Matthew Kennedy

Roadshow! (eBook, PDF)

The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Full-page newspaper ads announced the date. Reserved seats went on sale at premium prices. Audience members dressed up and arrived early to peruse the program during the overture that preceded the curtain's rise. And when the show began, it was--a rather disappointing film musical. In Roadshow!, film historian Matthew Kennedy tells the fascinating story of the downfall of the big-screen musical in the late 1960s. It is a tale of revolutionary cultural change, business transformation, and artistic missteps, all of which led to the obsolescence of the roadshow, a marketing extravaganza designed to make a movie opening in a regional city seem like a Broadway premier. Ironically, the Hollywood musical suffered from unexpected success. Facing doom after its bygone heyday, it suddenly broke box-office records with three rapid-fire successes in 1964 and 1965: Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music. Studios rushed to catch the wave, but everything went wrong. Kennedy takes readers inside the making of such movies as Hello, Dolly! and Man of La Mancha, showing how corporate management imposed financial pressures that led to poor artistic decisions-for example, the casting of established stars regardless of vocal or dancing talent (such as Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon). And Kennedy explores the impact of profound social, political, and cultural change. The traditional-sounding Camelot and Doctor Dolittle were released in the same year as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, representing a vast gulf in taste. The artifice of musicals seemed outdated to baby boomers who grew up with the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, race riots, and the Vietnam War. From Julie Andrews to Barbra Streisand, from Fred Astaire to Rock Hudson, Roadshow! offers a brilliant, gripping history of film musicals and their changing place in our culture.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 352
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. Dezember 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780199925681
• Artikelnr.: 40042759

Autorenporträt

Matthew Kennedy is a writer, film historian, and anthropologist. His books include three biographies of classic Hollywood figures: Marie Dressler, Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, and Joan Blondell. He lives in San Francisco.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements
Overture
Chapter 1 - The Musical That Ate Hollywood
Chapter 2 - "I, Too, Can Sing"
Chapter 3 - The Animal Kingdom
Chapter 4 - Movie Stars
Chapter 5 - Smoke and Gold
Chapter 6 - Over-Egg the Pudding
Chapter 7 - Do Little
Chapter 8 - Casting About
Chapter 9 - Buying and Selling
Chapter 10 - "Impossible to Control the Cost of This Gown"
Chapter 11 - Battle of the Girls
Chapter 12 - Delayed Adolescence
Chapter 13 - The Paramount Bloodsuckers
Chapter 14 - Goodbye, MGM
Chapter 15 - Numbers
Chapter 16 - "Magnificent Apathy"
Chapter 17 - Acts of Faith
Chapter 18 - The Impossible Dream
Exit Music
Appendix A
Appendix B
References
Bibliography
Index