of these themes, and the fate of cabaret itself, through the most turbulent decades of modern German history: the prosperous and optimistic Imperial age, the unstable yet culturally inventive Weimar era, and the repressive years of National Socialism. By situating cabaret within Berlin's rich landscape of popular culture and distinguishing it from vaudeville and variety theaters, spectacular revues, prurient nude dancing, and Communist agitprop, Jelavich revises the prevailing image of this form of entertainment. Neither highly politicized, like postwar German Kabarett, nor sleazy in the way that some American and European films suggest, Berlin cabaret occupied a middle ground that let it cast an ironic eye on the goings-on of Berliners and other Germans. However, it was just this satirical attitude toward serious themes, such as politics and racism, that blinded cabaret to the strength of the radical right-wing forces that ultimately destroyed it. Jelavich concludes with the Berlin cabaret artists' final performances--as prisoners in the concentration camps at Westerbork and Theresienstadt. This book gives us a sense of what the world looked like within the cabarets of Berlin and at the same time lets us see, from a historical distance, these lost performers enacting the political, sexual, and artistic issues that made their city one of the most dynamic in Europe.

This work looks at Berlin's cabarets from the day the curtain first went up, in 1901, until the Nazi regime brought it down. It follows the changing treatment of popular cabaret themes, and the fate of the cabaret itself.

Set in Berlin between the two world wars the play explores the tensions leading to the rise of Hitler.

Where did cabaret come from? What has it got to do with pre-war Berlin, decadent society and Nazis? How does it turn into media cabaret and the sisterhood of sleaze? Is cabaret a primary vehicle for exploring the range of sexual practices and alternative sexual identities? In this new book William Grange brings into one place for the first time the range of practices now associated with the form of cabaret. Beginning with its origins in speciality German theatres and the development both of the sheet music industry and disc recordings, Grange tracks the form through into its golden age in the 1920s and beyond. The book's three sections deal first with the emergence of Berlin as the 'German Chicago', where cabaret flourished in the midst of post-war political turmoil. The abolition of censorship allowed nude dancing and sexually explicit songs and routines. It also saw the introduction of kick-line dancing and black performers. In the book's second and third sections Grange takes the story forward into the post second-world-war world, describing how the form moved outwards from central Europe to move across the whole world, reaching Singapore and Australia, and as it did so settling into the range of forms in which we know it today. Some of these forms became 'media cabaret' looking towards the new media age, the postmodernism that followed on from modernism. To this age, even in its new forms, cabaret brought its old habits of making challenges to assumptions around gender identities and sexual practices. As throughout its whole history, cabaret was a form that provided particular vehicles for female performers. And whereas it once served up whore songs and nude dancing it now offers a sisterhood of sleaze.

The stylistic remnants of cabaret music from Weimar-era Germany are all around us. During the 20th century, its most prominent American exponents were the Germans Marlene Dietrich and Lotte Lenya, whose careers extended through the 1970s. Because of them (and others), the words and music of such artists as Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Friedrich Hollaender, and Marcellus Schiffer continue to be heard and exert widespread influence. Major songwriters touched by cabaret include Lennon & McCartney, Bacharach & David, Kander & Ebb, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, and Patti Smith, among many others. African-American artists, beginning with Louis Armstrong, have been sympathetic interpreters of cabaret music. Modern-day Las Vegas appears to be the fulfillment of a prophecy made in the late 1920s by Weill & Brecht in their Mahagonny stage works. And today, the German Kabarett tradition remains strong with such stars as Ute Lemper and Max Raabe packing international venues.

In 1973, Cabaret walked away with eight Academy Awards, including gold statues for director Bob Fosse and for its stars, Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey. Based on the long-running Broadway musical, with a memorable score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, Cabaret is a landmark film that broke new cinematic ground by revolutionizing the Hollywood musical through its treatment of adult themes and art house sensibility. With an introduction by Joel Grey, the book chronicles the history of Cabaret from Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories to the stage and film versions of John van Druten's play I Am a Camera through the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical for the big screen. Readers will get an insider's look into the making of the film, the creative talent in front of the camera and behind the scenes, and why this divinely decadent musical continues to captivate audiences.