Stars, studios, and the musical theatre screen adaptation : an Oxford handbook of musical theatre screen adaptations, volume 3 / edited by Dominic Broomfield-McHugh

"From Show Boat (1936) to The Sound of Music (1965) and from Grease (1978) to Chicago (2002), many of the most beloved film musicals in Hollywood history originated as Broadway shows. And in the three years since the original publication of the chapters in this volume (as The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations, 2019) the phenomenon has persisted, with new adaptations such as Cats, In the Heights, Tick, Tick...Boom!, Dear Evan Hansen, and Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. Yet in general, the number of screen adaptations of Broadway musicals and operettas is far greater than the number that have met with success, especially both critical and commercial success (i.e., good reviews and a profit at the box office). This is all the more surprising since Hollywood tended almost (if not quite) exclusively to buy the rights to musicals that had been successful on the stage as a means of guaranteeing a profitable outcome. After all, musicals that had already enjoyed long runs and nationwide productions on the stage ought to have a readymade audience. One might also think that because the authors had puzzled over the individual challenges posed by such properties in their stage incarnations, it ought to be easier to turn them into strong film musicals. But for every West Side Story there were several Finian's Rainbows, Man of La Manchas, and Carousels: movies that simply did not do justice to the 'enchanted evenings' these works provided in their stage incarnations"-- Provided by publisher Hollywood's conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical, following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the heightened experience of song and dance drew attention to the novelty of the technological development. Until the near-collapse of the genre in the 1960s, the film musical enjoyed around thirty years of development, as landmarks such as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Singin' in the Rain, and Gigi showed the exciting possibilities of putting musicals on the silver screen. The final of three volumes, Stars, Studios, and the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation: An Oxford Handbook traces how stardom and technology has affected the evolution of the genre of the stage-to-screen musical. Many chapters examine specific screen adaptations in depth, with case studies on the screen versions of Broadway favorites Carousel and Brigadoon, while others deal with broad issues such as how music rights affected how studios approached screen adaptations. Together, the chapters incite lively debates about the process of adapting Broadway for the big screen and provide models for future studies. Volume I: The Politics of the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation Volume II: Race, Sexuality, and Gender and the Musical Screen Adaptation Volume III: Stars, Studios, and the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation "The final of three volumes, Stars, Studios, and the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation: An Oxford Handbook traces how stardom and technology has affected the evolution of the genre of the stage-to-screen musical. Many chapters examine specific screen adaptations in depth, with case studies on the screen versions of Broadway favorites Carousel and Brigadoon, while others deal with broad issues such as how music rights affected how studios approached screen adaptations. Together, the chapters incite lively debates about the process of adapting Broadway for the big screen and provide models for future studies"-- Publisher's description