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‘The Milkman's on His Way’: ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ and the Illusion of New York

image of ‘The Milkman's on His Way’: ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ and the Illusion of New York

This chapter focuses on the image that the song ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ creates of New York. It shows that the city becomes a projection surface, where everyone can project its hopes and dreams on. By using the genres of the lullaby and the city symphony, specific myths about New York, such as the ‘city that never sleeps’ or the ‘city where everyone can make it’, are presented and questioned. In the analyses, the original use in Gold Diggers of 1935 and the musical 42nd Street (1980) are contrasted, through which the different illusions the song creates are interrogated. Lastly, the question of agency of the chorus girl who is to be persuaded by the lullaby and the glitz and glamour of Broadway is discussed.

Keywords: 42nd Street ; Al Dubin ; backstage musical ; Busby Berkeley ; chorus girl ; city symphony ; Gold Diggers of 1935 ; Harry Warren ; Hollywood ; metropolis ; musical theatre ; mythologization ; show business

Hardback ISBN: 9781789389906
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References

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  12. Pester, Holly (2016), ‘Songs of Rest: An Intervention in the Complex Genre of the Lullaby’, in F. Callard, K. Staines and J. Wilkes (eds), The Restless Compendium: Interdisciplinary Investigations of Rest and Its Opposites, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 113–18.
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References

  1. Bacon, Lloyd (1933), 42nd Street, USA: Warner Bros.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Berkeley, Busby (1935), Gold Diggers of 1935, USA: Warner Bros.28
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Chauncey, George (1994), Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940, New York: Basic Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. ‘daffodil’ (1994), Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, New York: Random House.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Filipcevic, Vojislava (2010), ‘Urban Planning and the Spaces of Democracy: New York of the Great Depression in 42nd Street, Dead End, and The City’, Culture, Theory & Critique, 51:1, pp. 65–91.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Fischer, Lucy (2010), ‘City of Women: Busby Berkeley, Architecture, and Urban Space’, Cinema Journal, 49:4, pp. 111–30.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Graf, Alexander (2007), ‘Paris – Berlin – Moscow: On the Montage Aesthetic in the City Symphony Films of the 1920s’, in A. Graf and D. Scheunemann (eds), Avant-Garde Film, Amsterdam: Brill, pp. 77–91.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Hodges, Graham Russell Gao (2020), Taxi: A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. McKinley, Jesse (1995), ‘F.Y.I.’, New York Times, 23 July, p. 2, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/23/nyregion/fyi-277595.html. Accessed 31 January 2021.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Ooobaby Muscal (2017), ‘42nd Street “Lullaby of Broadway” Jerry Orbach’, YouTube, 6 April, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nxUgNabH8. Accessed 26 February 2021.
  11. Orbach, Jerry and 42nd Street ensemble (1980), ‘Lullaby of Broadway’, composed by H. Warren and A. Dubin, 42nd Street ensemble (original cast recording), USA: RCA.
  12. Pester, Holly (2016), ‘Songs of Rest: An Intervention in the Complex Genre of the Lullaby’, in F. Callard, K. Staines and J. Wilkes (eds), The Restless Compendium: Interdisciplinary Investigations of Rest and Its Opposites, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 113–18.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Shearer, Martha (2016), New York City and the Hollywood Musical: Dancing in the Streets, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Stalter-Pace, Sunny (2013), Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New York City Subway, Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Whearty, Bridget (2012), ‘Lullaby’, in R. Greene, S. Cushman, C. Cavanagh, J. Ramazani and P. Rouzer (eds), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 825–26.
     [Google Scholar]

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