A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 VITAPHONE PRELUDE
2 THE SOUND BARRIER
3 YOU WERE MEANT FOR ME
4 ON WITH THE SHOW!
5 FINDING A VOICE
6 DUELING MAMMIES
7 HOLLYWOOD, REVUED
8 BROADWAY BABIES
9 WITH ALL ITS ORIGINAL STAGE ENCHANTMENT
10 JUST IMAGINE
11 THE CUCKOOS
12 OF VIENNESE NIGHTS AND GOLDEN DAWNS
13 IS IT A MUSICAL?
14 THE MARCH OF TIME
15 VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS
16 WE'RE IN THE MONEY
17 THE PAST AS PROLOGUE
FINALE
Appendix One:
NOTES ON LOST FILMS
Appendix Two:
A SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY: EARLY MUSICALS ON RECORD
SOURCE NOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

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Drawing on meticulous research, sharp wit, and insightful analysis, Richard Barrios illuminates the origins of the movie musical in this extensively revised and updated edition of his highly acclaimed A Song in the Dark. From Warner Bros. and Jolson, to the Oscar-winning Broadway Melody and beyond, here is the whole funny and peculiar history of these films, their creators, and their audiences. Ranging from the smash hits of The Singing Fool and Sunny Side Up to bizarre flops like Golden Dawn and Cecil B. DeMille's Madam Satan, they form a body of work unlike anything else in the history of popular entertainment. Here too are legendary performers, directors, and composers: from Fannie Brice, James Cagney, and Mae West, to Busby Berkeley, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, and countless others. With many new rare photographs, some not published in nearly 80 years, this new edition traces the rise and fall, and rise again, of this quintessential piece of the American experience.

Reviews

This lively, intelligent and well-researched survey tells the tumultuous and often delightfully absurd saga of the film industry's frantic, disaster-laced efforts in the late 1920's and early 1930's to fabricate a new, lucrative product - the movie musical - as part of its effort to come to grips with the new technology of sound. Mr. Barrios makes clear that contrary to myth The Jazz Singer, featuring the overbearing Al Jolson, was neither the first major motion picture to use sound nor the first to make notable use of music. A Song in the Dark deals engagingly with its colorful and fascinating subject, and it is illuminating not only on artistic concerns, but on business and technical ones as well, including the process by which many of these films, previously declared lost, have been found and restored. It makes an effective case for a re-examination of this audacious, excessive and underappreciated moment in motion picture history

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