Be Our Guest with Jack Viertel (Broadway Melody)

Jack Viertel is an American theatrical producer and writer. During his 34 years at Jujamcyn Theaters from 1987 to 2021, he occupied positions including Creative Director and Senior Vice President. He was "conceiver of the longest running musical revue in Broadway history, Smokey Joe's Cafe, conceived the critically acclaimed After Midnight, and served as the dramaturg for Hairspray. The musical and movie The Prom were developed from his original concept." From 2000 to 2020, he was a producer at the Encores! series. Under his tenure, several Encores! productions transferred to Broadway, including After Midnight, The Apple Tree, Finian's Rainbow, and Gypsy. In 2003, he began lecturing at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. He developed the content of his music theatre studies course into a book, The Secret Life of the American Musical, published in 2016. Reviews were largely positive, with The New York Times calling it "revelatory and entertaining." Broadway Melody traces three lives through the early ambitions and unlikely pathways that landed all of them in the same place at the same time - 1960s Broadway. Woven through its pages are the hits and flops, the making and breaking of careers, the destruction of three historic theater buildings, the plague of AIDS, the machinations of union bosses and producers, and, of course, the world outside this insular community - the audience that looks to Broadway for emotional thrills, for enlightenment, and for pure entertainment.Laced with humor and sadness, portraits of historical characters from The Street and a long view of the rise, fall and revival of Times Square itself, Broadway Melody stitches three lives - and three hearts - into the fabric of an endlessly compelling tale of the American theater.