A01=Adrian Wright
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Author_Adrian Wright
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Beat Girl
British Cinema
British Stage Musicals
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=APFG
Category=ATFG
Category=AVGM
Category=AVLM
Category=HB
Category=HD
Category=N
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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eq_music
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Errol Flynn
Gilbert and Sullivan
Jayne Mansfield
Judy Garland
King's Rhapsody
Language_English
Oh! What a Lovely War
Oliver!
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
Rock You Sinners
Second World War
softlaunch
The Golden Disc
The Tommy Steele Story
Vera-Ellen
Product details
- ISBN 9781783277490
- Weight: 940g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 14 Mar 2023
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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A comprehensive reassessment of British musical films 1946-1972 including King's Rhapsody, Beat Girl, The Tommy Steele Story, Rock You Sinners, The Golden Disc, and Oliver!
Acting as a sequel to Adrian Wright's Cheer Up! British Musical Films, 1929-1945 (Boydell, 2020), Melody in the Dark offers the first major reassessment of the British musical film from the end of Second World War up to the beginning of the 1970s. In the immediate post-war world, British studios sought to reflect fast-changing social attitudes as they struggled to create inventive diversions in an effort to rival American competition. Hollywood stars Errol Flynn, Vera-Ellen, Jayne Mansfield and Judy Garland were among those brought in to provide Hollywood glamour.
Embedded in the British consciousness, the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan were represented in three productions. Studios occasionally attempted adaptations of British stage musicals, among them King's Rhapsody and Expresso Bongo, and sexploitation movies turned musical via Secrets of a Windmill Girl and Beat Girl. It was left to minor studios to acknowledge the impact of rock'n'roll on social change in three early films, The Tommy Steele Story, Rock You Sinners and the iconic The Golden Disc. Through the sixties, British cinema seemed intent on flooding the market with entertainments promoting pop singers and rock groups such as Cliff Richard, Billy Fury and The Beatles. Towards the end of the period, it aspired to more grandiose projects such as Oliver! and Oh! What a Lovely War.
ADRIAN WRIGHT is a performer, novelist and writer. His previous books with Boydell include A Tanner's Worth of Tune: Rediscovering the Post-War British Musical (2010), West End Broadway: The Golden Age of the American Musical in London (2012) and Must Close Saturday: The Decline and Fall of the British Musical Flop (2017). He has previously written on the subject of film music in his biography of William Alwyn, The Innumerable Dance (2008), and his fiction includes the Francis and Gordon Jones Mysteries series: The Voice of Doom, The Coming Day and Forget Me Not.
