For Hollywood and the rest of the world, Musicals were a new phenomenon. The sound era did not arrive until thirty years after the first movies were made.  The first musical ushered in the sound era with the Jazz Singer in 1927 starring Al Jolson. It is thought that his first words addressed to his mother launched the sound era.  Submit your Musicals reviews.

Several Studios, much to their embarrassment ignored the sound assuming that it was just fluke and a passing fad.

The first movie choreographer/ director who understood the value of the new invention was Busby Berkeley.  Before Busby Berkeley, the directors used to think of the cinema in the same terms as theatre where the stage is fixed and the action happens on that small physical area. 

Busby Berkeley was one of the first people to truly understand the potential of the movie camera and how it could move around in four different dimensions.  The fourth dimension being time.  The director can cut and jump through scenes. He created dance sequences with casts of hundreds.  Busby used to direct his dancers standing 70 feet above the stage on a narrow platform with a rope around his waist to stop him from crashing all the way down.  His movies still astound the audiences when shown on television or at art house cinemas. I have seen stage versions of 42 nd Street.  I firmly believe that the original version made in 1933 was the best.  The last 15 minutes of this film show you the mastery of Busby Berkeley.  Please watch it if you get a chance. Busby choreographed many other musicals such as The Footlight Parade, Zigfeld Girls, Two Tickets to Broadway, Million Dollar Mermaid and his real final work Rose Marie in 1954.

Then there appeared a market for singing cowboys such as Gene Autry and later Roy Rogers. These movies had no plots. Just the story of a cowboy who comes to a troubled town and sings his way into solving a conspiracy, exposes the bad guys and moves on with a girl.  Utter C class you would say and yet very popular with rural America of the thirties, forties and fifties.   I find it amusing that they are still showing this stuff on satellite and cable.

Then there appeared a market for singing cowboys such as Gene Autry and later Roy Rogers. These movies had no plots. Just the story of a cowboy who comes to a troubled town and sings his way into solving a conspiracy, exposes the bad guys and moves on with a girl.  Utter C class you would say and yet very popular with rural America of the thirties, forties and fifties.   I find it amusing that they are still showing this stuff on satellite and cable.

Musicals have gone through several periods of ups and downs since Busby Berkeley's time.

In the thirties there were boring musicals with long slow songs with the likes of Jeanette McDonald and Eddie Nelson.  Long on singing, far less on dancing and short on plot.  The only real exception was the dancing team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The talent was great even though the plot was non existent in most of these movies.  Even nowadays, when they have these movies on TV, I cringe at having to watch the senseless plot.  But I look forward to the dancing numbers.  That is why Tivo is so wonderful to have.

One of the best musicals made during the Forties was Yankee Doodle Dandee starring James Cagney who won an academy award for his portrayal of the composer George M. Cohan.  It was reported that Cohan who was a sick old man by then but managed to see the movie before he died and was impressed with James Cagney's performance.

In the fifties, things changed.  Color became important and MGM made one of the most unforgettable movies of the era, Singing in the Rain. The movie started real talents such as Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Conner.  The dancing and singing were superb and became standard that other musicals were rated by.  Few musicals managed to equal or surpass this movie.

Another very popular sub-genre of musicals was the swimming musicals with Esther Williams.  These movies which showed women in swimming costumes passed the censors both in the US and also in many third world Moslem countries because they were considered to be sports oriented.  One of the most successful musicals in the fifties was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers which was produced in Cinemascope by MGM.  The movie which is still very popular on television had catchy tunes and many fast paced dance numbers.  Even the story line was engaging.  Disney made many silly musicals with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.   The titles explain the quality, Beach Blanket Bingo, Beach Party and Pajama Party to name just a few.  Connie Francis made her screen debut with Where the Boys Are.    Elvis Presley made several musicals with weak content mostly to showcase his songs, the best one being Viva Las Vegas with the talented Ann-Margaret.   The King and I was produced in 1956.  It was based on Anna and the King of Siam which was made in the 1930's.  It was so successful that Yule Brynner took it to the stage and is now being played across the world with real Asian actors in the title role. 

In the late fifties and into the sixties epic style musicals with stereophonic sounds were introduced.  Such movies as South Pacific and the Sound of Music made a big splash and were very well received by the audiences world wide.  In many countries, the musical numbers were successfully translated into the local language.  Some other successful musicals of the era were The Music Man and My Fair Lady.  My Fair Lady directed by George Cukor in 1964 was based on an old movie Pygmalion (1938) which was based on a play by George Bernard Shaw.  It definitely was an improvement over both with superb acting by Rex Harriosn, Audrey Hepburn and Wilfrid Hyde-White.

Another major movie was West Side Story (1961) based on Romeo and Juliet which starred Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Rita Moreno and George Chakaris.  Barbara Streisand had two wonderful years with The Funny Girl in 1968 which earned her the Oscar and Hello, Dolly! In 1969.

In 1972 Bob Fosse produced Cabaret with Liza Minelli and Joel Grey.  A pleasant movie that won eight Academy Awards. During the late seventies and into the eighties there was a complete break with the past.  Thanks to the British group the Bee Gees, Disco fever took over and several wonderful movies were made such as Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Unlike many forgettable tunes of the yesteryears their music still lives on. 

Chorus Line was directed by the legendary Richard Attenborough in 1985 and starred Mike Douglas.   Almost the entire action takes place on a stage in a theatre.  This kind of throwback to the old theatre presentation can be disastrous to a movie.  However, the director carried it off very successfully and the movie received Academy awards for editing, sound and music. Richie Valens story was masterfully depicted in La Bamba in 1987 starring Lou Diamond Phillips.  Another nice movie in the late Eighties was Dirty Dancing with Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze

There was another fundamental shift in the nineties.   Thanks to MTV and VH1 and other music channels, the musical videos were created and played on TV over and over again.  So, there was little demand for the old musical format.  Some notable and very successful movies of these times were Evita with Madonna and she did deserve the Oscar for her part.  Moulin Rouge in 2001 starred Nicole Kidman.   There was another movie named Moulin Rouge made in 1952 and directed by John Houston with Jose Ferrer and Zsa Zsa Gabor.  The only thing in common between the two was their title.  Chicago made in 2002 was a grand movie in the tradition of great musicals of the past.  The Phantom of the Opera in 2004 was based on the long running Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical.

Cartoon Musicals such as Pocahontas and Aladdin were successfully marketed to the younger audiences.