Pre-Code Hollywood studios spent millions transitioning their medium to sound and other new technologies that brought about major advances in photography, lighting, and set design. But there were still five million unemployed people in the United States and many more just getting by. The studios were losing money, many of them going bankrupt.
By 1930 the breadlines were longer than the ticket lines and people were slow to give up their hard earned money. They wanted to be entertained, they wanted to laugh and forget their troubles for just a while. Comedies, adventure, and musicals quickly became the most popular film genres of the time.
I. Pre-Code Action, Adventure, and Drama
Hollywood took their stories to the far corners of the earth as places like Africa, the South Pacific, and the Far East became exotic settings for movies. An island kingdom somewhere in the Pacific with strange creatures, even stranger natives,...
By 1930 the breadlines were longer than the ticket lines and people were slow to give up their hard earned money. They wanted to be entertained, they wanted to laugh and forget their troubles for just a while. Comedies, adventure, and musicals quickly became the most popular film genres of the time.
I. Pre-Code Action, Adventure, and Drama
Hollywood took their stories to the far corners of the earth as places like Africa, the South Pacific, and the Far East became exotic settings for movies. An island kingdom somewhere in the Pacific with strange creatures, even stranger natives,...
- 1/31/2014
- by Gregory Small
- CinemaNerdz
It's not that I hate songs in movies; My Fair Lady is usually a nose ahead of 2001: A Space Odyssey for the top slot in my all-time favourite films. It's not even that I hate musical interludes in movies per se, as they can provide a fascinating insight into character, or introduce a new character in a spectacular and meaningful way...
But for every musical interlude as memorable as Jessica Rabbit beguiling down-at-heel tec Bob Hoskins with 'Why Don't You Do Right?' in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), there are hundreds, if not thousands, of songs that are cynically slotted into movies to sell records, 'cover all bases' or just generally pause the plot. These are the musical interludes that follow the original 1930s principle of musical interludes: something for everyone.
It's a democratic idea, to be sure, but it's the kind of thinking that means no-one can totally...
But for every musical interlude as memorable as Jessica Rabbit beguiling down-at-heel tec Bob Hoskins with 'Why Don't You Do Right?' in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), there are hundreds, if not thousands, of songs that are cynically slotted into movies to sell records, 'cover all bases' or just generally pause the plot. These are the musical interludes that follow the original 1930s principle of musical interludes: something for everyone.
It's a democratic idea, to be sure, but it's the kind of thinking that means no-one can totally...
- 12/20/2010
- Shadowlocked
Broadway theatres dimmed their lights last night to honor revered stage and screen star Kitty Carlisle Hart, who died on Tuesday after a long battle with pneumonia. The 96-year-old actress, who was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and attended a private school in Switzerland, began her career as an opera star before becoming a Hollywood singer. She made her mark in the movies when she appeared with The Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera. Other films followed, including Here Is My Heart, Murder At The Vanities, Larceny With Music and Woody Allen's Radio Days. But Hart was perhaps best known for her Broadway successes in the mid-1930s. She appeared in operettas like White Horse Inn and Three Waltzes and the American premiere of Benjamin Britton's The Rape of Lucretia. She met writer and director Moss Hart in 1946 and later married him. The couple was married until the songwriter's death in 1961. On TV, Hart became a beloved regular panelist on US game shows To Tell the Truth and What's My Line.
- 4/19/2007
- WENN
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