Engaging `Broadway' presents musicals' history

For five of its six hours, the PBS series "Broadway: The American Musical" beautifully traces how America's outsiders -- immigrants and their families, African-Americans, gay men -- combined the musical revue with European operetta and American jazz to create a near-perfect blend of entertainment and art.

Alas, the awful final hour gets away from producer Michael Kantor. The series leaves us holding the nose instead of walking on air.

Five out of six isn't bad in most endeavors, so there's mostly good news here. Narrating this series -- coproduced by WNET in New York, Ghost Light Films, and the BBC, among others -- about a great American art form is that great American entertainer . . . Julie Andrews? Instead of trashing PBS for its Anglophilia, I suppose we can offer the endearing Broadway star honorary citizenship for the series (though my choice would have been the four-time Tony winner Audra McDonald, who is present here only as a voice-over).

The series begins at the turn of the 20th century with Florenz Ziegfeld, whose "Ziegfeld Follies" borrowed from France's Folies-Bergere, but the chorus girls were joined by comedians, dancers, and singers in a series of loose skits and solos.

It's a treat to see stars like Fanny Brice and Bert Williams, who turned minstrelsy on its ear, and Kantor does a creditable if overly brief job of connecting how Irving Berlin, the son of a rabbi, transformed Judaic melodies into the big, broad songs of Tin Pan Alley.

Ditto Eubie Blake's and George Gershwin's incorporating jazz into the musical language. (What do Berlin and rap artists have in common? Berlin, too, was accused of hastening the end of Western civilization.)

The melting pot had its problems on Broadway, as it did in the rest of the country. "Follies" stars threatened to quit when Ziegfeld hired Williams, a West Indian immigrant. Ziegfeld called their racist bluff. Years later when the union was striking over labor issues, Williams showed up for work and started applying his makeup. Nobody had bothered to tell him about the strike.