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My Un-Fair Lady? Celebrity Producer Lars Schmidt and the Postwar International Success of Broadway Shows
Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Culture and Aesthetics.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3405-1282
Number of Authors: 12023 (English)In: The Oxford Handbook of the Global Stage Musical / [ed] Robert Gordon; Olaf Jubin, Oxford University Press , 2023, p. 190-214Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

This chapter identifies and explains the pivotal role played by Swedish agent-cum-producer Lars Schmidt (1917-2010) in successfully helping to introduce and implement the postwar Broadway musical on European stages. By presenting heretofore unmined archival and original sources, the chapter outlines some of Schmidt’s key artistic choices and financial strategies that paved the way for the transatlantic breakthrough of the American musical. As a primary case study, the 1959 production of My Fair Lady in Stockholm serves as representative of how European audiences came to embrace Broadway culture. Not only did it mark one of the most expensive theatrical events produced in Sweden up until that point, but it also engendered significant anxieties around prefabricated theatre that seemingly valued profit over art. The chapter puts this criticism to the test by presenting various sides of the debate and teasing out the complexity of the (arguably very shrewd) business strategies used by Schmidt to launch My Fair Lady as one of the defining cultural events of the postwar period in Northern and Western Europe, one that became a turning point for the financial and conceptual organisation of live theatre. Also at play in this moment are the intertwined fears around commercialisation and Americanisation that served to heighten the tensions between theatre as art and theatre as mass entertainment.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Oxford University Press , 2023. p. 190-214
Keywords [en]
Americanisation, commercialisation, Europe, Lars Schmidt, marketing, My Fair Lady, prefabricated theatre, producer, Sweden
National Category
Performing Art Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-236720DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190909734.013.7Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85190062636ISBN: 9780190909734 (print)ISBN: 9780190909765 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-236720DiVA, id: diva2:1918631
Available from: 2024-12-05 Created: 2024-12-05 Last updated: 2024-12-05Bibliographically approved

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Gindt, Dirk

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Citation style
  • apa
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Language
  • de-DE
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  • nn-NB
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Output format
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