Stuff You Should Know - Give My Regards to the Broadway Episode!

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Broadway is a street in NYC, but more than that it's a term for the NY theater district. They say the neon lights are bright there. Who knows?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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this is a good old fashioned toe toe-tapping, feel-good event of the century that we like to call stuff you should know. I cannot stop singing... They say the neon lights up right on Broadway. It's one of my least favorites. Is that from a chorus line? I don't know. I was singing that earlier. I was singing Give My Regards to Broadway. Wow. You haven't been singing the one I've been singing.

What have you been singing? There's no business like show business like no business I know. That's great. I do not know the neon lights one. I should have looked that up, but I do know Give My Regards to Broadway is from Little Johnny Jones from 1904,

written by George M. Cohan. Neon Lights is a Kraftwerk song. You're way off. Oh, oh well. Little Johnny Jones is the most like 1920s play title or musical title I've ever heard. I didn't know Kraftwerk, they say the neon lights are bright.

Is that how theirs goes? It's a little different. Okay. It's really good though. I think it's actually the best song about neon lights. Oh. That's a bold statement. I know, I'm with you.

By the way, this is a listener suggestion. So big thanks to Sarah Nagy for sending this in. Oh, nice. Thanks, Sarah. We should probably say, for anybody who didn't bother looking at the title, we're talking about Broadway today. Broadway, as in the American home of musicals, the Great White Way, you know, where musical theater goes to live and thrive and give it a shot at stardom.

That's right. And non-musical theater. True, true. I'm more of a play guy than a musical guy myself. I remember going to see La La Land in the theater and being like, I had no idea this was a musical. Luckily it turned out really well, but at first I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Kind of like, you know, when you go to drink, take a sip of water and it turns out to be Coke, and it's really shocking, but then you're like,

oh, okay, Coke's fine. It was a lot like that, the movie version of that. Yeah, I think I've detailed this a little bit, but I've gotten more into musicals and I enjoy musical theater and Broadway, and we try to go to a show when we're in New York and now we're doing an annual Broadway only trip,

like where we go see a few of them. That's a pilgrimage is what they call it. Yeah, pilgrimage. But I do love the plays and we are in fact going to see Glyn Gary Glyn Ross in May. Haven't you seen the movie? I have, but this has got that killer cast on Broadway. I don't know if you heard about it or not.

No, I haven't. Honestly, I haven't kept up with Broadway lately. Yeah, this has got a Glengar Glen Ross with Kieran Culkin and Bill Burr and Bob Odenkirk and others. Wow, that is a killer cast. So I grabbed tickets for that right when they went on sale and I'm going and my friends are like,

how'd you get tickets, man? You're so lucky. I'm like, I just logged on and got right when they went on sale and I'm going and my friends like, how'd you get tickets man? You're so lucky. I'm like I just logged on and got him when they went on sale You logged on to your internet. Yeah, you know just get on a if you're into that kind of thing You just jump on a little like a Broadway direct email list Mm-hmm, and then you'll get the haps on all the haps so You mentioned a T is it TKT? Oh yeah, the TKTS booth.

Yes, are they online too, or is that like a physically stand there in person kind of thing? Yeah, that is the ticket service run for the not-for-profit theater development fund, and that is if you're in New York and you're like, man, I wish I could go to a show, but I don't wanna jump on a resale website

and pay a ton of money. There are booths in Times Square and satellite booths at South Street Seaport and Lincoln Center where you can get day of, you can go get day of tickets for people that are like, I can't go. Broadway, can you help me sell these? Yeah, and apparently if you go with like an hour or so

before the booth opens, the line, once it does open, will only be about an hour. That's how long it takes to clear out typically. And people who are in line know what they want to see and they want the best seats and that's what they're going for. That's why they're standing in line. But if you're like, hey, I'm in New York, let's catch a show.

I don't care what show. You can just show up like a couple hours after the thing opens and walk, let's catch a show. I don't care what show. You can just show up like a couple hours after the thing opens and walk right up and pick a show. Yeah, and I gotta say, and you know, we'll get to this, or I might as well say it now, the largest Broadway theater, if you've never been, you might be used to like Broadway in your hometown at like the 5,000 seat theater or something

like they have here at the Fox. At the Performing Arts Center? Yeah, or the Performing Arts Center, but in New York, they're pretty small. 5,000 seat theater or something like they have here at Fox. At the Performing Arts Center? Yeah, or the Performing Arts Center, but in New York, they're pretty small. The largest one is the Gershwin Theater at 1,933 seats. The smallest of the, how many theaters is it total? 42?

