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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the extraordinary story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process. I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Everything Old is New Again, The Modern Era of Broadway, Part 2.

[0:38] David Armstrong: In my last episode, I outlined how a new wave of brash young songwriters swept aside the Golden Age and ushered in Broadway's modern era with shows such as Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. But surprisingly, in the midst of this ongoing triumph and ascendance of the rock musical, the biggest hit of 1971 was a revival of the Silver Age musical comedy No No Nanette. That's right, the Vincent Youmans musical that had introduced the songs "Tea for Two" and "I Want to Be Happy" way back in the Roaring Twenties. The star of the show was dancer Ruby Keillor, whose most recent appearance on Broadway had been in the 1929 musical Showgirl, which had been produced by Ziegfeld and had songs by George Gershwin.

Soon after that show closed, she went to Hollywood, and in the early 1930s, she became a big movie star in a series of Warner Bros. film musicals all choreographed by Busby Berkeley, beginning with the smash hit 42nd Street. By 1970, Keillor had been retired for many years, but a producer named Harry Rigby persuaded her to come back to Broadway. With a heavily reworked book, sparkling new orchestrations and arrangements, and a snazzy Art Deco-inspired set and costume design, this reincarnation of No No Nanette was billed as the new 1925 musical. And it became a smash hit, running for 861 performances and winning four Tony Awards for choreography, costume design, and for two of its stars, Helen Gallagher and another vintage movie star, comedian Patsy Kelly.

And after years of it being almost entirely absent from Broadway, Nanette brought tap dancing back into fashion in a major way. Most significantly, Nanette fanned a mania for everything and anything that recalled the music, style, and glamour of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. The press dubbed this phenomenon the Nostalgia Craze, and it quickly spread into every aspect of American life. Tiffany lamps, Mickey Mouse watches, vintage comic books, and old Coca-Cola signs became high-priced collector's items. Original Art Deco furniture, sculpture, and artwork became coveted antiques, and much of 1970s and 80s modern architecture, interior, and graphic design strongly echoed the Art Deco period. So before we look at how the Nostalgia Craze continued to flourish on Broadway, I want to look back at exactly where it came from, what artistic, social, and cultural forces came together to spark this unlikely phenomenon.

[3:25] David Armstrong: One of the roots of the Nostalgia Craze reaches back into the 1960s, when young people began noticing and pointing out the similarities between their era and the freewheeling, rebellious spirit of the 1920s, a time when skirts got shorter, drug use was widespread, and young people rejected the sexual and social hang-ups of the previous generation. This resulted in most 1960s rock bands and singers including material from the vaudeville era in their repertoire, or they wrote songs that sounded just like them, for example, The Beatles' "When I'm 64."

[4:09] David Armstrong: 🎵 Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forevermore. Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm 64. 🎵

[4:23] David Armstrong: And they ransacked their grandparents' attics and thrift stores for vintage fashions that would go with those songs. Although I am technically a baby boomer, I come at the tail end of the boom, and I wanted to talk to someone who was there in the thick of it during this period. Luckily, our resident expert Albert Evans graduated college in the class of 1969. I recently had a chance to talk with him about those tumultuous times. Hello, Albert. The reason I wanted to talk to you today is I'm trying to pin down exactly what the origins of this Nostalgia Craze of the 1970s are, and I think we have to look back, obviously, to the 1960s to get there. And you were certainly around during that period, so I wanted to get your take on it. And I think you, like me, were very influenced by what came from the Nostalgia Craze. I was certainly enraptured by it.

[5:16] Albert Evans: Yes, so was I. The 1960s were my years in high school and college. Of course, it was the period of the youth rebellion and the baby boom and all that. And this Nostalgia Craze really comes out of this youth rebellion in a strange way. I think people later saw it as sort of reactionary against it, but it actually comes from young people rebelling against the status quo.

[5:37] Albert Evans: Yeah, sort of their parents, of course, were children of the Depression and the Second World War.

