One of Hollywood’s most talented musical stars, Gene Kelly personified song and dance in the 1950s, and many of his films, such as Singin’ in the Rain, are classics of the genre.
Ever since Al JOLSON shouted, “Wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” and burst into song in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, the musical has been a vital commercial—and often artistic—force in the history of cinema. The medium has spawned legendary performers including Judy GARLAND, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelly, and some of the century’s finest pop composers have written for screen musicals. These range from Ira and George GERSHWIN and Irving BERLIN to John Lennon and Paul McCartney and Elton JOHN.
The Jazz Singer was the first feature-length film with sound using singing and talking, and in 1929 the Hollywood studio MGM released the first “all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing” picture, The Broadway Melody. This was the first sound film with an original score (songs by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown) and it won an Academy Award for best picture.
Although the earliest Hollywood musicals were entertaining and successful, visually they were treated in much the same way as other types of films, and structurally there was little difference between film musicals and their Broadway counterpart. It took Broadway veteran director and choreographer Busby Berkeley to change all that. With films such as Gold Diggers of 1933, 42nd Street (1933), and Footlight Parade (1933), Berkeley transformed the Hollywood musical. He staged visionary, often surrealistic, musical sequences in which the camera would soar, swoop, and glide around and through hundreds of chorus girls, often in kaleidoscopic poses. These effects would have been impossible to produce on stage, and the camera techniques that were pioneered by Berkeley quickly came into use in mainstream cinema and were a major influence on cinematography in general.
The early musicals also produced a new breed of celebrity, the musical star. Two of the first of these were Ruby Keeler and William Powell, who had worked with Berkeley. But by the mid-1930s, the king and queen of song-and-dance were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Broadway’s best songwriters went West to compose scores for the duo’s musicals, including Vincent Youmans (Flying Down to Rio, 1933), Jerome KERN (Roberta, 1935, and Swing Time, 1936), and Irving Berlin (Top Hat, 1935, Follow the Fleet, 1936, and Carefree, 1937), and Ira and George Gershwin (Shall We Dance, 1937).
The period of the late 1930s to 1950s produced many innovations in the film musical, such as Technicolor and animation. The first feature-length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) started a whole new subgenre that included Pinocchio (1940), Bambi (1942), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). Also in this period, Hollywood devised another new subgenre: biographical musicals of contemporary composers and songwriters. Despite the relative success of these films, many were outlandish fabrications. Songwriters whose life-stories were treated with such creative licence included Jerome Kern (Till the Clouds Roll By, 1946), Richard RODGERS and Lorenz Hart (Words and Music, 1948), Cole PORTER (Night and Day, 1946), and George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue, 1945).
Beginning with The Wizard of Oz (1939), the unprecedented string of musical hits produced by MGM from the late 1930s to mid-1950s ranks among Hollywood’s best—including Babes in Arms (1939), The Pirate (1948), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and perhaps the most acclaimed musical of all, Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Gene Kelly, star of Singin in the Rain, brought a new vitality and athleticism to the musical in the late 1940s and 1950s. Whether splashing around a rain-soaked street in Singin’ in the Rain, hoofing on roller skates in It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), or cavorting with cartoon characters in Anchors Aweigh (1945), Kelly changed the perception of the male dancer and expanded the horizons of the screen musical.
The artistic and financial success of the movie musical was short-lived, however, and began to decline in the mid-1950s. This downfall was due in part to the failure of big-budget originals, the emergence of rock’n’roll, and the growing popularity of television—people simply weren’t going to the movies as often. Hollywood reacted by playing it safe, as far as musicals were concerned, with adaptations of Broadway shows including Oklahoma! (1955), Guys and Dolls (1955), Carousel (1956), The King and I (1956), Pal Joey (1957), and West Side Story (1961). Each of these proved enormously successful, and, although fewer musicals were being produced, those that were made money. In the 1960s, Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins, 1964) and Barbra STREISAND (Funny Girl, 1968) emerged as the foremost stars in movie musicals, and the most celebrated musicals of this period were adaptations of hit Broadway shows, My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Oliver! (1968), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), and Cabaret (1972).
Around this time, the genre of film musical started to diversify away from Broadway and take on various kinds of music, especially the now dominant influence of rock and pop music. For example, the BEATLES helped reinvigorate screen musicals with their film A Hard Day’s Night (1964), and other “hip” movies followed—especially the “rockumentary” on Bob DYLAN, Don’t Look Back (1967), Monterey Pop (1969), Woodstock (1970), and the WHO’S Tommy (1975) and Quadrophenia (1979). In the 1970s and 1980s, the movie musical re-emerged sporadically with well-received films such as Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978), Fame (1980), Victor, Victoria (1982), and Dirty Dancing (1987). In the late 1980s to the 1990s, Walt Disney animations such as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994) breathed new life into movie musicals.
One of Hollywood’s most talented musical stars, Gene Kelly personified song and dance in the 1950s, and many of his films, such as Singin’ in the Rain, are classics of the genre.
Foreign countries have seldom matched the Hollywood musical for invention and sheer entertainment, with the exception of Brazil’s Black Orpheus (1959), France’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and Jamaica’s The Harder They Come (1973). The Indian film industry known as “Bollywood” (Bombay-Hollywood) produced many musicals, though these have not found a popular audience in the West due to the language barrier and the exotic sound of Indian music.
One new area is the short music video. Though essentially made to promote one song at a time, it is now a genre in its right. As historian Ted Sennett says, “the Hollywood musical may have altered its form, may move to a different beat … but the love affair persists …” The public still loves them.
Michael R. Ross
SEE ALSO:
ARRANGERS; CHILDREN’s SONGS; FILM MUSIC; INDIAN FILM MUSIC; MUSICALS; POPULAR MUSIC; TIN PAN ALLEY.
FURTHER READING
Hemming, Roy. The Melody Lingers On: The Great Songwriters and Their Movie Musicals (New York: Newmarket Press, 1986);
Hirschhorn, Clive. The Hollywood Musical (New York: Portland House, 1991);
Sennett, Ted. Hollywood Musicals (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at RKO;
Lullaby of Broadway: The Best of Busby Berkeley at
Warner Bros. ; That’s Entertainment:
The Best of the MGM Musicals.