47. 41 theaters. 41. The smallest is the Hayes at 597. So, you know, if you're in town, you wanna check out a show, in most of those theaters, most of the seats are pretty great

and it's fairly intimate. I don't know much about it lately. Like I left off with Phantom of the Opera. That was probably the last musical I was ever really into. So, but I know that since I've been into it, like they've become blockbuster productions. Very much along the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie franchise stuff, where it's like,

just put a ton of money into it, and people will come from all over, and you'll make 10 times what you put into it. I mean, that's a fairly new development. Is it like that basically across the board now, And that, I mean, that's a fairly new development. Is it like that basically across the board now, or surely that's like a handful of powerhouse shows and the rest of them are more normal, and hence ticket prices are more normal, do you know?

I mean, from my experience, stuff, you know, if you go to see some of the classics, they're, you know, they're big productions, but they're not, maybe not as like special effects heavy. They definitely, I feel like have jazzed them up a lot more in more recent years with more sort of jaw dropping moments of like kind of I can't believe they did that live

kind of stuff. Like when the salesman from Death of a Salesman flies out over the crowd at that one scene. But like for instance, last time we went, we saw the... This is my death. We saw one of the ones we saw was the newish Death Becomes Her which is I can't recommend enough.

It is one of the funniest musicals you will ever see. But it wasn't some lavish production but they had a couple of very well-placed sort of special effects that were very fun. And so I think you need to sort of wow the crowd a little bit more these days. Okay, so you're not going to find like a 1950s, 60s style musical comedy that isn't relying at all on special effects there anymore? No, I mean, but maybe not special effects, but the sets are still very big

and there's a lot of money poured into it. Your plays are gonna be a little more stripped down. So, okay, last question. Ticket prices from what I've seen are eye-popping. Pretty expensive. Like 200 bucks. Yeah, I think Wicked was the most expensive. It was 290 average price.

Man, ouch. So, there's gotta be tickets that are like, the normal person can afford, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's the average ticket price. So the cheaper seats for like a show like Wicked are, I don't know, probably in the hundred and something, which is still, I mean, that's a lot of money, but I don't know that you can go like,

if you're a questionist, can you go see a Broadway show for like 45 bucks? Yes mean that's a lot of money, but I don't know that you can go like, if your question is can you go see a Broadway show for like 45 bucks. Yes, that's my question. I don't know, and I doubt it. Yeah, all right, well that's a bit of a shame I have to say. Although I'll have to look at my Glengarry tickets. I don't know that those were like crazy expensive,

but I'll check while you talk. Okay, well I'm gonna start talking about the history of Broadway. Let's do it. So Olivia helped us out with this. Kudos to her, because this was a huge, huge topic and she wrangled it greatly. But the street itself, Broadway, is really, really old. It's actually built on an old Lenape tribe trail

that connected the tribes along the 13 miles of Manahatta. So this is like pre-contact. Yeah. Broadway was already in existence. When the Dutch showed up and they said this is New Amsterdam, eventually we'll rename it New York. Yeah. They called it De Heerstraat.

Yeah. Which is is gentleman's way. So apparently here with two Es in the middle means gentleman in Dutch, if you wanna impress people at your next party. But they just called it Bredweg or Broadway, Broad Road in the English. We're just gonna call that Broadway from now on. Yeah, so that's the street.

Broadway, the theater district is between Times Square to 53rd Street and then the side streets from 6th to 8th Avenues. And like I said, it's 41 theaters. And with that smallest one, the Hayes being $597, they're all at least $500, almost $600. Can you squeeze three more seats in there, Hayes? Maybe standing room only. And like I said, the Gershwin is the largest at 1933. And you know, that's where theater happens. And we're gonna talk a little bit about

sort of the early theater days, because if you're talking New York theater, you're gonna have to go back to 1732 to see the first, or at least the first record of a performance of a play there, it was called The Recruiting Officer. And that was some Londoners traveling through town. And it was at the New Theatre on Nassau Street. But that was near Broadway,

but not anywhere close to the theatre district. It was way, way downtown in what would now be the financial district. You're not going to mention the name of the owner of the New Theatre building? Governor Rip Van Dam. Which is a really great hotel check-in name. Yeah, that's good. Included just with the governor? Yeah, governor.

Like, okay. They give you special treatment. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, you said that was what is in what is now the financial district. So, um, slowly but surely it started to kind of move to what was called the Longacre Square. But before that, there was a lot of theaters that had opened up sporadically away from what we now consider Broadway.

And I think the first, I don't know if we said it or not, because you corrected me when I said musicals. You're like, well, plays too. But most people when they're talking about Broadway, they're thinking about musicals. You're like, well plays too. But most people when they're talking about Broadway, they're thinking about musicals, right? So the first musical, as far as anybody can tell, that was performed in New York,

was called The Beggar's Opera. It was about thieves and sex workers. It was a musical comedy. It sounds like it was somewhat like one of the plays that would come in the 19th century or one of the musicals where there were like kind of breaks in between where some standup comedian would come out or a juggler maybe or somebody would perform a song.

