How did Broadway go from being a fabulous invalid to a mint? That’s the story the New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel tells in his very entertaining new book, Razzle Dazzle: The Battle For Broadway.

Riedel begins his story with the Shubert Brothers, the challengers and successors to the Theater Syndicate run by Edward Albee’s grandfather, Edwin Franklin Albee II. The Syndicate dominated the booking of popular performers sent about the country during the period of Vaudeville.

Natives of Syracuse, the Shubert brothers were immigrants with little education who saw theater-owning as a way out of poverty. Not surprisingly, their involvement began where the money was: the box office. The brightest and most driven of the three brothers, Sam, had started out working in the box office of the Syracuse Grand Opera House as a teenager.

Recruiting his brothers J. J. and Lawrence to work with him, he shifted roles and began managing and producing. By being supportive of the “talent,” the Shuberts won success through a willingness to pay performers better than the Syndicate, a group which had few scruples about trying to keep the Shuberts out through monopolistic practices. The fight with the Syndicate led Sam and his brothers to begin building their own theaters as a way to compete.

Although Sam died in a train car accident in 1905, his brothers were able to expand the company into a powerful Broadway theater