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  • Roadshow!: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s

    Roadshow! by Kennedy, Matthew;

    The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s

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    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP USA
    • Date of Publication 26 November 2015

    • ISBN 9780190262440
    • Binding Paperback
    • No. of pages320 pages
    • Size 234x157x14 mm
    • Weight 422 g
    • Language English
    • Illustrations 25 photographs
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    Short description:

    In Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, film historian Matthew Kennedy explores the downfall of a beloved genre caught in the hands of misguided creators who glutted the American film market with a spate of expensive and financially unrewarding musicals between 1967 and 1972.

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    Long description:

    Full-page newspaper ads announced the date. Reserved seats went on sale at premium prices. Audience members dressed up and arrived early to peruse the program during the overture that preceded the curtain's rise. And when the show began, it was--a rather disappointing film musical.

    In Roadshow!, film historian Matthew Kennedy tells the fascinating story of the downfall of the big-screen musical in the late 1960s. It is a tale of revolutionary cultural change, business transformation, and artistic missteps, all of which led to the obsolescence of the roadshow, a marketing extravaganza designed to make a movie opening in a regional city seem like a Broadway premier. Ironically, the Hollywood musical suffered from unexpected success. Facing doom after its bygone heyday, it suddenly broke box-office records with three rapid-fire successes in 1964 and 1965: Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music. Studios rushed to catch the wave, but everything went wrong. Kennedy takes readers inside the making of such movies as Hello, Dolly! and Man of La Mancha, showing how corporate management imposed financial pressures that led to poor artistic decisions-for example, the casting of established stars regardless of vocal or dancing talent (such as Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon). And Kennedy explores the impact of profound social, political, and cultural change. The traditional-sounding Camelot and Doctor Dolittle were released in the same year as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, representing a vast gulf in taste. The artifice of musicals seemed outdated to baby boomers who grew up with the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, race riots, and the Vietnam War.

    From Julie Andrews to Barbra Streisand, from Fred Astaire to Rock Hudson, Roadshow! offers a brilliant, gripping history of film musicals and their changing place in our culture.

    Road-Show The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s by Matthew Kennedy is not just a great entertaining book, it's not just a book for all lovers of the genre, but it's so funny, plenty of anecdotes, intriguing facts that you won't never put down this book until its end, trust me.

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    Table of Contents:

    Acknowledgements
    Overture
    Chapter 1 - The Musical That Ate Hollywood
    Chapter 2 - "I, Too, Can Sing"
    Chapter 3 - The Animal Kingdom
    Chapter 4 - Movie Stars
    Chapter 5 - Smoke and Gold
    Chapter 6 - Over-Egg the Pudding
    Chapter 7 - Do Little
    Chapter 8 - Casting About
    Chapter 9 - Buying and Selling
    Chapter 10 - "Impossible to Control the Cost of This Gown"
    Chapter 11 - Battle of the Girls
    Chapter 12 - Delayed Adolescence
    Chapter 13 - The Paramount Bloodsuckers
    Chapter 14 - Goodbye, MGM
    Chapter 15 - Numbers
    Chapter 16 - "Magnificent Apathy"
    Chapter 17 - Acts of Faith
    Chapter 18 - The Impossible Dream
    Exit Music
    Appendix A
    Appendix B
    References
    Bibliography
    Index

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