But the songs didn't have much to do with the story if anything at all. Yeah, and we'll get to that. That was sort of the way it went for a while. It was sort of like songs and sketches and stuff like that. That was what a musical was. But we wouldn't have any of this stuff. It hadn't been for some pretty notable people.

The first one, well, he's actually the first Oskar Hammerstein of what would be two notable Oskar Hammersteins. Yeah, this is Oskar Hammerstein I. That's right. He moved from Germany, of course, to New York City in 1864 and was a cigar factory floor sweeper until he invented a cigar machine and made quite a bit of money doing so such that he could start funding the opening of his passion, which was opera. So he opened the Harlem Opera House first in 1889, and then that very first one in Longacre Square, which will be notable in about a minute and a half,

because you will learn what that became, Hammerstein's Olympia Theater at Broadway in 43rd and 44th. Then after that, the Republic Theater was in 1899, which is still there but is now the new Victory Theater. and then after that the Republic Theater was in 1899, which is still there, but is now the new Victory Theater. Gotcha, which I think is for young audiences, right? Is it? Pretty sure. Yeah, I'm almost positive it is.

Like really bawdy kids' plays? Yeah, like Avenue Q. Yeah, exactly. So within like a decade, Oscar Hammerstein I built like three major theaters in New York City. And he helped pretty much establish this theater district or the concept that New York had a theater district. Or was a theater town, I guess. Plus, and this is probably a fairly overlooked component of it, the Interboro Rapid Transit System, the train,

helped too, because it could get people around New York much more easily than before. So with those two things, Hammerstein and the IRT converging, New York suddenly had, like, everything it needed, all the ingredients to become, like, a world-class theater destination. Yeah, for sure. So the writing was on the wall, he opened those theaters, other people were like, hey, we can invest money in this now

that it's becoming a thing. The New Amsterdam Theater and the Lyceum Theater were both built around the same time in the early 1900s. And then, oh boy, we're probably more than a minute and a half after I promised it. But in 1905, Longacre Square was renamed for the newly relocated New York Times offices and thus it became Times Square.

Ta-da! That's it? I was like, was it New York Times Square? And I was like, no, dummy. Just Times Square. Just Times Square. And it was around the same time that these three brothers, Lee Samuel and Jacob Schubert, a very popular theater name to this day, they opened up a bunch of theaters

in New York and elsewhere. And the Schubert organization still owns and operates 17 of those 41 theaters. That's a bunch. That's almost half of the theaters on Broadway. They got it locked down, baby. So all of this hubbub and activity of building theaters and attracting, like, really good performers and plays and musicals,

by the time World War I rolled around, like, New York was on the map for theater, and Broadway was the theater district for New York by this time. Uh, and one of the things that really helped things along, kind of picked up where Oscar Hammerstein, the first in the IRT left off to really like give things a real goose, was the Ziegfeld Polly's, which I know we talked about in our episode

on Vaudeville in November 2022. We talked about that a lot. But the idea that like you could go to the theater and you could see some amazing performances and hear some funny comedy and see some crazy dances or great dances, like that drew people to theaters, like everyday people who might otherwise not have gone to the theater.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, some of the songs that you, you know, even if you're not a fan of this kind of thing, just kind of leaked into the public consciousness, like Give My Regards to Broadway from George Cohen. He also wrote Yankee Doodle Dandy and over there during World War I. This is when Irving Berlin came around, one of, as you'll see, kind of a series of poor Jewish immigrant families that came to New York and the children of those families ended up being

like these amazing Broadway writers and composers. He wrote things like Annie Get Your Gun, and There's No Business Like Show Business, your old favorite. That's right. He also wrote White Christmas, which I read as the best-selling Christmas song of all time.

Which was not on Broadway. No. Well, it ended up on Broadway. It was in the movie Holiday Inn, and then they retro-created a musical based on the movie. They retconned it. Right. Another pair that were really huge at this time were George and Ira Gershwin, brothers, another Jewish immigrant family. They created Funny Face, Girl Crazy, Porgy and Bess. And some of these, as we'll see, were pretty kind of groundbreaking, especially at the time, but they also launched some stars careers like Ethel Merman.

Who you think of when you think of somebody singing There's No Business Like Show Business. I think Ethel Merman. Yeah, in the movie Airplane. Right, exactly. That's where I first learned about it. singing There's No Business Like Show Business. I think Ethel Merman. Yeah, and the movie Airplane. Right, exactly, that's where I first learned about it. Ginger Rogers, Greta Stair. Of course. Greta Garbo, Dance On Air. And it wasn't just musical theater at the time.