[5:43] Albert Evans: What we call the greatest generation today. And they actually preferred, having gone through all that, I think they wanted nice, placid music. They wanted Perry Como, and they wanted modern things.

[5:55] Albert Evans: They wanted new, right?

[5:56] Albert Evans: They wanted new. They wanted things that would not remind them of the Depression and of the war. So, of course, the kids, I think to annoy them, they were into rock and roll, but they also got into nostalgia. But it wasn't their own nostalgia. It was what should have been their parents' nostalgia.

[6:10] Albert Evans: It's really their grandparents' era that it went back to, the 1920s and the 1930s, when their parents were children. But their parents now felt that that was old-fashioned and out of date, and they wanted to move into the future.

[6:22] David Armstrong: Yeah, they wanted nothing to do with it.

[6:24] Albert Evans: Yeah, so it was a way, really, like rock and roll music, it was another way to annoy the older generation.

[6:30] Albert Evans: Yeah, and so the kids would go to thrift shops and pick up these ratty old clothes.

[6:35] David Armstrong: Right, and these would be like dresses and suits and things from the 1920s and the 30s.

[6:41] Albert Evans: Exactly.

[6:42] Albert Evans: Platform shoes from the 1940s, things like that.

[6:44] Albert Evans: And really that attitude then, I think, went mainstream with Barbara Streisand. When she was doing club work very early in her career, she really couldn't afford designer gowns so she went to the thrift shops and she decked herself out. And she even had a signature song about it, an old song, of course, called "Second Hand Rose."

[7:02] Albert Evans: A song from Fanny Rice back in the teens.

[7:04] Albert Evans: Exactly. She made that part of her personality and her persona. And again, it was a rebellious thing.

[7:11] David Armstrong: Right. And it was also a gay thing, because, you know, gays have always been the camp attitude, which at that time, it sort of meant something is so bad, so outdated, that it's actually fabulous and good. And let's do this, you know, let's dress in old feather boas and cloche hats and raccoon coats.

[7:30] Albert Evans: Exactly. And you mentioned feather boas. They were like a new thing that sort of emerged in the 60s. Of course, they were a very old thing.

[7:37] Albert Evans: Yeah. And to mix these styles, to mix like bell-bottom jeans with feather boas.

[7:42] Albert Evans: Exactly. Which Janis Joplin did.

[7:44] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[7:45] Albert Evans: Another root of the nostalgia craze extends back even further to the mid-1950s, when local television stations were being established in every city in America. They had hours and hours of time to fill every day beyond the programming that the networks were providing. So they started buying packages of old movies from the major film studios to fill out their schedules.

[8:04] Albert Evans: It's movie time, a million dollar movie. It's movie time, a million dollar movie.

[8:15] Albert Evans: These included many films from the 1930s and 40s that we now consider to be classics, most of which had not been seen by anyone for decades.

[8:23] Albert Evans: On WHBQ television, million dollar movies show.

[8:30] Albert Evans: Every day, an outstanding motion picture selected from the WHBQ television library of over 1,200 titles. During the 1960s, movies made up 25% of local programming, and a new generation fell in love with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy L'Amour. And not just on television, but also on college campuses all across the country. Albert and I discussed that phenomenon as well.

[8:58] Albert Evans: So I went to a very small college in a very small town, and we really didn't have a movie theater. So we depended on the college art film society that once a week would get like a 16 millimeter print of some old movie, or like the new French new wave movies. So we had a diet of like Godard and Antonioni and Bergman and Fellini, that sort of thing, mixed with Marx Brothers movies and WC Fields was very big and also silent movies.

[9:29] Albert Evans: And mixed in with those was some very strange old Warner Brothers movies, musicals from the early 30s, directed by Busby Berkeley, this mad visionary who would build these enormous, very abstract production numbers, mainly built out of girls, but with just things that could never be done on a real stage, although they would always be framed by a real stage.

