Bernard F. Dick 
That Was Entertainment [EPUB ebook] 
The Golden Age of the MGM Musical

That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical traces the development of the MGM musical from
The Broadway Melody (1929) through its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s and its decline in the 1960s, culminating in the notorious 1970 MGM auction when Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from
The Wizard of Oz, Charlton Heston’s chariot from
Ben-Hur, and Fred Astaire’s trousers and dress shirt from
Royal Wedding vanished to the highest bidders.


That Was Entertainment uniquely reconstructs the life of Arthur Freed, whose unit at MGM became the gold standard against which the musicals of other studios were measured. Without Freed, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ann Miller, Betty Garrett, Cyd Charisse, Arlene Dahl, Vera-Ellen, Lucille Bremer, Gloria De Haven, Howard Keel, and June Allyson would never have had the signature films that established them as movie legends.


MGM’s past is its present. No other studio produced such a range of musicals that are still shown today on television and all of which are covered in this volume, from integrated musicals in which song and dance were seamlessly embedded in the plot (
Meet Me in St. Louis and
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) to revues (
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and
Ziegfeld Follies); original musicals (
Singin’ in the Rain,
Easter Parade, and
It’s Always Fair Weather); adaptations of Broadway shows (
Girl Crazy,
On the Town,
Show Boat,
Kiss Me Kate,
Brigadoon,
Kismet, and
Bells Are Ringing); musical versions of novels and plays (
Gigi,
The Pirate, and
Summer Holiday); operettas (the films of Jeanette Mac Donald and Nelson Eddy); mythico-historical biographies of composers (Johann Strauss Jr. in
The Great Waltz and Sigmund Romberg in
Deep in My Heart); and musicals featuring songwriting teams (Rodgers and Hart in
Words and Music and Kalmar and Ruby in
Three Little Words), opera stars (Enrico Caruso in
The Great Caruso and Marjorie Lawrence in
Interrupted Melody), and pop singers (Ruth Etting in
Love Me or Leave Me). Also covered is the water ballet musical–in a class by itself–with Esther Williams starring as MGM’s resident mermaid. This is a book for longtime lovers of the movie musical and those discovering the genre for the first time.

عن المؤلف

Bernard F. Dick is professor of communication and English at Fairleigh Dickinson University and is author of many books, including The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes; That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical; The Screen Is Red: Hollywood, Communism, and the Cold War; The President’s Ladies: Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis; Hollywood Madonna: Loretta Young; Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell; and Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty, all published by University Press of Mississippi.