Anglo-American Music Theater I Main Menu

Summary: Hollywood Musicals

15878
Jerry Kavinski – MUSIC 730 – 12 April 2017
Assignment 3 – Article Summary
  
            When looking at the transformation a musical undergoes when it makes the leap from stage to screen, there are several factors that come into play.  Beginning with The Jazz Singer, which was premiered on stage in 1925 and as the first ‘talkie’ in 1927, the motion picture industry struggled and innovated to come up with the best techniques and conventions to make the transition smooth and seamless.  Among the obstacles in the way were The Orchestra From Nowhere, the challenge of sound recording musical numbers on set, and the balance between story songs and ‘floor numbers.’
            The Orchestra From Nowhere is perhaps the most obvious of the obstacles in standing in the way of a seamless flow in a movie musical.  When an audience was watching a musical live, there were instrumentalists in the pit providing the vocal accompaniment.  In order for this to occur in a movie, the players would have to be physically present in any scene which contains a song.  Picture the Barbershop Quartet in Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, who sing ‘spontaneously’ throughout the show; now imagine that there are 20 people rather than four, and that they are toting trumpets, bassoons, and clarinets of every size – not exactly what Hollywood desired for incidental scenery.
            Initially, this issue was dealt with in a few different ways.  There were ‘backstage musicals,’ where the audience was viewing a musical at various stages of production; the songs could be portrayed during the rehearsal process as well as on stage during performance.  Another way this problem was solved was through the use of orchestras being in the scene before the characters arrive, such as a dance band during a dinner scene, which of course feels quite natural.
            Beginning with The Broadway Melody (a 1929 backstage musical), Hollywood begins to break away from its fear, as this musical contains two instances of songs being sung in a hotel room with “no visible source of accompaniment.”  Perhaps this departure is made possible due to the fact that, as a backstage musical, the audience is seeing a source of instrumental accompaniment throughout, so the brief absence of an accompaniment source is less noticeable.
            Another of the first challenges to face movie musical producers was how to record the audio.  For some time, everything was done all at once – acting & singing, complete with instrumental accompaniment.  For this to work, an orchestra would have to be on set for any scene that required accompaniment, and everyone on the set would have to be extremely quiet during all filming.  This proved expensive and most likely, quite stressful for all involved.  One of the early pioneers in improving the standard was John Murray Anderson; when he was producing The King of Jazz (1930)  they “made the sound-tracks [sic]…separately from the picture, just as we’d make phonograph records.”  This meant that the actors would have to lip-sync with a track they had previously recorded, however, the overall effect was on par with the more complex process, so it was increasingly used in future productions.
            The final issue raised by Mordden involves how songs are used to advance the story as opposed to merely entertain.  For example, Gershwin’s Girl Crazy (staged 1930, filmed 1943) has three songs that advance the love story-line in the plot, however the remainder of the songs are pure entertainment with tenuous connections to the plot at best, such as I Got Rhythm; can you describe the plot of that song?
 

This page has paths:

  1. Literature Summaries & Research Abstracts Steven Gerber

This page has tags:

  1. 1929 Steven Gerber
  2. 1927 Steven Gerber
  3. Topic: Genre/Form Steven Gerber
  4. Topic: Musical/Theatrical Features Steven Gerber
  5. Work: Jazz Singer Steven Gerber
  6. Work: Broadway Melody Steven Gerber
  7. Topic: Successors Steven Gerber

Contents of this tag:

  1. Participant: Kavinski, Jerry