Bringing Song and Dance to the Screen: Directors of Golden Age Hollywood Musicals

Film historian Hischak (Broadway Decoded) honors the directors of Golden Age movie musicals with this exhaustive and, at times, exhausting survey. Extending his scope beyond well-known “auteurs” like Vincente Minnelli, director of Meet Me in St. Louis and Gigi, he highlights the work of lesser-known studio stalwarts, including “solid craftsman” Norman Taurog, who made 38 musical films in his career; detail-obsessed directors like Mark Sandrich; and such innovators as Alan Crosland, who “wisely” permitted Al Jolson to “chatter on and on” on the set of 1927’s The Jazz Singer, which became the first film to “demonstrate talking on screen” when scenes originally meant to be silent were presented with sound. The author’s at his most convincing when spotlighting similar technological innovations or underappreciated films, like King Vidor’s 1929 Hallelujah, “a potent drama about African-Americans that sought authenticity and avoided stereotyping” and became the “first all-Black talking feature.” Despite the benefits of the broad scope—which also encompasses less-than-stellar films (not even stars Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire could save the “tired and cliche-ridden” script of Charles Walters’s The Barkleys of Broadway, for example)—the formulaic directors’ biographies, eye-glazing plot synopses, and tendency to overexplain cinematic trends grow wearisome. While the breadth of Hischak’s research is admirable, this is for completists only. (Oct.)