Customer Reviews

The Songs of Hollywood

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I studied movie musicals in college so had a "been there, read that" attitude going in. But I was impressed by the details included regarding the performers and creators of the original movie musical songs. The focus is mainly on the films from the 20's-60's when the creation of movie musicals with original songs was possible due to lyricists and composers being contracted by studios to create this unique art form with one picture after another. The conversion of movies to sound in the late 20's REALLY got the ball rolling. Then by 1930 the public was tired of movies with people breaking into song, the economy made the public more choosey plus the early equipment prevented creative filmmaking. Soon with the use of boom mikes and mobile cameras and prerecorded tracks, the golden age of movie musicals developed until television in the 50's forced studios to use gimmicks like wide screen Cinemescope, 3D, and stereophonic sound to compete. Studios also were compelled to adapt Broadway shows that were already familiar to audiences in advance as a way to create the movie musical. The authors of this book seem to be more impressed with the integrated musical than the performance musical. But when the integrated musical is adapted from Broadway, it no longer ranks as an original creation and just gets perfunctory mentions. To the authors' credit, the focus of this book is on the songs created for Hollywood but I enjoy well made movie adaptations of Broadway shows so feel they deserve inclusion along with the films with original material.

I do have issues with their descriptions of two particular films. There are two instances in which the description of the song's use is at least misleading and at worse false. "Be a Clown" in The Pirate in 1948 is performed TWICE, both with Gene Kelly and Nicholas Brothers as well as the finale with Gene and Judy Garland. But according to this book, Judy missed so many shooting days the planned duet for her and Gene had to be cut! Well, she DID miss a lotta days and much of the film had to be rewritten and reshot but the movie ends with Judy and Gene singing "Be a Clown." Producer Arthur Freed was no fool! The other example is the description of a song used during the titles of a movie. I am impressed with the author's inclusion of Hollywood songs in different manners ranging from title songs to peformance, but I was confused with the description of "The Way We Were" He says the song was not presented on screen and implies it only appears during the closing credits and is not able to make a connection to the film or relate to the story. But this ignores the important presence of the song early in the film, performed by Barbra Streisand in the background while we see her character Katie's "memories" of college and a young Robert Redford. The song clearly makes the "connection" that he says was missing. So clearly with these two movies the author missed the end of The Pirate and tuned in to The Way We Were after the first ten minutes!

Still in spite of these two egregious errors, this is a fine book with a wonderfully detailed account of Hollywood's original movie musicals. More textbook than coffee table book in tone with an insightful look at how the magic happened.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book and will be coming back to visit its pages many times in the future. It is a marvelous history of the remarkable talents that came together to make the American musical film a unique and wonderful experience. Who hasn't had their spirits lifted by a song from a Hollywood musical?

Furia is a noted scholar of American popular song. Precisely what Laurie Patterson brings to the party is unknown.

Essentially this is a history of the Hollywood musical and particularly the people who wrote those wonderful songs, made sure they got into the movies (producers and directors), gave them a framework (directors) and character (actors). There is no question of Furia's knowledge, including backstage lore, which in turn makes this an interesting book.

It is, unfortunately, not a particularly well-written book. Furia writes like an academic. His style lacks verve and is somewhat stiff. The feeling that you are reading a textbook is never far away.

But the book is readable and, with all its information, enjoyable for anyone who likes Hollywood musicals.

A surprising omission is that the book lacks a fimography, that is a list of all the movies mentioned, dates of production, stars, songwriters and so on. Anyone who doesn't want to watch some, most or all of these films again after reading this book is probably dead and, thus, a filmography would be helpful. There is a song index.

The design of the book is, charitably stated, a total disaster.

The cover of the copy I read has a picture of Gene Kelly and Debby Reynolds on the cover. It is an iconic shot from "Singing In The Rain". But instead of the raincoats being bright yellow, they are an ugly, vile, repulsive shade of orange/brown or perhaps umber. The skin tones are rendered as a sunburn red. The effect is just plain awful. It is possible that this is a printing error, but it looks more like just plain bad design. The Amazon cover shot has the same coloration.