This sort of post-World War II era also had some pretty legendary plays, like The Iceman Cometh from Eugene O'Neill and Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun, of course. Mm-hmm. But it was Times Square after all, so in World War II, that's when you started seeing some, you know, the usual thing that would happen was like burlesque theater, eventually

peep show, maybe regular movie theater, and then porn theater. Yeah, and you better know the difference. Yeah. I say that we take a break and we come back and we talk about the establishment of Broadway shows as we know them. Let's do it. Sonoro and I Heart's MyCultura podcast network present The Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro.

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network available on the iHe radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. You say you never give into a meltdown and never feel your feet with kid photos. You say you never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild to the grocery store. So when you say you never let them get into a car without

you there. No it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Stuffed with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. Okay, so, One Hammerstein did some amazing stuff with Broadway, creating Broadway. But this family was showing off, and they produced Oscar Hammerstein II, who was the grandson of Oscar Hammerstein I,

and he got together with a composer named Jerome Kern, and they just started making some amazing, groundbreaking for the time especially, new kinds of musicals that just, that gave us Broadway as we know it today. Yeah, like if you go to a musical today, you're not assured to, but more than likely you're going to be seeing what's called a book musical.

And that is when the musical, when like the songs are central to the plot and the storyline and moving things along. It's not just like, and here's a song to add to this musical review kind of thing. They still have those some, you know, sometimes, but it's kind of a throwback. Like these days, the book musical, as a direct descendant of Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern, is sort of the way to go. Right. They came up with Showboat together, which was an enormously groundbreaking show. It combined both white and black performers on the same stage, which if you remember a Harry Belafonte episode, that was a no-no well into the 50s and 60s.

These guys made this show in 1927. Yeah, I mean, people were not doing that at the time. They also had blackface in that review because that was something they were also doing at the time, but it was also pretty progressive in some ways by having an integrated cast. Yeah, and I mean, a lot of the themes were about racism and it just kind of took it head on. It was a serious, dramatic story. It wasn't like, you know, feel good, forget your troubles, come on, get happy kind of thing.

Yeah, and just to be clear, it was truly integrated. I wasn't saying the blackface was integration. It had real integration and also blackface, which I don't quite understand, but. I don't either. Yeah, I don't know how they were doing things in 1927. Like when a woman is in an episode of Monty Python, it's like, why are you guys in drag then? Right, exactly.

So Hammerstein is doing his thing, doing pretty well. Jerome Kern's great. But all of a sudden, a dude lopes onto the scene, named Richard Rogers. And Hammerstein said, Rogers and Hammerstein. That sounds, that has a nice ring to it. They're old buddies, old former classmates from Columbia years earlier. And

Rogers approached Hammerstein and said, hey, there's this play Green Grow the Lilacs from Lynn Riggs. Why don't we turn that into a musical? And why don't we do a little different? Like why don't you write the words to this thing first. I'll write the music. And I don't know. Let's use an exclamation point in the title. Let's just call it Oklahoma. Oklahoma, right? Sure. So this show, this established Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammond's sign, like this is 1943. It set a record for the most performances.

At the time, it's long since been just totally demolished, but it had a record performance total of 2,212. That was just unheard of back then. So imagine, like, you know, you've got some pretty cool stuff under your belt, but all of a sudden you get together with this new collaborator and you create the show that has the longest running, or the largest number of performances ever, just right off the bat. That's kind of like what these guys became.

Like, they were just the stars of Broadway productions. Yeah, I mean, giants to this day of the industry, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, The King and I, I mean, their names are basically synonymous with musical theater. I read, Chuck, also that at one point, they had three of the longest running plays or shows on Broadway at the time,

and three other shows in production to be adapted to films, all at the same time. Giants. Giants, yeah. We could have just left it at that now that I think about it. So there were some huge, huge shows of the late 20th century

that sort of helped redefine Broadway. West Side Story was one, this was where the idea of the triple threat came along, because they didn't have, for a while there, there was a separate chorus, that did the dancing and stuff. And West Side Story was one of the first ones in 1957 to be like, hey, you're the lead actor,

you're also singing, you're also dancing, because that's all part of it, and all of a sudden the triple threat was a thing. And that was the real start of another giant of Broadway, Stephen Sondheim. Yeah, who would go on to direct Contagion, which we mentioned recently too. No, he wrote the lyrics and then another name

you might've heard of, Leonard Bernstein, was a composer for West Side Story. Yeah, he's great too. Cabaret was another one. By this time, this was 1966. Today, you think of Cabaret and it's just a cult classic musical. But at the time it was groundbreaking

in that it introduced a new kind of musical to Broadway, which is actually kind of a throwback to how it used to be. It's called a concept musical. And rather than, you know, a through-line story where the songs advance the story and everything, this is more like there was a theme. The theme was the show was set at the Kit Kat Club in Berlin, I think in Weimar era Berlin. Yeah.

