A History Of Movie Musicals

History of Movie Musicals

A History of Movie Musicals

"Movies learned to sing and dance even before they learned to talk. For years, before the arrival of sound, Joan Crawford and other flappers had been dancing the Charleston on the silent screen. Then musical soundtracks were adopted, providing the first "sounds" of silent film. Later still, and some say by accident, came the talkies. It is said that Al Jolson, while doing the song recording for The Jazz Singer, cried out in a burst of enthusiasm, 'You ain't heard nothing yet, folks! Listen to this!' And talking pictures were born. Purists will limit the film musical genre to the half dozen or so that finally fulfilled the highest criteria of cinematic art. But John Kobal is no purist. He is interested in all the torch songs by femmes fatales, the high kicks and shuffles of the chorus cuties, the extravagant set-pieces which relied more on spectacle than on musical talent. He is also more interested than anyone in the great personalities of the musical, such as Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Jeanette MacDonald, Busby Berkeley. But his most valuable contributions to cinema lore are the special interviews with, among others, Rene Clair, Vincente Minnelli, Rouben Mamoulian, Charles Walters, Kathryn Grayson, Bebe Daniels, Bessie Love, Joan Blondell, Mae West and Jessie Matthews. This unique and highly entertaining book is illustrated with over 670 photographs from the author's collection. Most of these will be new to the reader and many are rare and unknown even to the most knowledgeable students of the genre. The photographs speak--even dance--for themselves. If there is a book anywhere that can do justice to the exhilarating spirit of the musical then this is it." --Jacket.

The Movie Musical

"With the release of each new musical film, critics ask, "Has the musical returned?" The very frequency of the question would seem to belie its implication. Indeed, while musicals have changed over time, they have never truly gone away. This point becomes especially clear if we look beyond the "golden age" of the 1940s and 50s, beyond Hollywood, and even beyond the United States. The Movie Musical is a thematic exploration of the genre with a focus on how the musical changes and adapts in order to preserve its own relevance. From The Jazz Singer (1927), The Sound of Music (1965) to La La Land (2016) and The Greatest Showman (2017) and many more, the book traverses time and space, from the classical period of musical film production at midcentury to the present, and from Hollywood to Europe, the United Kingdom, and Asia. Chapters explore the genre as an archive of its own formation, its engagement with race, ethnicity, and gender, and its relationship to ever evolving technologies and media. Ultimately, the book tells a story of the musical's evolution that denies the familiar narrative that the genre is in crisis; instead, The Movie Musical demonstrates that, if we look beyond the familiar places, we see that the musical is dynamic, capacious, and always with us"--