Free The Girl Who Fell Down: A Biography Of Joan McCracken Ebooks To Download
Dancer and actress Joan McCracken (1917-1961), commanded a pioneering career that influenced some of the greatest artists on Broadway and in Hollywood. An overnight sensation for her 1943 comedic role as "The Girl Who Falls Down" in the groundbreaking musical "Oklahoma!", McCracken established the prototype dancer-comedienne, headlining in ballet, stage, film, and television productions before her life was tragically cut short by complications from diabetes. Derived from extensive interviews with McCracken's friends, family and colleagues, Lisa Jo Sagolla paints a complex portrait of the petite, blue-eyed and sprightly entertainer as a woman exploiting her mesmerizing beauty and magnetism to succeed in the man's world of entertainment, yet always retaining the persona of childlike pixie she portrayed on stage. McCracken's comic exuberance and athleticism also epitomized a new ballet form that married the European ideas of aristocratic grace and movement with a uniquely American spirit and style. From her beginnings in Philadelphia and New York, to her meteoric rise to fame, to her life-long struggle with the little understood and devastating effects of diabetes, "The Girl Who Fell Down" chronicles McCracken's spirited yet poignant life, including her training at Balanchine's seminal School of American Ballet, her blossoming as a "ravishing talent", with a "crackerjack dance technique" under Agnes de Mille, her supremacy as a performer, her marriages to acclaimed choreographer Bob Fosse and novelist Jack Dunphy, and her ultimate diagnosis with heart disease. Touching yet inspiring, Sagolla's account describes McCracken's lasting influence through her nurturing of husband Fosse's provocative career, her dramatic coaching of actress Shirley MacLaine, and her inspiration for the many dancer-comediennes that followed - Gwen Verdon, Carol Haney, and Sandy Duncan, to name a few. Rich with the social and cultural history of a golden age in show business and teeming with colourful choreographers, dancers and entertainers, this comprehensive and carefully researched biography should introduce Joan McCracken to a new audience of dance enthusiasts.
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Northeastern; 1st edition (September 18, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555535739
ISBN-13: 978-1555535735
Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #1,352,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #286 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Dancers #554 in Books > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Theater > Broadway & Musicals #663 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Theatre
This is a fascinating book about an artist who participated in some of the most significant moments in American cultural history. Joan McCracken was just a name to me before I read this book. I knew she had been in a minor Rodgers and Hammerstein show called ME AND JULIET and that she was Bob Fosse's second wife, but that was it. She catapulted to fame in the original cast of OKLAHOMA, was a founding member of The Actors Studio and an early performer in the new medium of television, as well as being an active mentor to many artists including her husbands Jack Dunphy (later Truman Capote's lover) and Bob Fosse. As a performer, Joan McCracken created a whole new "type" in the American musical-the hoydenish comic pixie who could dance up a storm. She was the prototype for a long line of sensational entertainers that includes Carol Haney, Shirley MacLaine and Sandy Duncan, among many others. But there was a lot more to Joan McCrakcen than her professional credentials. Personally she was a complex individual usually described as a loner. James Mitchell said, "she was wonderful to work with...however, she was not a stable woman." She liked to paint and walk on the beach rather than party. Although she never went to college, she nonetheless (through the influence of Dunphy) developed a formidable intellect. She was a political Conservative, which seems to upset author Sagolla, rationalizes, "like her antiunion statements, McCracken's tirade against taxes was more likely the result of political naïveté than of true conservative leanings." She was prone to fantasy and some thought she experimented with hallucinogenic drugs. As a diabetic in the days before much was known about its treatment, her health was always precarious and she tried to keep her condition a secret.
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