Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...The film of Carousel somewhat softened Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 adaptation of Ferenc Molnar’s 1909 play, Liliom. Billy (Gordon MacRea) is killed by accident in the film, not by suicide. The original built to the shock of Billy’s death...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...One Hour with You was Ernst Lubitsch’s final musical at Paramount (though production began with George Cukor directing). Reuniting Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald three years after their success in The Love Parade, it is a musical...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...Released in 1944, when many families remained fractured by war, and based on Sally Benson’s stories of her turn-of-the-century childhood, Meet Me in St. Louis speaks directly to nostalgia for the ideals of American family life. The film...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...In 1957, the year West Side Story opened on Broadway, Fred Astaire (in Silk Stockings and Funny Face) and Gene Kelly (in Les Girls) starred in their last major Hollywood musicals. The year before, Elvis Presley had made his first movie...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...In the middle of It’s Always Fair Weather, Ted Riley (Gene Kelly) celebrates his discovery of love in a number (‘I Like Myself’) that recalls Kelly’s much more famous ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. Ted’s virtuoso dance through the streets on roller...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...Before moving to MGM in 1941, Joe Pasternak produced the extremely popular Deanna Durbin musicals at Universal (see 100 Men and a Girl). MGM musicals of the 1940s are now associated particularly with the production unit headed by Arthur...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...Oscar Hammerstein II’s updating and relocation of Bizet’s opera Carmen to World War II and an African-American setting ran for over 500 performances after its 1943 Broadway opening. The opera’s tobacco factory became a parachute factory...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...‘Drum Crazy’, Fred Astaire’s first main musical number in Easter Parade, has much in common with numbers like ‘Fancy Free’ in Top Hat, largely solo dances that the character seems to improvise, using the props and furniture of whatever...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...In the history of the film musical, The Love Parade is a landmark in several respects. It was Ernst Lubitsch’s first talkie, Jeanette MacDonald’s first film, the first of the four films that made Maurice Chevalier and MacDonald...
Douglas Pye is Senior Visting Research Fellow for Film, Theatre and TV at the University of Reading, UK. His works include Style and Meaning (2005) and The Movie Book of the Western (1996). Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
...The Sound of Music was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s last musical – Oscar Hammerstein II died in 1960, the year after the show opened on Broadway. A considerable hit in New York and even more so in London, it was eclipsed by the unprecedented...
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