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A comprehensive reassessment of British musical films 1946-1972
including King's Rhapsody, Beat Girl, The Tommy Steele Story, Rock
You Sinners, The Golden Disc, and Oliver! Acting as a sequel to
Adrian Wright's Cheer Up! British Musical Films, 1929-1945
(Boydell, 2020), Melody in the Dark offers the first major
reassessment of the British musical film from the end of Second
World War up to the beginning of the 1970s. In the immediate
post-war world, British studios sought to reflect fast-changing
social attitudes as they struggled to create inventive diversions
in an effort to rival American competition. Hollywood stars Errol
Flynn, Vera-Ellen, Jayne Mansfield and Judy Garland were among
those brought in to provide Hollywood glamour. Embedded in the
British consciousness, the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan were
represented in three productions. Studios occasionally attempted
adaptations of British stage musicals, among them King's Rhapsody
and Expresso Bongo, and sexploitation movies turned musical via
Secrets of a Windmill Girl and Beat Girl. It was left to minor
studios to acknowledge the impact of rock'n'roll on social change
in three early films, The Tommy Steele Story, Rock You Sinners and
the iconic The Golden Disc. Through the sixties, British cinema
seemed intent on flooding the market with entertainments promoting
pop singers and rock groups such as Cliff Richard, Billy Fury and
The Beatles. Towards the end of the period, it aspired to more
grandiose projects such as Oliver! and Oh! What a Lovely War.
The first book to deal exclusively with British musical flops, Must
Close Saturday presents a rolling panorama of the good, the bad and
the ugly, reassessing their place in theatrical history. The
ominous announcement "Must Close Saturday" too often heralded the
demise of British musicals. Looking forward from the vantage point
of Lionel Bart's spectacularly successful Oliver! in 1960, Adrian
Wright's authoritative chronicle of the commercially unsuccessful
British musical of the last half a century uncovers a wealth of
fascinating material. In the wake of the resurgence that briefly
blew through the British musical at the end of the 1950s with
verismo works such as Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be and Expresso
Bongo, the British musical was shaken by Bart's adaptation of
Dickens, but was quickly left floundering in the face of constant
critical complaint and financial failure. The first book to deal
exclusively with British musical flops, Must Close Saturday
presents a rolling panorama of the good, the bad and the ugly,
reassessing their place in theatrical history.Wright reveals a
consistent striving at invention, with subjects including the
electric chair, the Holocaust, the Virgin Mary, social inequality
and Trade Unionism, sexual problems and murder, as well as
biographical treatments of Hollywood stars, French painters, tragic
novelists, royalty, and the Rector of Stiffkey. Discursive and
provoking, Must Close Saturday at last prises open the neglected
history of the British musical flop up to 2016. ADRIAN WRIGHT is
the author of Foreign Country: The Life of L. P. Hartley (1996),
John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure (1998), The Innumerable Dance: The
Life and Work of William Alwyn (Boydell & Brewer, 2008), the
novel Maroon (2010) and The Voice of Doom (2016). His previous
books on British musical theatre are A Tanner's Worth of Tune:
Rediscovering the Post-War British Musical (Boydell & Brewer,
2010) and West End Broadway: The Golden Age of the American Musical
in London (Boydell & Brewer, 2012). He lives in Norfolk.
The first book to deal exclusively with the British musical film
from the very beginning of talking pictures in the late 1920s
through the Depression of the 1930s up to the end of World War II.
Cheer Up! is the first book to deal exclusively with the British
musical film from the very beginning of talking pictures in the
late 1920s through the Depression of the 1930s up to the end of
World War II. The upsurge in production at British studios from
1929 onwards marked the real birth of a genre whose principal
purpose was to entertain the British public. This endeavour was
deeply affected by the very many emigres escaping Nazi Germany, who
flooded into the British film industry during this decade, as the
genre tried to establish itself. The British musical film in the
1930s reflects a richness of interest. Studios initially flirted
with filming what were essentially stage productions plucked from
the West End theatre but soon learned that importing a foreign star
was a box-office boost. Major musical stars including Jessie
Matthews, Richard Tauber and George Formby established themselves
during this period. From its beginning, the British musical film
captured some of the most notable music-hall performers on screen,
and its obsession with music-hall persisted throughout the war
years. Other films married popular and classical music with social
issues of poverty and unemployment, a message of social integration
that long preceded the efforts of the Ealing studios to encourage a
sense of social cohesion in post-war Britain. The treatmentof the
films discussed is linear, each film dealt with in order of its
release date, and allowing for an engaging narrative packed with
encyclopaedic information.
