Mcdonnell-Dissertation-2015
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DISCLAIMER: This document does not meet current format guidelines Graduate School at the The University of Texas at Austin. of the It has been published for informational use only. Copyright by Cari Elizabeth McDonnell 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Cari Elizabeth McDonnell Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Genre in Context: Toward a Reexamination of the Film Musical in Classical Hollywood Committee: David Neumeyer, Supervisor Byron Almén James Buhler Charles Carson Thomas Schatz Genre in Context: Toward a Reexamination of the Film Musical in Classical Hollywood by Cari Elizabeth McDonnell, B. Music Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2015 Dedication To my grandmother, Eula Mae King Acknowledgements This project would never have seen completion without the love and support of my family, especially my husband, who is by far the kindest and most unselfish man I know. Thank you to my parents for “standing at the fence” all these years. I am indebted also to my supervisor, David Neumeyer, for his wisdom and patient guidance throughout last three years. I thank the members of my committee for offering their time and insight so generously, especially Jim Buhler and Tom Schatz, who provided significant direction when I was in the early stages of this project. The archival research I rely on so heavily in this study would have been much more difficult to accomplish without the assistance of the welcoming staff at the Margaret Herrick Library and the Autry National, and I am grateful to my dear friend Misty Crouch for opening her home to me during my research trips to Los Angeles. Finally, I am thankful for the faculty and students in the music theory department at the University of Texas. Their cooperative spirit and collegial support both eased the difficulty of and inspired me to persevere through the challenges of doctoral study. Genre in Context: Toward a Reexamination of the Film Musical in Classical Hollywood Cari Elizabeth McDonnell, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: David Neumeyer Though no single history of the Hollywood musical exists as such, a historical narrative nevertheless emerges from the extensive body of scholarly work on the genre. Most studies of the American film musical have used as texts a limited canon of films. Though these studies have illuminated many stylistic and critical constructs at work in the film musical, they have also presented an incomplete picture of the historical development of the musical in classical Hollywood. We need to contextualize our critical understanding of the American film musical by broadening the scope of films we study and by investigating the cultural and industrial circumstances in which these films were produced. The purpose of this study, then, is twofold: I offer a historical context in which to conduct critical examinations of the Hollywood film musical, and I provide examples of how this historical understanding can inform further investigations of the genre. By far the most attention in the literature is given to MGM musicals, particularly those produced by the Freed unit in the 1940s and 1950s, with RKO’s Astaire-Rogers films in the 1930s trailing not far behind. Yet almost every other Hollywood studio, whether major, minor, or independent, made cycles of musicals during the studio era. Paramount Pictures, through its Bing Crosby and Bob Hope Road films, provides a significant contrast to the MGM Freed unit among the large studios in the prosperous 1940s, while Walt Disney Productions, through its animated musicals in the 1950s, offers a rare example among independent studios during the dismantling of the studio system. !vi Taken together, these two case studies present a cross-section of production and reception practices through the height of the classical Hollywood era and into the immediate post- classical period. I will use these two prominent cycles of film musicals to examine the dynamic relationship that existed between the industrial and cultural conditions of the entertainment industry and the film musical's aesthetic style and content. This study will work alongside the existing literature to create a more complete and historically grounded understanding of the American film musical in the classical Hollywood era. !vii Table of Contents List of Tables………………………………………………………………………..……ix List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………….x List of Examples………………………………………………………………………..xiii Chapter 1: Genre and the Classical Hollywood Film Musical A Problematic Narrative…………………………………………………………..1 Defining Genre: Theory and History……………………………………………..5 Defining the Film Musical as a Genre: (1) Differing Views…………………….10 Defining the Film Musical as a Genre: (2) Privileging Integration……………..14 Decentering the Integrated Musical……………………………………………..18 Expanding the Canon: Singing Cowboy Films………………………………….23 Looking Ahead…………………………………………………………………..35 Chapter 2: The Vaudeville Aesthetic, Star Performance, and Reflexivity in Paramount’s Road Films Introduction: “Well, here we are, off on another Road!”………………….……..41 Vaudeville Roots: “I feel like I’m back in vaudeville”……………………….….43 Star Performance: “We run the gamut! We sing, we dance, we recite and then— you do your specialty”……..………………………………………………….…58 Reflexivity: “You mean they missed my song?”…………………………….…..75 Chapter 3: Romantic Coupling and Representation in Paramount’s Road Films Introduction: “They could’ve thought of another way to get us here”…….…….93 Gender and Romantic Coupling: “What’s the matter, gal? Want another chorus?”……………………………………………………………….…………94 Nationalism and Exoticism: “I’m just an average, all-around, all-American boy with an excess of charm”..…………………………………………….….…….109 Camp Readings of the Road Films: “I don’t care where I’m going just as long as I’m with you”..……………………………………………………….…………127 Chapter 4: Media Conglomeration and Disney’s Animated Features in the 1950s Introduction………………………………………………………………….….140 Disney Tunes and the Cinderella Year………………………………………….144 Alice and Peter in TV Land…………………………………………………….148 Lady and the Beauty of Cross-Promotion………………………………………161 Chapter 5: Musical Performance in Disney’s Animated Features in the 1950s Introduction……………………………………………………………………..172 So This Is Not a Love Duet……………………………………………………..175 You Can Fly, But You Can’t Sing………………………………………………184 The Thingamabob That Does the Job Is the Offscreen Chorus…………….…..190 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….…….199 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………209 !viii List of Tables Table 2.1: The musical performance numbers in the Road films and the act types to which they belong. The list is chronological for each film. For more on the terms in the “Act” column, see the discussion below. Table 2.2: Instances of Dialect Acts in the Road films. Note that all but one of these acts (“The Great Zambini” in Utopia) involve Crosby and Hope interacting with a foreign milieu. Table 4.1: Song timings in Alice in Wonderland. Song fragments shorter than seven segments are not included because of their multitude and because they are all reprises of longer performances. