Naomi Graber, Ph.D. 2013

Advisor: Tim Carter

Dissertation Title: Found in Translation: Kurt Weill on Broadway and in Hollywood, 1935-1939

Find it in the library here.

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation reexamines composer Kurt Weill’s position as an “assimilated” émigré by investigating the composer’s musical plays and film scores of the late 1930s, his first years in the U.S. Previously unconsidered archival evidence, including correspondence and music, reflect both Weill’s keen awareness of the Depression-era culture and his continued commitment to innovation on the musical stage. He worked within experimental and political circles like the Group Theatre and the Federal Theatre Project to comment on pressing issues of the Depression, including pacifism (Johnny Johnson, 1936) and homelessness (the unfinished One Man from Tennessee, 1937). In Hollywood, Weill worked with fellow émigrés Fritz Lang and William Dieterle on films in two of the most prominent left-wing, the anti-fascist epic (Blockade, 1938, although Weill’s score was not used) and the social problem films (You and Me, 1938). Weill also composed scores for the more commercial Playwrights Producing Company. His most well-known show from this period, Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), is often seen as simply a satire on President Roosevelt’s New Deal, but it also depicts European immigrants throwing off an Old World tyrant and embracing democracy at a time when suspicion of German émigrés prevented many of Weill’s European associates from securing visas to escape Nazi Germany. Weill also tried to comment on contemporary race relations in the unfinished Ulysses Africanus (1939). The show is filled with hidden analogies to Weill’s own experiences as a German-Jewish exile, and represents an attempt, albeit a clumsy and patronizing one, to reach across the U.S. color line. All of these works show that Weill did not simply “go commercial” upon arrival in the U.S., as much of current scholarship suggests, but rather carefully constructed an identity as a politically forward-thinking cultural figure. Weill’s experiences also show that, rather than being a backward interregnum between early modernism of the early twentieth century and the high modernism of the 1950s, the 1930s were a decade of artistic and cultural innovation. 

Recipient of the Glen Haydon Dissertation Award

Dr. Graber is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on American stage music, with particular emphasis on Broadway in the 1930s and 1940s and modern representations of gender in Broadway musicals. She has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press, which will focus on Kurt Weill’s American career.  

Pruett Fellow, 2008