Frank Carlson Library

Rodgers and Hart. George and Ira Gershwin. Cole Porter. Lerner and Loewe. For most people who've grown up with and shared America's musical heritage, great songs open the floodgates to memories and feelings. Perhaps nowhere is this more profound than in the world of Broadway musicals, with their iconic melodies and memorable lyrics. Revisit the standards, originally written for the stage, that have both delighted and helped mend the broken hearts...

"Wait...Gypsy didn't win the Tony for Best Musical?" That's a question that gets asked over and over again, every time a new Rose takes to the runway in the Broadway classic "Gypsy". In "Strippers, Showgirls and Sharks", the popular syndicated theatre critic Peter Filichia chronicles the history of the American musical by looking at those shows that did not win the Tony Award for Best Musical. It happens every spring: The American Theatre Wing bestows...

Show boat: When Julie La Verne and her husband Steve Baker are forced to leave the showboat Cotton Blossom, they are replaced by the Captain's daughter, Magnolia, and Gaylord Ravenal, a notorious gambler. Magnolia and Ravenal fall in love, marry, leave the boat and move to Chicago. They live off Ravenal's earnings from gambling. After they go broke, Gaylord feels guilty and leaves Magnolia, not knowing she is pregnant.

Blair Simpson, a dancer in the chorus lines of Broadway musicals discovers after an injury that life may have another career in store for her.

"An intimate and light-hearted memoir by viral sensation and three-time Emmy-nominated musical comedian Randy Rainbow that takes readers through his life-the highs, the lows, the lipstick, the pink glasses, and the show tunes. Randy Rainbow, the man who conquered the Internet with a stylish pair of pink glasses, an inexhaustible knowledge of Broadway musicals, and the most gimlet-eyed view of American politics this side of Mark Twain finally tells...