Can't Help Singin': The American Musical on Stage and Screen

Gerald Mast was a fine writer about movies ("Howard Hawks Storyteller" is another gem and "The Comic Mind" is very good too). Here he writes not only about movie musicals but Broadway musicals. He maintains a high level of quality on both fronts.Given the two large subjects he has to cover, Mast wisely focuses on the key figures instead of trying to exhaustively cover everything. (I think he gives about 5 pages to early movie musicals, something that Barrios' "A Song in the Dark" devotes its entire length to.) However, this approach pays off tremendously thanks to Mast's wise insights. He shows how the movie musical in its heyday (42nd St. to Gigi)differed from the Broadway musical. (He is very interesting on why Rogers and Hammerstein musical films don't work, except for Sound of Music.)Also good is that Mast explores the movie musical beyond Gigi. His discussion of "Pennies from Heaven" and "Victor/Victoria" are very perceptive.With musicals supposedly "coming back," this would be a good book to make one acquainted with their historical tradition.

This is THE book to own about the art of American popular song, delivering even more than the title promises--complete descriptions and evaluations of the shows and films, scintillating analyses of the lyrics and musical details of individual songs, intimate biographical information about Kern, Berlin, Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Hammerstein and Sondheim. Incredibly, it's frequently out of print. Buy it anyway, whatever the price. (No, I'm not selling my copy.)