Author Archives: boz

Essential Film Musicals: Mary Poppins

Posted on June 2, 2020 by boz

Walt Disney’s daughters fell in love with the Mary Poppins books and made him promise to make a film based on them. He first attempted to purchase the film rights from author P.L. Travers as early as 1938. However, she … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: A Star Is Born

Posted on May 29, 2020 by boz

In 1950, MGM fired Judy Garland. A year later, Vicente Minnelli and she divorced. At a professional and personal nadir, her personal manager (and eventual third husband) Sid Luft engineered a comeback with concerts at the London Palladium and New … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: Singin’ in the Rain

Posted on May 28, 2020 by boz

Though now often regarded as the greatest film musical ever made, Singin’ in the Rain was only a modest hit when it was first released in 1952. Its stature has grown to near legendary status in the years since. Roger … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: An American in Paris

Posted on May 28, 2020 by boz

MGM’s Freed Unit, which began creating musical films in 1939 under producer Arthur Freed’s leadership, reached the peak of its creative and critical acclaim in 1951 with An American in Paris, which won the Oscar for Best Picture. Much of … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: Meet Me in St. Louis

Posted on May 26, 2020 by boz

After working as an uncredited associate producer on The Wizard of Oz, Arthur Freed was given charge of his own unit at MGM. His first effort was the film adaptation of Rodgers and Hart’s stage musical Babes in Arms (1939), … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: Yankee Doodle Dandy

Posted on May 25, 2020 by boz

“There’s little that’s really original,” Roger Ebert has said of the musical biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy. “The greatness of the film resides entirely in the Cagney performance.” In its 1942 review, Variety similarly noted, “James Cagney does a Cohan of … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: The Wizard of Oz

Posted on May 22, 2020 by boz

After Disney’s Snow White showed that children’s stories could be profitable, MGM bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, about the adventures of Kansas farm girl Dorothy and her dog Toto in the … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: Top Hat

Posted on May 20, 2020 by boz

“When Hollywood revived musical films three years ago, dancing was monopolized by director Busby Berkeley,” Newsweek magazine noted in its 1935 review of Top Hat. “Thanks more to Fred Astaire than any other single influence, the character of musicomedy in … Continue reading →

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Essential Film Musicals: 42nd Street

Posted on May 20, 2020 by boz

In 1927, Warner Brothers launched the era of talkies with The Jazz Singer, and studios scrambled to hire Broadway composers. Within a handful of years, screens were flooded with movie musicals, most of them hastily put through production, and audiences … Continue reading →

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Essential Musicals: Hamilton

Posted on May 19, 2020 by boz

Once in a generation, a musical comes along that resets the theatrical atmosphere and perhaps enters the wider popular culture. Hamilton is such a show — as Show Boat was in the 1920s, Oklahoma! in the 1940s, Hair in the … Continue reading →

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