Robots Won't Save Japan addresses the Japanese government's efforts
to develop care robots in response to the challenges of an aging
population, rising demand for eldercare, and a critical shortage of
care workers. Drawing on ethnographic research at key sites of
Japanese robot development and implementation, James Wright reveals
how such devices are likely to transform the practices,
organization, meanings, and ethics of caregiving if implemented at
scale. This new form of techno-welfare state that Japan is
prototyping involves a reconfiguration of care that deskills and
devalues care work and reduces opportunities for human social
interaction and relationship building. Moreover, contrary to
expectations that care robots will save labor and reduce health
care expenditures, robots cost more money and require additional
human labor to tend to the machines. As Wright shows, robots alone
will not rescue Japan from its care crisis. The attempts to
implement robot care instead point to the importance of looking
beyond such techno-fixes to consider how to support rather than
undermine the human times, spaces, and relationships necessary for
sustainably cultivating good care.
This first extended biography of William Alwyn sets his works in
full context and uses hitherto unpublished material to give a vivid
account of his marriages, his operas and his relationship with
Britten. This book is the first full-scale biography of William
Alwyn since his death in 1985. Alwyn's early life as a flautist was
altered when he became a leading composer of the Documentary Film
Movement in the 1930s, going on to a prolific career in writing for
feature films, including commissions for Walt Disney and Carol
Reed. By the mid 1950s his reputation was established by the
beginning of his four-symphony cycle, his many tone poems,
concertos, chamber and piano pieces. An habitue of the London film
studios and concert halls, and a prominent professor at the Royal
Academy of Music, a major crisis in Alwyn's life precipitated an
escape to the Suffolk coast in 1960, where he turnedhis back on
film music and immersed himself in the writing of operas [including
Miss Julie], poetry, essays, fiction and painting. Adrian Wright's
book balances detailed analysis of Alwyn's work with a vivid
account of his marriages to the musician Olive Pull and the
composer Doreen Carwithen, relationships that profoundly affected
the course of his career. Using a mass of hitherto unpublished
material [including an unexpurgated version of his noted Ariel to
Miranda] and interviews with prominent figures in Alwyn's life, the
volume places his achievements in the musical context of his time,
along the way dealing with his relationship with Benjamin
Britten,and such hitherto almost unknown works as Don Juan, The
Fairy Fiddler and the radio opera Farewell, Companions. ADRIAN
WRIGHT is the author of the acclaimed Foreign Country: The Life of
L.P. Hartley (1996) and John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure (1998), and
is a contributor to The New Dictionary of National Biography.
" A] first-class psychological study . . . the character drawing,
although a little cruel, is admirably done and the writing is
consistently excellent." - "Times Literary Supplement"
"It is original, it is strangely exciting, and the logic of its
plan is repeated in the behaviour of its characters." - L. P.
Hartley
"It is really a detective story in which the clues, instead of
being actual, are psychological. The reader is made to feel all the
tension and curiosity which a good crime novel inspires, and he is
not disappointed." - "The Tablet"
Twelve years ago Claude Carlice was found dead of a gunshot wound.
The verdict was suicide brought on by a fit of insanity, but his
sister Isabel has never believed it. Now the day approaches when
Claude's son Ronnie will come of age and take possession of Carlice
Abbey. Preparations for the birthday party are underway, but it
will not be a festive occasion: Ronnie, who has imbibed Marxist
ideas at Oxford, intends to throw his aunt and stepmother out of
the house and sign the entire estate over to the Communist Party
for use as a propaganda centre. As tensions rise and the big day
arrives, a strange series of events will unfold, revealing the
scandalous truth behind Claude's death and resulting in an
unexpected fate for Carlice Abbey and its occupants.
