Sign-In
Cart
Bloody Broadway - Plays of Menace, Murder and Mystery - Volume II 1930-1960
Hardcover
Publisher: BearManor Media
Published: Apr 5 2026
Pages: 534
Weight: 1.93
Height: 1.13 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The entity known as Broadway began with several stage contributions by the American playwright-actor-director William Gillette. Gillette's major success was Sherlock Holmes, a compilation of half-a-dozen short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle into a cohesive plot line. It played at Manhattan's Garrick Theatre, garnered positive reviews, and ran for 256 performances. During the decade of 1900-1910, a number of prolific melodramatists whipped up various four-act plays featuring plays of crime and punishment populated by flamboyant villains, brawny heroes, and damsels in distress. Hal Reid's heroines went through dangerous cliffhangers. Clyde Fitch introduced elements that became hallmarks of detective fiction - the innocent party entrapped by circumstantial evidence as a murder suspect, the lack of alibi, and the sharp cross-examination of the suspect before the attorney of the defense agrees to take on the case.
In Owen Davis's Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Girl (1906), an inheritor of a fortune goes through a series of attempts on her life, by knives, pistols, and bombs. George M. Cohan set the frightening action of Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913) in a vacant lodge during a stormy night.
Elmer Rice inserted in On Trial (1914) cinematic flashbacks to cover the events that preceded a murder trial. John Willard was hailed for the ingenious use of secret panels and sliding doors in The Cat and the Canary (1922).
Acts of crime began to emerge in the works of notable playwrights, albeit in a more subtle approach-August Strindberg, Maxim Gorky, Bertolt Brecht-providing psychological insights. From England came to Broadway plays of betrayal, violence, and detection by W. Somerset Maugham, J. B. Priestley, and Daphne du Maurier, followed by the French Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Jean Genet, the Hungarian Laszlo Fodor, the German Ernst Toller, the Spanish Garcia Lorca, and the Italian Ugo Betti.
Also, mixing their ink with blood were the American novelists Damon Runyon, James Baldwin, Arthur Miller, and William Faulkner, as well as the Nobel Prize winners Eugene O'Neil, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway.
The book's entries are presented chronologically and include a plot synopsis, production data, opinions by critics, and biographical sketches of playwrights and key actors-directors.
Amnon Kabatchnik, now retired, was a professor of theater at SUNY Binghamton, Stanford University, Ohio State University, and Elmira College. He directed numerous dramas, comedies, thrillers, and musicals in New York and across the United States. He is the author of Sherlock Holmes on the Stage, Courtroom Dramas on the Stage, Horror on the Stage, Murder in the East End, as well as the seven-volume series, Blood on the Stage.
1 different editions
Also available
Bloody Broadway - Plays of Menace, Murder and Mystery - Volume II 1930-1960
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Paperback
Also from
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Bloody Broadway - Plays of Menace, Murder, and Mystery - Volume 1 1900-1930
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Hardcover
Murder in the West End Volume II: The Plays of Agatha Christie and Her Disciples
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Paperback
Murder in the West End Volume II (hardback): The Plays of Agatha Christie and Her Disciples
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Hardcover
Murder in the West End: The Plays of Agatha Christie and Her Disciples Volume 1
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Paperback
Murder in the West End (hardback): The Plays of Agatha Christie and Her Disciples Volume 1
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Hardcover
Bloody Broadway - Plays of Menace, Murder, and Mystery - Volume 1 1900-1930
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Paperback
Bloody Broadway - Plays of Menace, Murder and Mystery - Volume II 1930-1960
Kabatchnik, Amnon
Paperback
Also in
Theater History
History Hiding Around Broadway: Backstage Lore, Secrets & Surprises from New York's Famed Theater District
Dvornik, Teale
Hardcover
The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare
Swift, Daniel
Hardcover
Shakespeare's Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen
O'Malley, Charles
Stern, Scott W.
