# Bernstein Meets Broadway

The composer Leonard Bernstein once wrote that his now-famous "West Side Story" of 1957 included a plea for racial tolerance as materials reveal in the Bernstein Collection in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. This lecture traces Bernstein's composer-activism back to "On the Town" of 1944, which was his first Broadway show and grew out of a fruitful collaboration with Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jerome Robbins. Produced with a racially integrated cast during WWII, On the Town crossed race lines boldly, and it did so in an era when racial segregation held firm yet faced increasing resistance. In the historical literature about Broadway, the show's racial advances have been ignored. Fusing musical and cultural history, this lecture draws upon manuscripts for "On the Town" in the Bernstein Collection to explore political activism embedded in the show, as well as to consider Bernstein's early fascination with the blues. 00:16 Sue Vita, Music Division, 2:10 Ann Walters Robinson, President of the American Musicological Society, 7:50 Carol Oja, Harvard University, 32:45 "It's Gotta Be Bad to Be Good," Samara Oster and David Sawicki, 39:05 "Ain't Got No Tears Left," Samara Oster and David Sawicki, 49:58 Questions

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2011
- By: Library Of Congress. Music Division
- Genres: Music
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021688600/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021688600?play=1)