C.H.B. Kitchin (1895-1967) was both a best-selling crime writer
and a critically acclaimed author of literary fiction. In "Birthday
Party" (1938), he combined the two, resulting in a novel that is
both a fascinating examination of a changing English society on the
eve of the Second World War and a suspenseful psychological mystery
full of unexpected twists and turns. This first-ever republication
includes a reproduction of the original jacket art and a new
introduction by Adrian Wright.
This specially priced two volume set brings together Adrian
Wright's highly acclaimed two books on the Musical in Post-War
Britain. This specially priced two volume set brings together
Adrian Wright's highly acclaimed two books on the Musical in
Post-War Britain. A Tanner's Worth of Tune is not an encyclopaedia
of the British musical in the twentiethcentury, but an examination
of its progress as it struggled to find an identity. It shows how
the British musical has reacted to social and cultural forces,
suggesting that some of its leading composers such as Lionel Bart
and Julian Slade contributed much more to the genre than has
previously been acknowledged. West End Broadway is a history and a
re-evaluation not only of the British productions of Broadway's
most popular product but of the works themselves, beginning with a
brief account of the origins of the genre and of the shows seen
during World War II. Profusely illustrated, it discusses every
American musical seen in London between 1945 and 1972. Offering
aunique panoramic essay on British theatre of the Golden Age, this
is an authoritative, challenging and diverting contribution to an
understanding of a forgotten aspect of the Broadway musical. ADRIAN
WRIGHT is the author of Foreign Country: The Life of L.P. Hartley
(1996), John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure (1998), The Innumerable
Dance: The Life and Work of William Alwyn (Boydell, 2008) and the
novel Maroon (2010). He lives in Norfolk, where he runs Must Close
Saturday Records, a company dedicated to British musical theatre.
A history and re-evaluation of the American musical in London
between 1945 and 1972, a unique panoramic essay on British theatre
of the Golden Age. West End Broadway is the first book to deal
specifically with the 'Golden Age' of American musicals in London.
Here is a history and a re-evaluation not only of the British
productions of Broadway's most popular product butof the works
themselves, beginning with a brief account of the origins of the
genre and of the shows seen during World War II. The difficult
conditions of war-torn Britain prepared the ground for changes that
would come with peace. While Britain clung to tried formulas, a
refreshing breeze was blowing in from the Atlantic, altering the
nature of British theatre by sending New York's commercially
successful musicals to the West End. The wider relevance ofthis
history is underscored, as is the fact that these works effectively
imported American social history into the culture of a Britain
coping with the aftermath of conflict. In London, critical reaction
to Broadway musicals was often strikingly different from that
awarded in New York, and Broadway success could result in West End
failure, while off-Broadway shows struggled to gain hold in
Britain. West End Broadway discusses every American musical seen in
London between 1945 and 1972. As the final works of Cole Porter and
Irving Berlin made way for a new wave of writers and composers, the
arrival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! was celebrated as a
breakthrough,heralding a period that included important works by
Jule Styne, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green,
Robert Wright and George Forrest, Harold Rome, Frank Loesser, Alan
Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, and the first stirrings of the next
generation in Stephen Sondheim. Offering a unique panoramic essay
on British theatre of the Golden Age, West End Broadway is an
authoritative, challenging and diverting contribution to an
understanding of aforgotten aspect of the Broadway musical. ADRIAN
WRIGHT is the author of Foreign Country: The Life of L.P. Hartley
(1996), John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure (1998), The Innumerable
Dance: The Life and Work of William Alwyn (2008) and the novel
Maroon (2010). His previous book, A Tanner's Worth of Tune (Boydell
& Brewer, 2010), told the story of the post-war British
musical. He lives in Norfolk, where he runs MustClose Saturday
Records, a company dedicated to British musical theatre.
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