And through the songs that all kind of have this, share this kind of same theme, this concept is created. I think the theme was, I've not seen Cabaret, but I believe that it was a meditation on the rise of Nazism during the Weimar Republic's kind of swinging days. Yeah, yeah. I've always wanted to see Cabaret. Yeah, well, let's go see it together for the first time, then.

I don't know that it's... Is it running? Is there a revival going on? Oh, man, I'm gonna get myself killed. I'm talking about the movie. There's movies for all of these, pretty much. So we can just see the movie. There really is. There's two West Side stories, in fact. Yeah, Steven Spielberg did one.

Yeah, it was good. Hair, we have to talk about Hair from 1968. This is a musical that Olivia points us out. It wasn't just commenting on what's going on in history at the time. It really helped kind of shape it in real time. It was the first rock musical, something I'm a big, big fan of. Oh yeah? Yeah, like, the Jukebox... Jukebox... I have such a hard time with that.

Musicals are okay, not my favorite, but those 70s, Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Hair, like, that stuff is so groovy and so cool, because it's like 60s and 70s. Yeah, no, it is super groovy. Hair, if there's one word to describe hair, it's groovy. Yeah.

If the other, if you want one more word, it would be nude. Yeah, or merkin, because there was an all, the whole cast was nude very famously in one scene, but it did help launch the careers of Diane Keaton who was in that original production, as was Meat Loaf, a man whose house I have been at. Oh, of course. So I have no follow-up questions whatsoever to that.

Instead, okay, what were you doing at Meat Loaf's house? I'll tell you offline. Okay, cool. So Steven Sondheim, who you already mentioned, he was, he made a name for himself by writing the lyrics to West Side Story, but apparently his big breakout was something called Company,

which is a bunch of vignettes about romantic relationships. I have not seen that one either. Yeah, same. I kind of feel like a rube talking about all these things that I haven't seen, but I did read about it, And I read that the whole thing starts at the main character's 35th birthday party, walks into the birthday party,

and then these vignettes start. And then the thing ends, I think, with him walking into the 35th birthday party to make it like this all took place in just a moment in time, all of these vignettes did. Super cool, have not seen it either. Sondheim also very well known for Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

I have seen that. I have not seen that, but friend of the show, Scott Aukerman, highly recommended it, said it's like one of the best shows he's ever seen. It's great. Yeah, I gotta check it out. A Chorus Line, another movie. That one was kinda meta.

It was another concept musical where the whole thing takes place in an audition. Yeah. And so the whole thing is about theater life, about theater people, but it's actually a musical show. It's pretty cool. Yeah, and that began a run in 1975 of like a dozen years where some of the giants of all time were launched. Chorus Line, Chicago in 1975 of like a dozen years where some of the giants of all time were launched.

Chorus Line, Chicago in 1975, Les Mis in 1987, Cats in 1982, which we'll talk about that a little more in a sec, and then Phantom in 88. But Cats very famously was a very, very long running show that like some people love, some people hate, some people think it's brilliant, some people make fun of it. But lyricist Tim Rice got together with composer

Andrew Lloyd Webber, the Webber Rice team. They did the amazing technical dream coat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita. And then they said, hey, let's turn this T.S. Eliot old Possum's Book of Practical Cats into a musical and have real people dressed up as cats. Some people say like, if you could build a time machine, what would you do?

I would go back and prevent Andrew Lloyd Webber from having that thought. I've never seen any iteration of cats. I wanna see something. It's the only time outside of an airplane where I tried to make myself go to sleep in public. Was it at a live show? I was like, I can't even just sit here.

Yes, it was at a performance. Like I can't just sit here. Like I have to not be conscious for this. Oh boy. And I was too young to leave. I don't think I was driving at the time. I was with my family. Oh no.

You couldn't go like fake sick or anything? No, I think I don't have a recollection of the show after a certain point, so I think I might have been successful in falling asleep. Your dad would have been, uh, throw up in this bag. You'll be fine. And then Phantom, Phantom was 88, and I think that's another Andrew Lloyd Webber show, but I think that was one of the first ones to really ramp up, got real design-y and included some special effects and I think that kind of started that trend of making things a little bigger. Yeah for sure. That one I can sing along with basically from start to finish. I love that one. Dun dun dun dun dun dun.

Exactly. I knew exactly what you were doing just then because I'm so familiar with it. We tried to see Phantom at the Fox Theater here in Atlanta. And I actually just joined the Broadway season for next season. Oh, nice. The season's run from May to May, I think, on regular Broadway. Uh, I'm not sure about the Fox though. I think it may be about the same.

