The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway
First edition
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| Author | William Goldman |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Harcourt, Brace & World |
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Publication date
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1969 |
The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway is an account of the 1967-68 season on and off Broadway by American novelist and screenwriter William Goldman. It was originally published in 1969 and is considered one of the best books ever written on American theater. In The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called the book “Very nearly perfect. ... It is a loose-limbed, gossipy, insider, savvy, nuts-and-bolts report on the annual search for the winning numbers that is now big-time American commercial theatre.”
Goldman reports in the book that he spent over 18 months of reporting on the book, seeing every show on Broadway, many of them more than once, as well as preview productions in the principal try-out towns like Boston, New Haven and Washington, D.C.
The book is presented roughly in chronological order throughout the season. It analyzes the Broadway audience and the economics of Broadway theatre at the time, as well as the shows given during the season, and it profiles or interviews the significant theatrical personalities of the day.
The plays and musicals described include:
There are also chapters on the actor Peter Masterson, critics (especially Clive Barnes), ticketing, corruption and homosexuality in the theatre.
William Goldman decided to write the book after making a large amount of money on the sale of his script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the late 1960s. He wanted to attempt a non fiction work and originally intended to do a piece on mental institutions such as Meninger's, but was worried what would happen if the institutions did not co-operate. He then decided to do an article on Broadway instead as he knew there would always be someone who would talk to him. Goldman:
For the original article I wanted to interview everybody who was involved with a show in an important position, before and after. But I realised very early on that all failures have the same song. It's always a case of people not communicating, people not understanding, people lying. It's always the same wail, and I realised that my premise was not valid. But by this time I was into it. It became obsessive and it evolved into whatever The Season is. The Season I enjoyed writing. I don't like writing very much. But doing The Season was social.
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Wikipedia