For nearly a century, Hollywood has been captivated by the allure of the Broadway musical. From the beginning of talkies through today, most of the Great White Way’s biggest hits have made the transfer to the movie theater, though sometimes the journey has yielded damaged goods. For every triumph like My Fair Lady or Cabaret, there have been disappointments like Camelot or A Chorus Line.
Media historian Brian Rose looks at the colorful history of the Broadway-to-movie musical and traces its development from truncated adaptations, in which most of the songs were abandoned, to glorious reinterpretations like Milos Forman’s Hair or Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story in 2021.
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