But, um, we tried to go see Phantom years ago, but we're both so distracted. It was when we were trying to buy our first house and we were obsessed with this house. We were trying to get a bid on, and it was just one of those deals where we were not there. Our head was elsewhere, and we finally just looked at each other

and we were like, we need to get out of here. No, you should definitely see it again. It's a really great show. The music, the lyrics. I know, I gotta see it. There's like a one-ton chandelier that falls to the stage. Like, it's a good show.

And I think you're right that it did kick off kind of the mega productions. Um, it ran for 35 years. And as far as I know, it holds the record still for the most performances at 13,981. Wow. Remember Oklahoma set something at like 2,200 before. Oh yeah, that's impressive at the time,

but yeah, 35 years is impressive. It's pretty amazing. So yeah, I love that show. I'm just gonna say it probably five more times throughout this. So we gotta talk a little bit about Times Square. Even before the 70s came along, it was a pretty rowdy place.

And the early teens, there was a 1 a.m. curfew because it was such a rowdy place. There were speakeasies there during Prohibition, burlesque in the 30s, and then from the 60s and into the 90s, I think I mentioned this before, when I first started going to New York in the mid 90s, there were still peep shows there. It was right before the final cleanup happened,

thanks to a few different mayors, but Mayor Ed Koch, certainly David Dinkins, and then eventually Giuliani would finish up the work of cleaning up Times Square. Yeah, David Dinkins was the one who I think maybe had the biggest impact, eventually Giuliani would finish up the work of cleaning up Times Square. Yeah, David Dinkins was the one who I think maybe had the biggest impact or we should mention John Lindsay in the early 70s, he created a tax incentive where if you built in Times Square a new building you could get a pretty good tax break

but you had to build a theater on the ground floor to try to bring the theater back to the area. I thought that was a pretty ingenious idea, but to me, David Dinkins probably had the biggest impact, good or bad, by making a deal with Michael Eisner, who was running Walt Disney at the time, and he said, just do your thing here, Disney. Like, we got a lot of perverts running around here,

we need some Disney to counterbalance this stuff and maybe even overwhelm it. And it worked. Like, if you pour enough Disney onto an area, the perverts just turn and run. So they started, they dipped their toe in the pond with renovating and renting out the new Amsterdam Theater, which at that point New York City had acquired in 1992

as part of the 42nd Street Development Program because it was one of those that followed the burlesque theater, then movie theater, then porn theater model. I don't know if that was an official model. And then as they were remodeling that in 94, before they were finished, Disney opened Beauty and the Beast at the Palace Theater, of course, the adaptation of the 91 animated film. And it was almost a $12 million budget, the most expensive musical ever at the time,

and ended up running for about 13 years to total grosses of about 430 mil. That's just insane. Even today, but this was the mid-90s. Yeah, I mean, the returns on Broadway, if you can get a smash hit going, it's not like you have to sink $200 million into it like you do a big-budget movie.

Yeah, there's a lot of front-loaded cost, but then, yeah, after you get it up and running and it's going, it can just go by itself, basically. For sure. Should we take our second break? Oh, geez, I wasn't expecting that, but sure, let's do that. All right, we'll be right back

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Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know All right, so Broadway, you can go for Escape a Spare. You always have been able to, you still can. But starting in the mid-90s with Rent, people really started tackling some heavier topics. Jonathan Larson's rock musical talked about addiction

and suicide and poverty and AIDS. Rent was another one I left. It was fine, but it was another situation where I was with friends and everyone, I can't remember, there was some weird distraction where everyone was like, do you wanna leave? I think our seats were bad or something and it just wasn't happening.

But I wanna see Rent again. Larson very tragically died at 35 years old of an aortic aneurysm the night before it premiered off Broadway. I know, that's insane. Just a brutal, brutal story. Yeah, because it's such a legendary show to just have this show that you probably,

I'm sure he was like, I think this is going to be big. And then he dies right before it. Even seeing it perform once, that's just sad to me. Yeah, very sad. And then another thing that kinda came along, there were plenty of escapist shows, we should say, and there still are. And a really good example from fairly recent times

is Mamma Mia, which is one of those jukebox, it is hard to say, isn't it? Yeah. Jukebox musical, which is it takes existing songs everybody knows and loves and then creates like a musical around them. And Mamma Mia did that back in 2001 with ABBA songs. Yeah, and they, you know, I haven't seen many of those,

but they did one of like the 80s rock, the Billy Joel's had one, Bob Dylan had one. Don't forget Dee Snider from Twisted Sister had Rock of Ages. Yeah, that's what I meant, the 80s rock one, that was Rock of Ages, right? But you know, it's a thing. I prefer something with,

I mean, they have stories built around the songs, like you said, so they can be okay, but I prefer something a little more straight ahead, not based, like original music, I guess, is what I'm trying to clumsily get out. Yeah, there's some good ones. So there's a Carole King, basically bio-musical that features hers.

