About the Book
Full-page newspaper ads announced the date. Reserved seats went on sale at premium prices. Audience members dressed up and arrived early to peruse the program during the overture that preceded the curtain's rise. And when the show began, it was--a rather disappointing film musical. In Roadshow!, film historian Matthew Kennedy tells the fascinating story of the downfall of the big-screen musical in the late 1960s. It is a tale of revolutionary cultural change, business transformation, and artistic missteps, all of which led to the obsolescence of the roadshow, a marketing extravaganza designed to make a movie opening in a regional city seem like a Broadway premier. Ironically, the Hollywood musical suffered from unexpected success. Facing doom after its bygone heyday, it suddenly broke box-office records with three rapid-fire successes in 1964 and 1965: Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music. Studios rushed to catch the wave, but everything went wrong. Kennedy takes readers inside the making of such movies as Hello, Dolly! and Man of La Mancha, showing how corporate management imposed financial pressures that led to poor artistic decisions-for example, the casting of established stars regardless of vocal or dancing talent (such as Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon). And Kennedy explores the impact of profound social, political, and cultural change. The traditional-sounding Camelot and Doctor Dolittle were released in the same year as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, representing a vast gulf in taste. The artifice of musicals seemed outdated to baby boomers who grew up with the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, race riots, and the Vietnam War.
From Julie Andrews to Barbra Streisand, from Fred Astaire to Rock Hudson, Roadshow! offers a brilliant, gripping history of film musicals and their changing place in our culture.
About the Author :
Matthew Kennedy is a writer, film historian, and anthropologist. His books include three biographies of classic Hollywood figures: Marie Dressler, Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, and Joan Blondell. He lives in San Francisco.
Review :
"Everyone who loves the films of Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, and Gene Kelly wonders what happened to movie musicals after the 1960s. Roadshow! is an extensively researched and engagingly written account of the demise of musical film during those decades of tumultuous cultural upheaval." --Philip Furia, co-author of The Songs of Hollywood
"High of budget and misplaced of ambition, roadshow musicals define an arresting--and quite troubling--moment in the history of film. With meticulous research and a suitably critical eye, Matthew Kennedy details the plunge from feast to famine, from bounty to bankruptcy, from The Sound of Music to Song of Norway." -Richard Barrios, author of A Song in the Dark: The Birth of Musical Film
"Matthew Kennedy has written a colorful, entertaining and well-researched history of the Hollywood musical's greatest moment of crisis. This book helps to fill an important gap in our understanding of the postwar American film industry." --Sheldon Hall, Senior Lecturer in Stage and Screen, Sheffield Hallam University
"Hugely entertaining...the author's research is impeccable, his story fascinating and his writing lively." - Booklist
"In Matthew Kennedy's zesty, detailed investigation...we see one of America's most vital art forms implode so badly that it all but dies out...Yet the book does not read as a funeral. Mr. Kennedy writes with a sense of humor, opening up the bizarre backstage of these events." - Ethan Mordden, The Wall Street Journal
"'What were they thinking' is the subtext of virtually every page in Matthew Kennedy's informative history of the Hollywood roadshow...Kennedy's wincingly detailed chronicle of out-of control spending and egos makes it clear that many of the musicals he focuses on deserved to die, but he doesn't think the roadshow itself deserved to go with them." - Wendy Smith, The Washington Post
"Film historian Kennedy, in an erudite yet fetchingly entertaining style, traces the demise of ostentatious budget-busting Hollywood musicals...Kennedy juxtaposes the over-the-top theatricality and artifice inherent in these productions with the tumultuous societal and artistically discordant developments in the late Sixties EL some of the numerous stories, quotes, and anecdotes he excavates from production records and archives are priceless." -Library Journal
"It's compulsively readable candy for movie buffs...It is with considerable relish, flashes of dry wit, dead-on personal opinion, well-placed ironic asides, and impressively extensive research that Kennedy details the presumed aesthetic qualities and the production histories of all these movies." - John Karr, Bay Area Reporter
"It's a hilarious, gossipy, but ultimately serious look at how the humongously successful musicals of 1964-65 caused Hollywood to lose its mind." - Jim Farber, New York Daily News
"Roadshow! recalls an important but forgotten piece of movie history, and it is also packed with juicy gossip involving the personalities who worked on the mega-musicals...Kennedy mixes exhaustive research with sharp analytical skills for a very tasty read." - Joe Myers, Connecticut Media Group
"Much more than an entertaining foray into the rise and fall of a distinctly American art form, Roadshow! is an insightful and often discerning look at who we once were and how our values, priorities and tastes evolved during the turbulent decade of the 1960s. Indeed, social commentary is infused throughout the book in a way that brings the historical significance of musicals into sharp focus...Roadshow! provides a complete course in the cultural transformation that took place during this revolutionary period in our nation's history." - Aaron W. Hughey, Bowling Green Daily News
"Kennedy engages readers throughout with his charming storytelling." --The Gay and Lesbian Review
