Preface Taslate o 20th-century and early 21st-century audiences, it might seem though movie musicals have been around forever such is the vast number of iconic works that can still be enjoyed in theaters, on DVDs and other physical forms for in-home viewing, and on the numerous streaming video services. This volume traces the history of movie musicals back to 1927 and the premiere of the film The Jazz Singer. As important as that was, the year 1927 also saw the premiere of Show Boat, the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II show, that was arguably the first important, mature, well-rounded Broadway musical. That crucial year was not, however, the beginning of the story of popular musical theater—a genre of which the movie musical is a part—, so the chapter “Background” discusses the pre-Show Boat era in order to fill out the story. Unlike other volumes in this series that focus on bands, albums, iconic concert events, and songs, the chapter “Must-Hear Music” focuses entirely on 50 important and/or particularly interesting films. Many of these are among the most iconic movie musicals up to the present how- ever, I have included a few that might not have necessarily been the greatest films of their time. These somewhat-left-field examples, though, tell us something important about either the development of the genre or what was going on in the world of the popular culture of the movies’ times. “Must-Hear Music” is arranged alphabetically, in the manner of encyclopedic entries. Because I treat the 50 major entries in the chapter like standalone entries in an encyclopedic work, the reader will find some duplication of information. For example, I include discussion of the importance of Show Boat in “Background,” a detailed discussion of the film versions of
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