OLLI at Duke • Spring Term 2025
Course Description
This course explores the Broadway musicals and Hollywood films of two important composers: Jerome Kern and Jule Styne. Their careers spanned the twentieth century, providing numerous ground-breaking and popular shows, with dozens of songs considered part of the Great American Songbook. Each composer partnered with multiple lyricists and librettists, giving their scores great variety. In the 1910s and ’20s, the shows Kern created with P. G. Wodehouse and Buddy DeSylva helped to define the American musical. His masterpiece was 1927’s Show Boat with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. In the 1930s Kern wrote the scores for film musicals such as Roberta and Swing Time featuring Astaire and Rogers. Jule Styne’s first successes were in Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s, earning ten Academy Award nominations for Best Song. His first Broadway musical was 1947’s High Button Shoes, followed by 1949’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In the 1950s and ’60s he partnered with such lyricists as Stephen Sondheim, Bob Merrill, and Betty Comden and Adolph Green to create such classics as Gypsy, Funny Girl, and Bells Are Ringing.
Instructor : Alan Teasley
Alan Teasley began his career as a high school English and drama teacher. After retiring from the Durham Public Schools in 2006, he taught in Duke’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program. He is an avid theatergoer with a particular fondness for American musicals. This is his sixteenth course on musical theater for OLLI. Previous courses have focused on the musicals of Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Frank Loesser, Lerner & Loewe, Jerry Herman, Bock & Harnick, Leonard Bernstein,” Rodgers & Hart, George & Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Schwartz. All materials for these courses are on this website, except for the two courses on Stephen Sondheim which are located at https://www.sondheim101.com/