[9:53] Albert Evans: Because they're all backstage musicals.

[9:54] David Armstrong: They're all backstage musicals.

[9:56] Albert Evans: Supposedly happening backstage at a Broadway show. And of course, we're talking about 42nd Street and Footlight Parade and Gold Diggers of 1933 and Gold Diggers on Parade and that whole series of movies created by Busby Berkeley. And so as I said, they would start realistic and then they would go into some strange other world where there were worlds inside of worlds. You know, you would go to a big swimming pool that would turn into a fountain that would turn into a forest that would, you were constantly going inside other worlds.

[10:29] Albert Evans: So again, it was very druggie. It was very trippy on already, much less in a time period where most people going to college are experimenting with drugs.

[10:40] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[10:41] Albert Evans: So we loved these movies and these, we got to be big fans of people like Ruby Keillor, the ingenue of the early 30s and Dick Powell, the tenor and Jimmy Cagney was in a lot of these movies, not in his gangster mode, but in his tap dancing mode.

[10:58] David Armstrong: So you mentioned camp and camp is something that emerges in the mainstream in the 1970s as really part of this nostalgia craze. But of course, it's going on way before that. It's going on in the gay scene and in the theater scene, even back in the 50s with shows like Little Mary Sunshine and The Boyfriend. These all have very strong camp elements and are spoofing something. We come up with that word spoof for the first time.

[11:25] Albert Evans: And I think that brings forward one of the most important aspects of camp is that you are making fun of something that you also think is brilliant.

[11:34] David Armstrong: Right.

[11:35] Albert Evans: Because like in the case of these movies, actually Busby Berkeley, the choreographer and sometimes director was brilliant. There was no one like him. He was a genius. No one has ever been able to replicate what he did.

[11:44] David Armstrong: And yet what he does is ridiculous.

[11:50] Albert Evans: Yeah, it's ludicrous and preposterous. And that's what I think a lot of the essence of camp is tied into those two things coinciding at the same time. It's not the same as satire exactly. It has satirical elements because you are making fun of something, but you also love what you're making fun of and you're honoring it and relishing it and putting it out there. And I think that's where you annoy the generation before you is you're putting it out there to be praised and to be held up as something exemplary that they dismiss as being trash and trash is a great camp word from that period as well.

[12:26] Albert Evans: Trashy and campy and all those kinds of things.

[12:28] David Armstrong: And kitschy.

[12:29] Albert Evans: Kitschy.

[12:30] Albert Evans: Kitschy was a great word.

[12:31] David Armstrong: Kitschy was a great word that became something, not a negative, it became a positive.

[12:34] Albert Evans: No. I mean kitsch originally meant something that was just garbage, that wasn't worthless.

[12:38] David Armstrong: Yeah.

[12:39] Albert Evans: In the original Yiddish it means, yeah, it's a throwaway. And then people began filling their dorms with little kitsch figurines and kitsch pictures and...

[12:49] Albert Evans: Betty Boop clocks.

[12:50] David Armstrong: Exactly. And all that stuff from the thrift stores, some of it became quite valuable, like Tiffany lamps and all that kind of stuff. So that in a way brings us to Dames at Sea, which I want to talk about. And I know you saw the original production of Dames at Sea.

[13:03] Albert Evans: I did.

[13:04] Albert Evans: It isn't Jean Harlow, it isn't Greta Garbo. It's you, it's you, it's you.

[13:06] Albert Evans: It's not Leslie Howard or even Noel Coward. It's you, it's you, it's you.

[13:08] Albert Evans: It's you, it's you, it's you. It's you, it's you, it's you.

[13:12] Albert Evans: It's you, it's you, it's you. It's you, it's you, it's you.

[13:14] Albert Evans: It's you, it's you, it's you. It's you, it's you, it's you.

