Longtime Santa Monica resident Amnon Kabatchnik has penned a new volume in his critically acclaimed award-winning reference series. "Bloody Broadway: Plays of Menace, Murder, and Mystery, Volume I" is now available in hardcover, trade paper and eBook editions.
In his latest work, Kabatchnik focuses on Broadway's development, beginning with the stage contributions of actor-director-playwright William Gillette. Gillette's major success was "Sherlock Holmes," a compilation of Arthur Conan Doyle short stories crafted into a cohesive plot.
"Bloody Broadway" examines the period from 1900-1930, including prolific melodramatists such as Hal Reid, Clyde Fitch, Owen Davis, George M. Cohan, Elmer Rice and John Willard, who created four-act plays featuring flamboyant villains, brawny heroes and damsels in distress.
Kabatchnik details how acts of crime began emerging in works by notable playwrights including August Strindberg, Maxim Gorky and Bertolt Brecht through psychological insights. He also examines works from England that came to Broadway, including plays by W. Somerset Maugham, J.B. Priestley and Daphne du Maurier, followed by French playwrights Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Jean Genet, Hungarian Laszlo Fodor, German Ernst Toller, Spanish Garcia Lorca and Italian Ugo Betti.
The book also examines American novelists including Damon Runyon, James Baldwin, Arthur Miller and William Faulkner, as well as Nobel Prize winners Eugene O'Neil, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway.
"Bloody Broadway" examines 79 plays presented chronologically. Each entry includes a plot synopsis, production data, opinions by critics and scholars, and biographical sketches of playwrights and key actors and directors.
Kabatchnik, a legendary drama professor, esteemed historian, celebrated director and multiple award-winning writer, has earned high critical acclaim for his previous works, which won honors in the Benjamin Franklin Awards, the ForeWord Book of the Year Awards and the Independent Book Publishers Award.
Edited by SMDP Staff