Lecture Thirteen:
The Hollywood Musical
11/15/2005

A Brief History of the Hollywood Musical

Beginnings:  The origins of the musical film can be dated to the advent of sound itself in cinema. The first musical was also the first talking film: The Jazz Singer (Alan Crossland, 1927), starring Al Jolson.

The musical film borrowed extensively from the theatrical stage and other forms of popular entertainment like vaudeville and burlesque. Two early, short lived forms of the musical film were the revue, which consisted simply of a series of skits by a variety of studio stars. The operetta featured singers with operatic voices, no dancing, and tended to be sentimental and romantic and was ultimately replaced by the musical comedy as the most popular form of the musical film.

The Golden Age of the classical Hollywood musical lasted from the late 1930’s to the early 1950’s.

Busby Berkeley – 3 innovations:

• Perfected the synchronization of filmed image with pre-recorded musical soundtrack.
• Used moveable cameras.
• Removed proscenium arch from dance films.

Subgenres of the Hollywood Musical:

• Musical biography – a version of the familiar biopic, which provided a showcase for big studio star power -- Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942), starring James Cagney.
• Children’s fantasy – The Wizard of Oz (1939), starring Judy Garland.
• Backstage musical – the most dominant subgenre, told the story of a group of “amateurs” who attempt to put on a theatrical musical.
• New Comedy/ Backyard musical – featured familiar boy meets girl plot.

1960’s – Present:  Period of decline.  Some limited promise of a possible resurgence of the Hollywood musical – Chicago (2002).

Formal Characteristics of the Hollywood Musical:

1. choreography vs. non-choreography: choreography is the sequence of steps or movements in a dance; non-choreography is a type of “masked choreography” presenting the impression that dance is organic, spontaneous, easy.
2. inseparability of music and dance:
• methods of characterizing musical numbers include the integrated and/or nonintegrated musical number. The integrated musical numberpresented as the sudden, spontaneous, or transcendent expression of a character’s thoughts or feelings. The non-integrated number appears as a formal performance and suspends the forward motion of the plot.
• types of song: sing-along, “passed-along song”
3. depictions of ideal family/relationships and harmonious community
4. transcendent expressions of emotion: the experiences of the characters demand a heightened form of expression, deliverable only through music and/or dance
5. an identification between the performer(s) and the audience achieved through audience participation, the “joys of amateurism,” and deliberate framing

The Hollywood Musical is a genre that is formally bold but culturally – unlike film noir or German Expressionism – it’s the most conservative.

**The information on Technicolor will be incorporated into our final lecture of the semester.

Films from which clips were taken this week:

• The Jazz Singer (Alan Crossland, 1927)
• Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
• Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002)
• Gold Diggers of 1935 (Busby Berkeley, 1935)
• Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)