Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780190639044)

Best remembered for his role as the Scarecrow in the 1939 MGM musical The Wizard of Oz, Ray Bolger led a rich and extraordinary career in the decade before and more than four decades after the creation of the film. Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow is the first biography of this classic American entertainer, covering the luminous and forgotten career of the eccentric dancer outside of his burlap mask.

The product of a fragmented, working-class Boston Irish family, Bolger learned tap and eccentric dance steps as solace for a difficult life before running away to repertory theater and Vaudeville. From there, he would go on to become a Broadway star, a contract player at Hollywood's major studios, one of the first performers to tour the South Pacific for the USO, a Tony Award winner, an early sitcom star, and the opening headliner of the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas.

Using unprecedented access to Bolger's papers and many never-before-published photographs, Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow pieces together the lost story of an itinerant hoofer who survived and thrived during the major media changes of the twentieth century and established himself as a staple of American pop culture.

Author: Holly Van Leuven
ISBN-10: 0190639040
ISBN-13: 9780190639044
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 03/08/2019
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.20w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 02/01/2019 pg. 90
Choice 07/01/2019