"The Great White Way."

By 1900 most of the signs on Broadway had gone electric, and New York City's famous theater district soon became known as "The Great White Way." By 1900 it was the mecca of the American theatrical world: the rest of the country was referred to by people in show business as "the Road." Technically, the New York City theater was as brilliant as its new marquees; artistically, it had not emerged from the nineteenth century's genteel shadow.

Do Not Disturb.

Sentimental melodrama passed for legitimate theater. Although they were lavishly produced for maximum appeal, Broadway dramas tended to be thin on plot, weak on character, and heavy on manipulated emotion. The New York City audience in the 1900s was middle class and conservative. Theatergoers who could afford the ever-escalating ticket prices were stubbornly averse to "artiness" and insisted that their expectations...