The Hollywood Musical

London: Secker & Warburg. Very Good/Very Good. 1971. First Edition. Hard Cover. Sm 4to Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Black cloth covered boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. No ownership inscription. Numerous Colour & b/w Illustrations / Photographs. 279 pages clean and tight. The Hollywood musical sprang into existence with the coming of sound, and blossomed almost immediately with the wittily sophisticated romantic operettas of Lubitsch and Mamoulian. Styles changed, from the brash chorus lines of Forty-Second Street and the baby charms of Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler to the all-singing, all-dancing On the Town, by way of vehicles adapted to the distinctive talents of stars like Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Gene Kelly or Doris Day. But the musical continued, and today, with expensive and large-scale entertainments such as Funny Girl, it still exerts its magic. John Russell Taylor, film critic of The Times, writes vividly and freely about his lifelong passion : for Astaire and Rogers, Busby Berkeley, the MGM musicals of the 1940s, the composers, the choreographers, the designers, the directors, the singers and the dancers. His text makes up the first half of this lavishly illustrated book. The second half, compiled by Arthur Jackson, popular music and film critic of Hi-Fi News and Record Review, consists of an encyclopedic reference guide to the Hollywood musical. 1,443 musicals are listed, and detailed filmographies are given for 275 of the best known. An index of songs lists 2,750 items with the films in which they appeared, and an extensive biographical index provides comprehensive information about more than 1,100 individuals whose talents have contributed to the genre. .