7 Books That Inspired The Stage
Spring is finally here and those bitterly cold winter days are history. Why not celebrate by reading on a sunny park bench? And why not pick up a book that has a second life in theater?
Show Boat
Often called the First American Musical, this show by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II started as a novel of the same name by Edna Ferber.
Legally Blonde
Before it starred Laura Bell Bundy at the Palace Theater, and before Reese Witherspoon brought Elle Woods to Hollywood, Legally Blonde was a novel by Amanda Brown (with several sequels).
Damn Yankees
This story of soul-selling and baseball originated as a book by Douglass Wallop: The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.
Love, Loss, and What I Wore
Ilene Beckerman’s best seller about the lives of 5 women through their wardrobe also succeeds as an Off-Broadway production.
Ragtime
Published in 1975, E.L. Doctrow’s Ragtime was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel and won the National Book Critics Circle Award before it won four Tonys as a Broadway musical.
Carrie
This Stephen King classic flopped as a musical in 1988, but a recent revival at the MCC Theater gave the prom horror story new life.
Wicked
A re-imagining of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West was a best-selling novel before it was a sold-out musical.