A Problem like Maria
Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical
Stacy Wolf
The Broadway tomboys, rebel nuns, and funny girls, who upset the 1950s gender norms: Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, Julie Andrews, and Barbra Streisand
Praise for the Book
"The question Wolf poses---how and why lesbian audiences can locate queer pleasures in conventional, ideologically resonant narratives of heterosexual consummation and gender-compliant success---is also its obverse: why are the featured characters in mainstream entertainments rendered as unmistakably gay even though they are equally unmistakably not? Wolf's aim is not to understand the cultural stake in this intricate intelligibility, but rather to think about what produces it. . . . . Wolf's book certainly attends to the rich, unmined traditions of performance and persona in American musical theatre. It ably brings these figures to the table occupied by such other 'queer' performers as Sarah Bernhardt, Greta Garbo, Marlena Dietrich, Agnes Moorhead, Tallulah Bankhead, Barbara Stanwick [sic], and Thelma Ritter."
---Theatre Research International
"An exciting and useful contribution to queer, performance, and cultural studies. The basic concept---carving out a "lesbian spectatorial position" in relation to four female American musical-comedy stars---is highly original and fascinating."
---Alisa Solomon, City University of New York
