Give Our Regards to Broadway: 10 Best Books Turned Musicals
July 19, 2011 · from the Word & Film archive
Hollywood didn't invent the book adaptation; Broadway got there first and louder. Our ten favorite novels that learned to sing:
1. Les Misérables (Hugo) — the barricade of the genre; still running somewhere at all times. 2. The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux) — pulp novel to longest-running Broadway show. 3. Wicked (Gregory Maguire, by way of Baum) — revisionism with a belt. 4. Oliver! (Dickens) — the exclamation point earned. 5. Man of La Mancha (Cervantes) — the impossible dream, literally.
6. Show Boat (Edna Ferber) — the 1927 show that invented the serious musical. 7. Cats (T. S. Eliot) — yes, a book; blame 'Old Possum.' 8. Ragtime (E. L. Doctorow) — the great American novel-musical. 9. The Color Purple (Alice Walker) — Celie's letters, sung. 10. Matilda (Roald Dahl) — the newest arrival and the naughtiest.
Several have since completed the circuit back to film — Tom Hooper's screen version of Les Misérables chief among them. The lesson holds across a century: a strong story survives any number of key changes.
