Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater
- ISBN-10
- 0472026038
- ISBN-13
- 9780472026036
- Category
- Performing Arts
- Pages
- 400
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2010-02-24
- Publisher
- University of Michigan Press
- Author
- Milly S. Barranger
Description
"In Milly Barranger, Margaret Webster has found the perfect biographer. In Margaret Webster, Milly Barranger has found her perfect subject. She brings to vivid life a fascinating and important theater figure whose public and private lives were of equal interest. In this carefully researched book, Webster's colleagues, lovers, and friends shine as brightly as she did. I wish she were here to read it." -Marian Seldes "Margaret Webster is a highly welcome addition to our knowledge of the first important female director in American theater. Remembered now especially for her staging of Othello with Paul Robeson, Uta Hagen, and Jose Ferrer, Margaret Webster was probably the best-known, in-demand, and admired director of Shakespeare in America in the 1940s and 1950s. Fascinating throughout, the book's discussions of working with Robeson, and of HUAC, which targeted her just as her career was reaching a peak, make for especially engrossing reading." -Oscar Brockett Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater is an engrossing backstage account of the life of pioneering director Margaret Webster (1905-72). This is the first book-length biography of Webster, a groundbreaking stage and opera director whose career challenged not only stage tradition but also mainstream attitudes toward professional women. Often credited with first having brought Shakespeare to Broadway, and renowned for her bold casting of an African American (Paul Robeson) in the role of Othello, Webster was a creative force in modern American and British theater. Her story reveals the independent-minded artist undeterred by stage tradition and unmindful of rules about a woman's place in the professional theater. In addition to providing fascinating glimpses into Webster's personal and family life, Margaret Webster: A Life in the Theater also offers a who's-who list of the biggest names in New York and London theater of the time, as well as Hollywood: John Gielgud, Noël Coward, George Bernard Shaw, Uta Hagen, Sybil Thorndike, Eva LeGallienne, and John Barrymore, among others, all of whom crossed paths with Webster. Capping Webster's amazing story is her investigation by Senator Joseph McCarthy and HUAC, which left her unable to work for a year, and from which she never fully recovered.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Lessons from the Road: USA
By Margaret WebsterLessons from the Road share the travel adventures of a funny, single, 50-something year-old woman, traveling across the U.S. in a van. Webster is navigationally challenged and yet strangely addicted to camping sites and critters.
-
A New Strength, a New Song: The Journey to Women's Priesthood
By Margaret WebsterMargaret Webster, one of the founders of the Movement for the Ordination of Women in 1979, gives an account of the years leading to the vote - the background, events...
-
Biography: Margaret Webster
Biography: Margaret Webster
-
The English Hospital 1070-1570
By Margaret Webster, Nicholas OrmeThis book - the first general history of medieval and Tudor hospitals in eighty-five years - traces when and why they originated and follows their development through the crisis periods of the Black Death and the English Reformation when ...
-
About Crabs: The Definitive Webster Guide
By Margaret Webster, Paul Webster, Michael WebsterAbout Crabs, the Definitive Webster Guide(Tim, Margaret, Michael, Thomas, Paul and Chris Webster)
-
Shakespeare Without Tears
By Margaret Webster... Shakespeare's pattern as far as he can divine it, to be thrown out of focus by one actor's personal predilection. The theater is, we do not need to be told, a fusion of the arts. It is also a fusion of the spirit. There should be no ...
-
The Politics of Paul Robeson's Othello
By Lindsey R. SwindallOttanelli, Fraser. The Communist Party of the United States from the Depression to World War II. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991. Patterson, William. The Man Who Cried Genocide. New York: International Publishers, 1971.
-
Descendants of Richard & Elizabeth (Ewen) Talbott of Popular Knowle, West River, Anne Arundel County, Maryland
By Ida M. Shirk1741, Margaret Webster, born 21 Jan. 1725, daughter of Isaac and Margaret (Lee) Webster, of Bush, according to the rules of the Friends" (Dr. Itidgely's Synopsis). The Webster home, at the head of Bush River ( Baltimore co. until 1778, ...
-
Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage
By Margaret WebsterDon't Put Your Daughter on the Stage
-
Notable American Women: The Modern Period : a Biographical Dictionary
By Barbara Sicherman, Carol Hurd GreenWebster had worked for and been associated with many political orbook Study of Margaret Webster's Production of Othello ” ( La . State Univ . , 1977 ) and Ronald Wolganizations , most of them theater - connected , sey , “ Margaret ...