Lawrence Schulman to Release New Book on Peter Allen in 2025

In 2025, BearManor Media will publish Lawrence Schulman's third book for BearManor Media, called Peter Allen: Somebody's Angel - The Boy From Oz In The Key of Camp, which will be a comprehensive overview of the late singer-songwriter's career. Schulman first published an initial article devoted to Allen in the ARSC Journal in 2023, and it won the 2023 ARSC Best Article Award. Schulman thereafter revised and expanded the article into a chapter in his 2024 Bearmanor book FREE: Words on Music by a Hi-Def Critic in an MP3 World, which included new interviews and information. For the 2025 book, Schulman has further revised and expanded the article to include even more interviews, expanded chapters, new photos, many published for the first time, and new appendices: A Complete Songography and Discography, Covers, Acting Roles, and Television and Radio.

Born in 1944 in Tenterfield, New South Wales, and dead in 1992 of AIDS-related throat cancer, Peter Allen had a career that spanned from the 1950s, when he and Chris Bell formed a duo called The Allen Brothers that performed in Australia and Asia, to 1992, during which time he made albums and played such prestigious stages as Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall. His extraordinary performances and brilliant songs are today somewhat forgotten, but Schulman's new book was written to reestablish Allen's importance to 20th century American popular music and to put him in the ranks of George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and others.

Lawrence Schulman, a graduate of Stony Brook University, the Sorbonne and CREAR, a school for film and video studies in Gouvieux, France, is a music producer, critic and translator who has compiled numerous CD sets devoted to Judy Garland in the past three decades. A collector and audiophile, Schulman has worked with such distinguished mastering engineers as Robert Parker, Jon M. Samuels, Gary Galo, Peter Rynston, John H. Haley, Robin Cherry, Peter Reynolds, Nick Dellow, and Richard Moore. His talk on Garland, "Moments of Magic," has been heard in New York, Boston, and various venues in Maine, where he resides. While living in Paris between 1971 and 1997, he taught and translated, and currently translates for the French website OpusHD.net, which specializes in classical high-resolution recordings. During his Paris years he also worked for French Public Radio as a producer and host. He has written sound recording and book reviews for the ARSC Journal since 1994, as well as three original articles, "The Plagued History of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli 'Live' at the London Palladium, 1965-2009," "Judy Garland: The Road Gets Rougher, 1960-1969," and "Somebody's Angel: Peter Allen, The Boy from Oz in the Key of Camp - A 21st-Century Reevaluation of His Music." His most recent CDs are Judy Garland - A Celebration from Trapeze Music & Entertainment/Acrobat Music (2024), Judy Garland: The Two-A-Day Is Back in Town, Closing Night at the Palace, February 24, 1952 from JSP Records (2023), Judy Garland - The Lost Vegas Show from High Definition Tape Transfers (2023), Judy Garland - The Final Concert In Copenhagen from High Definition Tape Transfers (2022), Judy Garland - The Greatest Night in Show Business History, Carnegie Hall, April 23, 1961 from High Definition Tape Transfers (2022), Classic Concert Series: Judy At Carnegie Hall - Judy In Person  from AVID (2022), and Judy Garland - Live in Paris, 1960 from Frémeaux & Associés (2022). Finally, his translation from the French of Bertrand Tessier's Judy Garland: Splendor and Downfall of a Legend, for which he also provided a Foreword, was published by BearManor Media in early 2023 and his own acclaimed best-seller, Garland - That's Beyond Entertainment - Reflections on Judy Garland, with a Foreword by former ARSC Journal sound recordings editor John H. Haley and an Afterword by longtime ARSC Journal reviewer James Fisher, was published by the same editor in late 2023. His most recent book is FREE: Words on Music by a Hi-Def Critic in an MP3 World, which has also been published in 2024 by BearManor Media.