I didn't either. I didn't either. Big fan of Wicked, still recommend it. Finally saw it last year on Broadway. Unfortunately, it was not the wickedly talented Adil Dazeem. But that's where she made her name, along with, who was the original? Was it Kristin Chenoweth, I believe? Yes, it was.

I always loved her in Pushing Up Daisies. Do you remember that show? I do, but I did not see that. Oh, you should go back and watch it. I saw it not too long ago, and it really holds up. It is a very charming show. We should call this episode Josh and Chuck Haven't Seen This.

Yeah, pretty much. Just put a colon before it, and we can add that, okay? Hamilton is one I did not see, but we would be remiss if we did not mention it, because it was such a landmark play, Lin-Manuel Miranda, of course, bringing hip hop into historical context on Broadway, which is a huge smash hit.

I saw it on the TV version of the film, the musical, and listened to it quite a bit, but I never saw it live. That's okay, Chuck. I'll let you off the hook. It was too expensive. Yeah, it really was, wasn't it? Those were some high-priced tickets for a while,

because everybody was talking about that show. Well, and it was all sold out, so the only way to get tickets was to pay like 1,200 bucks at the time. It would probably be even more now, but now you can go see it, and I bet you can get tickets for regular price. Sure. I gotta mention this one. I've not seen this, believe it or I bet you can get tickets for regular price. Sure.

I gotta mention this one, I've not seen this, believe it or not, everybody. It's called Dear Evan Hansen, it's from 2016, but I did read a couple of articles on it, and it sounds totally off the wall, where the title character is mistaken for the best friend of a teenager who's just died by suicide.

And so he suddenly becomes very popular and like everybody wants to know what this kid was like. And he uses it to basically become popular and liked, whereas otherwise he was just kind of overlooked, you know, kid on the sides. And there's all this horrible stuff that starts to happen and unravels and I think he's publicly unmasked

at some point. Yeah, that's on my list. A couple of good friends have seen it and said it's great. So I'm gonna go see that soon, I hope. These make a lot of money, like I said. Wicked set a weekly record in December of this past year, obviously buoyed by the popularity of the movie, but the first ever show to have a $5 million week.

And last season, the 23, 24 season again, ran from May to May. Total grosses of $1.54 billion, more than 12 million attendees, over 71 productions, with an average occupancy of 89.9. So, the average Broadway show isn't even sold out. Close to 90%. Wow.

Can we talk about a few flops? Yeah, I'm gonna pick out a couple of these. I'm gonna pick out Moose Murders from 1983. Mm-hmm. It is a farce, obviously, but it was bankrolled by an oil heiress named Lily Robertson and directed by her husband. Mm-hmm.

And starring the oil heiress Lily Robertson who bankrolled it, which should tell you it's not headed toward a great thing also because it's called Moose Murders. And it closed after one single performance, and New Yorker art critic Brendan Gill said that it would insult the intelligence of an audience consisting entirely of amoebas.

Yeah, I read about that. It seems like it was just a completely amateur production from start to finish. Like, everybody was basically, had no idea what they were doing. And if you want to just be delighted, go read articles about the flop that was Moose Murders, because it's widely considered like the worst show

that ever hit Broadway. In a lot of ways though, it's tough to qualify that because there's plenty of bad shows out there and some have been forgotten. But for some reason, Moose Murders just became like the symbol for the worst shows on Broadway. Yeah, I mean there's different ways to qualify it. Like is it just bad bad or is it notoriously flopped because of how much money it cost and it flopped.

That was the case with a couple of them. But Carrie, an adaptation of the Stephen King horror novel, as a musical in 1988, closed after 16 previews and five regular performances at an $8 million budget. So it's widely considered one of the biggest sort of, just expensive flops of all time. Yeah, there's a song about killing a pig in it, I think to get the blood to pour on it.

And the lyrics go, it's a simple little gig, you help me kill a pig. Yeah, and believe it or not, it wasn't like an amateurish production. It was directed by Terry Hans, who ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 13 years and was choreographed by Debbie Allen. So it was a big money thing that just was,

sounds like not a very good idea. It was a terrible idea, and I'm aware that it was terribly executed too in the end that just, you know, they really tried though. I think that's the difference. Well, it has been revived with cult status off-Broadway like in the 2010s, so it's one of those. I would go see that, I would go see that.

