A Song in the Dark

The Birth of the Musical Film

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by Richard Barrios

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Musicals

Keywords

musicals, history of cinema

Publishing date

2009

Publisher

Oxford University Press

2nd edition

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 504 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-537734-7

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Book Presentation:
• Extensively rewritten, revised, and updated new edition that takes into consideration numerous film rediscoveries made since the initial edition
• Contains many new rare photographs, many not published in nearly 80 years makes connections with and builds on growing momentum in movie musicals more generally - Moulin Rouge!, Sweeney Todd, The Producers, Rent, Mamma Mia!, Dreamgirls, various versions of High School Musical, and above all the Oscar-winning Chicago
• An eminently readable, enjoyable, entertaining account of a wild and turbulent era in film history

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.

Press 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." - New York Times

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press