The book has a couple of hundred illustrations, frames from the films. All of them are in black and white and all are about the size of a 35mm photo frame. Another piece of extremely dubious graphic design.

Overall, despite the ugly design and the somewhat stilted writing style, I enjoyed the book because of its subject matter and Furia's encyclopedic knowledge of the Hollywood musical and its songs.

Jerry

The trouble with film reference books is that once you uncover a glaring inaccuracy, the rest of the volume is cast into doubt. I speak of a section devoted to the 1973 musical version of "Lost Horizon". How is it possible for the authors to have seen the film and not even know who sang what song and in context the song was sung? Sally Kellerman's dancing-on-a-rock solo number "Reflections" is mistaken for one of the two Liv Ullman/Peter Finch duets, and Bobby Van's schoolroom cute-fest song "Question Me An Answer" is attributed to Peter Finch and mistaken for "If I Could Go Back." Granted , "Lost Horizon" is not a memorable film, but its easy enough to ignore (people have been doing it for decades). If you go to the trouble to reference it in a book (devoted to songs), aren't you supposed to at least get the songs right? Trust me, the error here is not the kind of geek trivia minutiae you can shrug off. These are major facts that they get completely wrong...almost like they were guessing by reading the album liner notes. The book feels somewhat valueless to me now as I am left wondering what other films, less familiar to me, are equally as inaccurately written about. The credibility of the authors is called into question. And don't get me started on the obvious money-saving, teensy-weensy, poor quality illustrations!

The book is well researched and contains a wealth of chatty, back-stage information (a whole chapter on the Astaire-Rogers musicals at RKO, and right on the mark analysis of Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in "Thanks For The Memory."), but the tiny photo reproductions really do disappoint.

The whole issue of layout and photos really matters when they are handled so badly. Why include about 200 photos--when they mimic the tiny size of a 35mm film frame (not clever), and with poor resolution to boot? Frustrating. Makes you want to look elsewhere for the pictures. This also makes the layout a little too cluttered. In regard to content, the authors neglect the 1930's Jolson films at Warner Brothers, such as "The Singing Kid" (with extended lyrics by Yip Harburg for "I Love To Singa" that are hysterical). They also score a zero for ignoring the early Sinatra musical films, while treading too much of the same old ground with Judy Garland at MGM. It would also help if the technical issues around the conversion to sound and 1930's recording techniques, were handled with more authority.

This is the kind of book that one buys for the permanent library, so I'd have to rate it a missed opportunity. Hope this book is reissued with better layout, more on the forgotten musicals, and a judicious selection of larger photos with crisp resolution. I'll wait for that edition.

Just received this book and was astonished over the tiny postage-size illustrations. I have never seen anything like this before. In looking over the book it seems very informative and the authors seem to have done their job, but whose idea was it to illustrate with stamp like pictures? The publisher? the authors? If there was not enough room they could have used quarter page stills sparingly or as the prior reviewer said no illustrations at all. Makes the whole layout of the book ridiculous. I have given this book three stars since I have just browsed through the book and it looks like it is going to be an interesting read, but the book deserves 1 star for the sloppy layout.

I've just received this book, and have only begun to read it, so will reserve judgment and comment on the written portion until a later time. With haste, however, I felt it necessary to warn prospective buyers about a severe shortcoming in this book. The inner leaf of the dust jacket states that this book is "Extremely well illustrated with 200 film stills...", and many film collectors and fans enjoy seeing photos from the various productions (film, after all, was a visual experience!), but the illustrations in this book are sized in a ridiculous manner.

The stills are all reproduced at about the size of a postage stamp, literally! In the majority of these tiny reproductions it is barely possible to determine who is appearing in the still. In leafing through, a stark example is a still of what appears to be a long shot of the Berkeley production number "Lullaby Of Broadway" from GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935. The only reason I know what it is is that I'm thoroughly familiar with the film... otherwise the people in the still appear to be tiny specks. Again, to note that this book is extremely well illustrated must be a joke. It would have been better to leave them out alltogether. I reserve judgment on the written portions, which might be very well done, but I was so taken aback by the ridiculous size of the photos that I couldn't help but warn others about this significant negative.