Yeah. And then I think the biggest flop as far as money goes is Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark from 2011. That's another one that just, anybody who has anything to do or any interest in Broadway, they know about this flop. Yeah, I mean that had all the right ingredients too. Broadway legend and film director Julie Taymor,

who directed The Lion King on Broadway. They got Bono on the Edge to write the music. It was huge special effects, and it was just problem after problem after problem, all like, you know, kind of front page, or at least front page of the arts headline kind of problems. Yeah, so when you're performing a show or putting on a production, you have what are called previews

where people can come. The critics are not allowed to see it yet, but normal people can come and watch it. But under the understanding that they're going to be stopping in the middle of performance, taking notes, maybe giving notes, there's going to be technical glitches. And they're working it out still in front of an audience. And I think the first preview of Spider-Man

went three and a half hours for the first act alone. And there were, it holds the record for the largest number of previews. The more previews you have, the more problems you have, obviously. It had 182 preview shows before it ever opened. Yeah, and I've been to some previews. I saw Sarah Jessica Parker and Broderick do the,

which one was it? The Neil Simon one a couple of years ago. And that was in previews. Don't let the idea of a preview turn you off because usually they just go straight through and it's just like a regular performance. I've never seen a preview where anyone stopped and did anything weird. And critics do actually see those, because they will review the show before opening night,

because they have seen the preview. Okay. I thought I read somewhere that critics are not allowed, so maybe there's like a special preview for the critics? There may be a window or something. Yeah. Yeah, that would be my guess, I'm not sure how that works. But I know it's always, I'm not sure if it's like movies.

I know movies sometimes they won't let the critics see it before it's released and that always means it stinks. Yeah. So I'm not sure if Broadway does that or not actually. Well Chuck, that's Broadway. We could keep talking about this for hours and hours and hours, but I feel like we probably haven't seen most of the stuff we would talk about. I've seen quite a few in recent years, and I'll be going to more and more.

So maybe we'll revisit this in 10 years, and I'll be more up to speed. Okay. Fair enough. Sounds good. And we'll have seen Carrie together by then. I hope so. And before we end, I think we would be remiss if we didn't mention that we recently learned

that we have like for sure literally inspired, not one, but two Broadway shows from this show, right? Yeah, it's pretty amazing, Chuck. I think we first learned about it in Town and Country magazine. They did an article called How a Secret British Spy Mission Became a Broadway Hit. And I think someone sent it to us,

and I was like, oh, that's interesting. And as I read a little deeper, I found that they mentioned us specifically as the inspiration for this hit musical. Yeah, that's amazing. And the other one, we found out from the producers of the show, they emailed us, the one I think is it, Off-Broadway on Sacco and Vanzetti, right?

That's right. Yeah, so big thanks to those guys for letting the world know that we helped inspire that, because that is quite an honor. And I think we would also be remiss to not say, break a leg. That's right. Do you have anything else?

I have nothing else. Okay, well since Chuck said he has nothing else and neither do I, I think it's time for listener mail. Yeah, I'm gonna call this rare shout out. We don't do shout outs much just because we get a lot of requests to and it would just be shout outs every week, but this one touched me. And this is from Cody in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Hey guys, in 2018 my dad passed away leaving behind my mom who after 54 years of marriage had never lived alone. She struggles with grief and anxiety induced insomnia as a result, so I suggested she listen to Stuff You Should Know for middle to night companionship to help her get her mind off her troubles. She did and she's been a huge fan ever since.

She calls you my guys and this parasocial relationship has been a true lifesaver for her. When I call her up day or night, the podcast is off and on in the background, keeping her company while she does dishes or rests. Y'all are about the same age as me and my brother so she feels like an, she feels an anti-like affection for you.

Her 80th birthday is in April, and I believe we've already missed it by the time this would come out, but I've been struggling with what to do for her as a fun surprise outside the party she's having this week, and Cody asked for us to send like a video or something, but I said, how about this? We'll do a rare shout out and say hello

to your wonderful mother on her 80th birthday, Bonnie Nichols. Bonnie, we love you, and we feel like you're our Auntie Bonnie as well. And it makes me feel really happy to know that you're out there with us listening to us. So that parasocial relationship goes both ways. So happy birthday, Auntie.

Yeah, happy birthday, Bonnie. You can't see me right now, but I'm making a heart out of my hands. Yeah, that's lovely That's really great. Seriously. Thanks for listening to us Bonnie. I'm glad we could help and keep you company And if you want to be like Bonnie, wait, who was it that wrote in her son? Yeah, it's Cody Cody if you want to be like Cody and tell us about the Bonnie in your life We'd love to hear that kind of stuff. You can send it via email to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. [♪upbeat music playing.♪

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. wherever you listen to your favorite shows. story. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope, about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Sam Hunt, Megan Maroney, Bailey Zimmerman,

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