International vaudeville star and Broadway prima ballerina Jeanne Devereaux performed for millions across America and Europe from age eleven until her retirement at forty. A headliner at Radio City Music Hall, she led a large group of performers on one of the first USO Camp Shows tours to Japan. Born Jean Helman, she entered showbiz as a dancing trouper performing in palatial theaters and was one of the last vaudevillians surviving into the 2010s. In her later years living in Pasadena, California, Devereaux indulged her passion for research and writing in the Huntington Library's Rothenberg Reading Room, losing none of her intelligence and wit despite a fading memory. Drawing on personal interviews, theatrical programs, and her diary and letters, this biography illuminates the life and career of one of vaudeville's stars of stage, film, and television.

Vaudeville, as it is commonly known today, began as a response to scandalous variety performances appealing mostly to adult, male patrons. When former minstrel performer and balladeer Tony Pastor opened the Fourteenth Street Theatre in New York in 1881, he was guided by a mission to provide family-friendly variety shows in hopes of drawing in that portion of the audience – women and children – otherwise inherently excluded from variety bills prior to 1881. There he perfected a framework for family-oriented amusements of the highest obtainable quality and style. Historical Dictionary of Vaudeville contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and the dictionary section has more than 1,000 cross-referenced entries on performing artists, managers and agents, theatre facilities, and the terminology central to the history of vaudeville. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about vaudeville.

International vaudeville star and Broadway prima ballerina Jeanne Devereaux performed for millions across America and Europe from age eleven until her retirement at forty. A headliner at Radio City Music Hall, she led a large group of performers on one of the first USO Camp Shows tours to Japan. Born Jean Helman, she entered showbiz as a dancing trouper performing in palatial theaters and was one of the last vaudevillians surviving into the 2010s. In her later years living in Pasadena, California, Devereaux indulged her passion for research and writing in the Huntington Library's Rothenberg Reading Room, losing none of her intelligence and wit despite a fading memory. Drawing on personal interviews, theatrical programs, and her diary and letters, this biography illuminates the life and career of one of vaudeville's stars of stage, film, and television.

Bungalow Heaven, Pasadena's first and largest landmark district, contains the nation's finest collection of middle-class homes of the American Arts and Crafts period. Saved from the wrecking ball in the late 1980s by a grassroots movement that would regenerate the city, it was listed in 2008 on the California Register and in the National Register of Historic Places. The next year, the American Planning Association deemed this heavenly place, with its human-scaled houses, welcoming front porches, and walkable tree-lined streets, as a "Great Neighborhood" in its Great Places in America program. Bungalow Heaven became a model for civic engagement and a lovingly restored reminder of a simpler, healthier way of life.

There have been wonderful books about dancing, and superbly evocative ones about old Russia: but here the two themes are fascinatingly wedded. For these are the memoirs of the prima ballerina assoluta of the imperial Russian ballet, Mathilde Kschessinska (the Princess Romanovsky-Krassinsky), with whom, at her first appearance, the Tsarevitch Nicholas fell in love. As a dancer she had few rivals: apart from her marvellous technique she had a star personality, and was adored by the public. At the height of her fame she appeared in London with Diaghilev's company and danced with Nijinsky: she preferred, however, to dance in Russia, and for twenty years she was the adored darling of the great world of Petersburg. After the Revolution, when she was living as an emigre in the South of France, Diaghilev begged her to dance for him in his new Paris season, but to no avail. Kschessinska's memoirs fall roughly into three parts: the glittering fairy-story of her life as prima ballerina in Russia; her flight during the Revolution; and the era in which she established herself as a teacher of the highest rank. It is an extraordinary self-revelation of a great dancer and an utterly human person.

Musical Theatre: A History is a new revised edition of a proven core text for college and secondary school students – and an insightful and accessible celebration of twenty-five centuries of great theatrical entertainment. As an educator with extensive experience in professional theatre production, author John Kenrick approaches the subject with a unique appreciation of musicals as both an art form and a business. Using anecdotes, biographical profiles, clear definitions, sample scenes and select illustrations, Kenrick focuses on landmark musicals, and on the extraordinary talents and business innovators who have helped musical theatre evolve from its roots in the dramas of ancient Athens all the way to the latest hits on Broadway and London's West End. Key improvements to the second edition: · A new foreword by Oscar Hammerstein III, a critically acclaimed historian and member of a family with deep ties to the musical theatre, is included · The 28 chapters are reformatted for the typical 14 week, 28 session academic course, as well as for a two semester, once-weekly format, making it easy for educators to plan a syllabus and reading assignments. · To make the book more interactive, each chapter includes suggested listening and reading lists, designed to help readers step beyond the printed page to experience great musicals and performers for themselves. A comprehensive guide to musical theatre as an international phenomenon, Musical Theatre: A History is an ideal textbook for university and secondary school students.