This is the first full-scale biography of what Time Magazine called a 'made-in-the-USA genius'. Jerome Robbins (1918-98) helped change American theatre forever with his choreography for Leonard Bernstein's musical On the Town. On Broadway, Robbins virtually invented the concept musical in which music, action and dancing are woven into a seamless whole. His life reflects the creative format of the post-war years, intersecting with the likes of Arthur Miller, Irving Berlin, W.H. Auden, Leonard Bernstein and George Balachine. His work includes The King and I, Pajama Game, Fiddler on the Roof, Gypsy and most famously, West Side Story. Robbins was part of other important 20th century narratives: the grim drama of the McCarthy blacklist; the emergence of gay culture; the epic of immigrant assimilation. A guarded and secretive man, Robbins had virtually no magazine profiles and no biography in his lifetime, but in 1998 Amanda Vaill was given unprecedented and unique access to Robbins' letters, diaries and meticulously kept journals.

Author Biography

Amanda Vaill's first book Everybody Was So Young was a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for the National Book Critics Award. Amanda was an executive editor at Viking Penguin in New York. Previous titles include: Everybody Was So Young (Little, Brown 1998)