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Bob Fosse: Troubled, Turbulent Icon

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This program was originally broadcast on November 14, 2013.

A big biography of Broadway dance king Bob Fosse – of “Chicago,” the film “Cabaret,” “All That Jazz” – opens up a turbulent life.

Bob Fosse, center, leads the cast through an energetic dance number during a rehearsal of his musical “Big Deal” at the Minskoff Rehearsal Studios on Broadway in New York, March 31, 1986. (AP)
Bob Fosse, center, leads the cast through an energetic dance number during a rehearsal of his musical “Big Deal” at the Minskoff Rehearsal Studios on Broadway in New York, March 31, 1986. (AP)

Gustav Flaubert said “be bourgeois in your life and radical in your work.”  Broadway and Hollywood dance king Bob Fosse, says a big new biography, was radical in both.  On stage and screen, Fosse remade the American musical with his unmistakable tilted hat, splayed-fingered, high charge.  His razzle dazzle in “Cabaret” and “Chicago,” “All That Jazz” and more was laced with sex and death and darkness.  Sensual grit.  So was his life.  Dazzling on stage.  Dark and turbulent off.  A terror of failure as he commanded dazzling success. This hour On Point, a new life of Bob Fosse. — Tom Ashbrook

Guest

Sam Wasson, author of “Fosse” and “Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.” (@SamWasson)

From Tom's Reading List

The Wall Street Journal: Book Review: ‘Fosse’ by Sam Wasson — “He was blond and slim, with a disarmingly boyish smile and the belief that everything interesting was about sex. And he had perfect timing, becoming one of Broadway’s outstanding choreographers in the mid-1950s, just as the power in the making of musicals had begun shifting from directors to dance masters. Then, too, the musical, an at times bawdy affair, was now turning openly erotic; this gave him the opportunity to experiment with taboo, creating the signature style that would make him famous.”

Vanity Fair: Q&A: Bob Fosse’s Biography: Sex, Death, and Jazz Hands — “I think everyone admires his style. No matter what you say about his movies’ content, you can’t say anything against the style. So anyone who is interested in the medium is going to go crazy for Fosse. I know that George Clooney is a huge fan of ‘All That Jazz.’ What can you say against Fosse as a stylist?”

NPR: Biography Of Director Bob Fosse Razzles, Dazzles And Delights — “‘Fosse’ is filled with the kind of inside detail that comes of substantial research, and vivid descriptions that turn the research into a sort of movie in your head. All the way from little Bobby Fosse’s elementary school disappointment when the spotlight faded on him, right through to the moment when Gwen Verdon, the love of his life, cradled Fosse’s head on her lap on a D.C. sidewalk, just blocks from an audience he was at that very moment razzle-dazzling to beat the band.”

Read An Excerpt Of "Fosse" By Sam Wasson

This program aired on August 26, 2016.

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