Inspired by the real life post-divorce experiences of television comedy writer Danny Simon, The Odd Couple has touched multiple generations of fans. Playwright Neil Simon embellished his brother Danny's pseudo-sitcom situation and created an oil-and-water twosome with memorable characters showcasing the foibles of mankind. The original Broadway production enjoyed a run of 964 performances. The story of the cohabitation of Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison translated extremely well to the silver screen, and then in 1970 to television, where it brought weekly laughs and mirth to an even larger audience for five seasons in prime time. This thorough history details The Odd Couple in all its forms over the decades. It provides capsule biographies of the stage, film and television casts and crew, as well as an episode guide and a wealth of little-known information.

Inspired by the real life post-divorce experiences of television comedy writer Danny Simon, The Odd Couple has touched multiple generations of fans. Playwright Neil Simon embellished his brother Danny's pseudo-sitcom situation and created an oil-and-water twosome with memorable characters showcasing the foibles of mankind. The original Broadway production enjoyed a run of 964 performances. The story of the cohabitation of Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison translated extremely well to the silver screen, and then in 1970 to television, where it brought weekly laughs and mirth to an even larger audience for five seasons in prime time. This thorough history details The Odd Couple in all its forms over the decades. It provides capsule biographies of the stage, film and television casts and crew, as well as an episode guide and a wealth of little-known information.

Two poker buddies, one a hyper-neurotic, the other an incurable slob, suddenly find themselves bachelors again and decide to share a New York City apartment.

The close professional relationship between Jack Klugman and Tony Randall has long been famous. However, the details of their close personal relationship has not been revealed until Tony and Me. Here Mr. Klugman provides the ultimate insider's view in a memoir-style tribute to a celebrated friendship that spanned nearly five decades. Tony and Me follows both actors from their early days of stage and television to the "Camelot" of The Odd Coup from Klugman's fight with invasive throat cancer to Randall's struggle to open a National Actors Theatre. What finally emerges is a touching portrait of a legendary professional relationship that, in the end, became deeply personal. Tony and Me includes over fifty photographs, many from Jack and Tony's private collections, and are a rare opportunity for fans to peek behind the scenes and into the lives of one of America's most beloved comedy teams. The free DVD of never-seen-before outtakes from The Odd Couple adds a hilarious third dimension to this intimate account, and makes Tony and Me well worth the price of admission. Book jacket.

Hollywood's conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical, following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the heightened experience of song and dance drew attention to the novelty of the technological development. Until the near-collapse of the genre in the 1960s, the film musical enjoyed around thirty years of development, as landmarks such as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St Louis, Singin' in the Rain, and Gigi showed the exciting possibilities of putting musicals on the silver screen. The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations traces how the genre of the stage-to-screen musical has evolved, starting with screen adaptations of operettas such as The Desert Song and Rio Rita, and looks at how the Hollywood studios in the 1930s exploited the publication of sheet music as part of their income. Numerous chapters examine specific screen adaptations in depth, including not only favorites such as Annie and Kiss Me, Kate but also some of the lesser-known titles like Li'l Abner and Roberta and problematic adaptations such as Carousel and Paint Your Wagon. Together, the chapters incite lively debates about the process of adapting Broadway for the big screen and provide models for future studies.

"From Show Boat (1936) to The Sound of Music (1965) and from Grease (1978) to Chicago (2002), many of the most beloved film musicals in Hollywood history originated as Broadway shows. And in the three years since the original publication of the chapters in this volume (as The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations, 2019) the phenomenon has persisted, with new adaptations such as Cats, In the Heights, Tick, Tick...Boom!, Dear Evan Hansen, and Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. Yet in general, the number of screen adaptations of Broadway musicals and operettas is far greater than the number that have met with success, especially both critical and commercial success (i.e., good reviews and a profit at the box office). This is all the more surprising since Hollywood tended almost (if not quite) exclusively to buy the rights to musicals that had been successful on the stage as a means of guaranteeing a profitable outcome. After all, musicals that had already enjoyed long runs and nationwide productions on the stage ought to have a readymade audience. One might also think that because the authors had puzzled over the individual challenges posed by such properties in their stage incarnations, it ought to be easier to turn them into strong film musicals. But for every West Side Story there were several Finian's Rainbows, Man of La Manchas, and Carousels: movies that simply did not do justice to the 'enchanted evenings' these works provided in their stage incarnations"--

This directory provides an extensive listing of household information collected for over 2,265 famous or notorious individuals who were alive during the 1930 United States Census. Figures from the entertainment industry constitute the bulk of the material, but the work also includes census data for hundreds of scientists, athletes, politicians, criminals, cult figures, and religious leaders. Entries includes the household members' birth and/or professional names, occupations, residential address, and an estimate of the homes' value or monthly rental fee. Each entry also offers a brief guide to finding the household's original census data through the National Archives microfilm. Several appendices provide overall population data from the 1930 Census, a complete list of the 32 questions originally included in the census questionnaire, and contact information for current National Archives and Records Administration locations.