When Broadway Went to Hollywood
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
When films like The Jazz Singer started to integrate synchronized music, in the late 1920s many ambitious songwriting pioneers of the Great White Way - George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Lorenz Hart, among many others - were enticed westward by Hollywood studios' promises of national exposure and top dollar success. But what happened when writers native to the business of Broadway ran into the very different business of Hollywood? Their movies had their producer despots, their stacking of writing teams on a single project, their use of five or six songs per story where Broadway fit in a dozen, and it seemed as if everyone in Hollywood was uncomfortable with characters bursting into song on the street, in your living room, or in "a cottage small by a waterfall."
Did the movies give theater writers a chance to expand their art, or did mass marketing ruin the musical's quintessential charm? Is it possible to trace the history of the musical through both stage and screen manifestations, or did Broadway and Hollywood give rise to two wholly irreconcilable art forms? And, finally, did any New York writer or writing team create a film musical as enthralling and timeless as their work for the stage?
In When Broadway Went to Hollywood, writer and celebrated steward of musical theatre Ethan Mordden directs his unmistakable wit and whimsy to these challenging questions and more, charting the volatile and galvanizing influence of Broadway on Hollywood (and vice versa) throughout the twentieth century. Along the way, he takes us behind the scenes of the great Hollywood musicals you've seen and loved (The Wizard of Oz, Gigi, The Sound of Music, Chicago, West Side Story, The Music Man, Grease) as well as some of the outrageous flops you probably haven't. The first book to tell the story of how Broadway affected the Hollywood musical, When Broadway Goes to Hollywood is sure to thrill theatre buffs and movie lovers alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mordden (On Sondheim: An Opinionated Guide), a noted authority on the American musical, explores the melding of Broadway and Hollywood in this informative and enlightening survey. Mordden is quick to clarify that his main focus is on Broadway-identified songwriters in Hollywood, following such notable men as Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Frank Loesser, and George and Ira Gershwin. To set the stage, he offers a brief history of early Hollywood musicals, beginning with The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, and going on to Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade and Whoopee! with Eddie Cantor. Dividing the book into chapters devoted to specific songwriters, he surveys the roles of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, and others in the development of the Hollywood musical. He touches upon Berlin's snapshots of American life in songs such as "How Do You Do It, Mabel, on Twenty Dollars a Week?" and Gershwin and Porter's contributions to lesser-known musicals such as, respectively, Delicious (1931) and Born to Dance (1936). Mordden's examination is fact-packed and sometimes intimidatingly dense, though aficionados will delight in the level of detail. This authoritative and illuminating book is an informed look at a pivotal slice of film and theater history.