[13:17] Albert Evans: It's you, it's you, it's you. It's you, it's you, it's you.

[13:20] Albert Evans: It isn't Leslie Howard or even Noel Coward. It's you, it's you, it's you.

[13:25] Albert Evans: It isn't Bert Wheeler. It isn't Ruby Keillor. No one of them, no, none of them will do. Not Claudette, or Carrie, Jack Benny, or Mary, it's you, it's you, it's you.

[13:38] David Armstrong: Don't go away. There's more of Broadway Nation right after this short break.

[13:44] David Armstrong: So this is a show that turns into another off-Broadway musical that becomes produced thousands and thousands of times all over the country that becomes entirely embraced by the mainstream. And again, it was just one of those odd cultural things that no one expected it to be practically a movement. But the essence of it is a bunch of gay guys getting together and making fun of the...

[14:18] Albert Evans: Welcome back to Broadway Nation. In this episode, we’re diving into Broadway's nostalgia craze of the 1970s.

[14:48] Albert Evans: This phenomenon didn't just appear out of nowhere; it was the result of a confluence of artistic, social, and cultural forces that had been brewing for years.

[15:18] Albert Evans: To understand where this nostalgia craze came from, we need to look back at the counterculture youth rebellion of the 1960s.

[15:48] Albert Evans: This rebellion was characterized by a rejection of the norms and values of the previous generation, which set the stage for a longing for the past, particularly the glamorous eras of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

[16:18] Albert Evans: At the same time, television was rediscovering and showcasing classic films from those decades, bringing them back into the public consciousness.

[16:48] Albert Evans: This revival of interest was further fueled by the popularization of gay camp culture, which found a significant outlet in the off-off-Broadway hit, "Dames at Sea."

[16:55] Albert Evans: This show, with its playful homage to the musicals of the past, helped to ignite a broader fascination with the styles and aesthetics of earlier eras.

[17:02] Albert Evans: All of these elements came together to create a perfect storm that would lead to the 1971 Broadway revival of "No, No, Nanette."

[17:09] Albert Evans: This musical, originally from the Roaring Twenties, was reimagined with a heavily retooled book, sparkling new orchestrations, and a dazzling art deco-inspired design.

[17:16] Albert Evans: It was marketed as “the new 1925 musical” and became a smash hit, running for 861 performances and winning four Tony Awards.

[17:23] Albert Evans: Not only did "No, No, Nanette" bring tap dancing back into fashion, but it also sparked a mania for everything that recalled the glamour of the past.

[17:30] Albert Evans: The press quickly dubbed this phenomenon “The Nostalgia Craze,” and it spread into every aspect of American life.

[17:37] Albert Evans: In this episode, we’ll explore how this nostalgia craze influenced Broadway and the broader cultural landscape of the 1970s.

[17:44] Albert Evans: So, let’s dive in and take a closer look at this fascinating period in Broadway history.

[17:51] Albert Evans: We’ll start by examining the impact of the counterculture movement and how it set the stage for a revival of interest in the past.

[17:58] Albert Evans: The youth rebellion of the 1960s was not just about rejecting the status quo; it was also about seeking new forms of expression and identity.

[18:05] Albert Evans: This desire for authenticity and self-expression would eventually lead to a longing for the perceived simplicity and glamour of earlier decades.

[18:12] Albert Evans: As we continue, we’ll look at how television played a crucial role in this nostalgia craze, bringing classic films back into the limelight.

[18:19] Albert Evans: Stay tuned as we explore the intricate connections between these cultural movements and the Broadway musicals that emerged during this vibrant time.

[18:26] Albert Evans: We’ll also discuss how "Dames at Sea" and "No, No, Nanette" exemplified this trend and helped to shape the future of musical theater.

[18:33] Albert Evans: Join us as we uncover the layers of nostalgia that defined Broadway in the 1970s and how they continue to resonate today.

[18:40] Albert Evans: Let’s get started!