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On Broadway: PBS salutes the shows that made the White Way great in Broadway: the American Musical, a new series with vintage footage and rare interviews.

Article Excerpt
My first newspaper job was working for a veteran entertainment editor, then in his 70s, who'd been going to Broadway shows for well over 50 years. As for me, well, I was fresh out of school; I could count my Broadway musicals on the fingers of one hand.

It's not that I didn't know about musical theater; I did. But I knew what I knew mostly from reading books and newspapers, from watching old movies on TV, from listening to original-cast recording. I had seen professional productions only of Gypsy, Hello, Dolly!, High Spirits, and Hair. He, by contrast, had vivid, firsthand memories of seminal stars like Fanny Brice, Al Jolson, and Bert Williams. He'd seen the original Broadway outings of Porgy and Bess. Guys and Dolls, and South Pacific. And he was prone to extended sighing about the good old days, when Fred...