Hardcover
Houdini's Library: Inside the Spellbinding Collections of the Great Illusionist
Colleary, Eric
Hardcover
The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition
Bogart, Anne
Landau, Tina
Paperback
Champions for the Arts: Lessons and Successful Strategies for Engaging Diverse Audiences
Walker-Kuhne, Donna
Paperback
Shakespeare's World: Seeing the Plays Through Elizabethan Eyes
Lubarr, Josh
Goodheart, Rebecca
Krausnick, Dennis
Paperback
Staging Blackface in Canada: Public Amusements, Variety Shows, and Racial Acts in an Age of Imitation, 1898-1919
Thompson, Cheryl
Paperback
Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created Sunday in the Park with George
Lapine, James
Paperback
The Bird Cage Theater: The Curtain Rises on Tombstone, Arizona's National Treasure
Mihaljevich, Michael Paul
Hardcover
Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive
Bainbridge, Danielle
Paperback
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Gefter, Philip
Paperback
The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War
Shapiro, James
Hardcover
Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Every Told
Papp, Joseph
Turan, Kenneth
Paperback
Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and their Movement in the Black Theatre
Goldmann, Kerry
Paperback
Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry That Changed Acting Forever
Rader, Peter
Paperback
Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and their Movement in the Black Theatre
Goldmann, Kerry
Hardcover
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Nineteenth-Century America: Discourse and Criticism
Rowland, Herbert
Hardcover
Undesirability and Her Sisters: Black Women's Visual Work and the Ethics of Representation
Barber, Tiffany E.
Paperback
Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
Vollmann, William T.
Paperback
Mediatic Shakespeare: The Dynamics of Orality, Script and Print in the Plays and Poems
Cavell, Richard
Hardcover
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Gefter, Philip
Hardcover
Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel
Gerould, Daniel
Paperback
Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project's Process of Devising Theater
Kaufman, Moises
Pitts McAdams, Barbara
Paperback
Listening for America: Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim
Kapilow, Rob
Hardcover
Collaboration in Theatre: A Practical Guide for Designers and Directors
Roznowski, Rob
Domer, K.
Paperback
The Second City: The Essentially Accurate History
Patinkin, Sheldon
Kozak, Liz
City, The Second
Hardcover
Something Wonderful Right Away: The Birth of Second City--America's Greatest Comedy Theater
Sweet, Jeffrey
Paperback
Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England
Kuhn, John
Hardcover
Les Misérables: The Story So Far of the World's Longest Running Musical
Wolf, Matt
Palmer, Martyn
Nightingale, Benedict
Hardcover
Beyond the Sewol: Activist Theatre and Performance in South Korea and the Diaspora
Jeong, Areum
Paperback
The Untold Stories of Broadway: Tales from the World's Most Famous Theaters
Tepper, Jennifer Ashley
Paperback
Artistic Collaboration, Exile, and Brecht: A New Intellectual History, 1900-1950
Hollander, Katherine
Hardcover
Shakespeare's Compassion: Emotion and the Classics on the Early Modern Stage
Refskou, Anne Sophie
Hardcover
Harold Pinter, Fascism, and Outrage: Aesthetic and Moral Implications
Russell, Dennis Eugene
Hardcover
The Long Revolution: Sixty Years on the Frontlines of a New American Theater
Fichandler, Zelda
Paperback
Japanese No Masks: With 300 Illustrations of Authentic Historical Examples
Perzynski, Friedrich
Paperback
Pioneering Theatre-in-the-Round: The Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, 1962-1986
Walker, Rachel
Hardcover
Sistren Theatre Collective and the Politics of Space in Jamaica: Woman Talawa
Smith, Karina
Hardcover
Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive
Bainbridge, Danielle
Hardcover
¡A Teatro Camaradas!: Dramaturgia militante y política de masas en Colombia (1965-1975)
Parra Salazar, Mayra Natalia
Paperback
A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge
Hajdu, David
Carey, John
Paperback
A History of Leadville Theater: Opera Houses, Variety Acts and Burlesque Shows
Scanlon, Gretchen
Hardcover
New York Theatre Walks: Seven Historical Tours from Times Square to Greenwich Village and Beyond
Kissel, Howard
Paperback
Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era
Na, Na
Paperback
Boom Chicago Presents the 30 Most Important Years in Dutch History
Rosenfeld, Pep
Moskos, Andrew
Hardcover
An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States
Hughes, Amy E.
Paperback
Theatre Work: Reimagining the Labor of Theatrical Production
Clements Cotton, Brídín
Robin, Natalie
Paperback
F*ck the Army!: How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War
Goss, Lindsay
Paperback
100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater
Ruhl, Sarah
Paperback
New Directions in Tarot: Decoding the Tarot Illustrations of Pamela Colman Smith
Martin, Scott
Hardcover
Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts
Horowitz, Joseph
Paperback