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When Broadway Went to Hollywood

Online ISBN:
9780199395439
Print ISBN:
9780199395408
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

When Broadway Went to Hollywood

Ethan Mordden
Ethan Mordden

Freelance writer

Freelance writer, Freelance writer
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Published online:
20 April 2017
Published in print:
26 January 2017
Online ISBN:
9780199395439
Print ISBN:
9780199395408
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

As historians have begun to consider the movie musical along with the stage musical, this book explores just how influential such writers as Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, and Stephen Sondheim have been when they moved from Broadway to Hollywood. Are the welcomed? Do they get to experiment, using the freedom of the camera to expand the very geography of song? Or do movie producers resent that New York sophistication? Broadway excels in the bittersweet “Send in the Clowns.” But Hollywood wants it simple: “White Christmas.” This text tantalizes with anecdotes and fresh observations. It discusses many unusual titles as well as the most famous ones—Viennese Nights, The Boys From Syracuse, Anything Goes, with Ethel Merman preserving her classic stage part as Reno Sweeney, the swinging evangelist.

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