Let's make a song and dance about it... Audiences had been lapping up musicals long before the movies arrived, but when the talkies finally happened in 1927, the show could go on (-screen). The bounce from silents to sound was a rough ride for some stars. And the fabulous Singin' In The Rain ' perhaps Hollywood's greatest ever musical ' tells just this story in a superb send-up of Tinseltown, as the energised Gene Kelly (who also stars in the Oscar-winning An American In Paris) dazzles on the boards while producers find his famous singing partner has a voice that could shatter reinforced glass.
A darker peek behind the curtain came in the shape of A Star Is Born by musical maestro Vincente Minnelli (Liza's dad), who also wowed with toe-tappers Gigi and Brigadoon. But the real star of early musicals was choreographer Busby Berkeley, who in classics like 42nd Street transformed simple song'n'dance numbers into fantastic cinematic extravaganzas: kaleidascopic lensing, visual effects, rhythmic editing and swooping, swirling camerawork that zoomed in from above on lines of chorus girls. Berkley's flamboyance was matched by the grace of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who made movie magic every time their toes twinkled.
Judy Garland became perhaps the brightest child starlet, scoring hits like Meet Me In St Louis and following the yellow brick road to screen immortality in the wondrous, inventive and ' let's be honest ' frickin' scary musical fantasy The Wizard Of Oz. As the decades past, broadway blockbusters like my Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and My Fair Lady fed audiences' appetite for all singin', all dancing entertainment. And the camp thrills and fizzing energy of modern musical like Fame proved this is a genre that is destined to ' all together now ' "live foreeever"...