The Wizard of Oz, Gigi, Top Hat, High Society - some of the most
popular movie musicals ever made were written by Broadway
songwriters. The Sound of Music, Chicago, West Side Story, The
Music Man, Grease - some of the other most popular movie musicals
were adaptations of Broadway shows. From the very first talkies to
the present, Broadway's composers and lyricists have given much of
their best work to the movies - but with varying results. In the
1930s, Rodgers and Hart's Love Me Tonight, with Maurice Chevalier
and Jeanette MacDonald at their sexiest, is a masterpiece of
fairytale sophistication. But Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, an Al Jolson
vehicle about tramps in Central Park, is one of the outstanding
flops, partly because Rodgers and Hart wrote it as a kind of opera
that is spoken instead of sung. Or take the big films based on
Broadway shows in the 1960s. After The Sound of Music, Hollywood
sought to fill the screen with lots of scenery, lots of drama, and
lots of Julie Andrews. But Camelot and Hello, Dolly! had too much
scenery, Paint Your Wagon was the hippie musical, and Song of
Norway was simply loony. Even Julie Andrews couldn't save the
Broadway bio film called Star!, all about the adventures of
Gertrude Lawrence. Who? As historians have begun to consider the
movie musical along with the stage musical, Ethan Mordden explores
just how influential such writers as Irving Berlin, George and Ira
Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and Stephen Sondheim have been
when they moved from Broadway to Hollywood. Are the welcomed? Do
they get to experiment, using the freedom of the camera to expand
the very geography of song? Or do movie producers resent that New
York sophistication? Broadway excels in the bittersweet "Send in
the Clowns." But Hollywood wants it simple: "White Christmas." With
his usual combination of scholarship and wicked wit, Ethan Mordden
tantalizes us with anecdotes and fresh observations. He discusses
many unusual titles as well - Viennese Nights, The Boys From
Syracuse, Anything Goes, with Ethel Merman preserving her classic
stage part as Reno Sweeney, the swinging evangelist. The first of
its kind, this book is made for the moviegoer and theatre buff
alike.
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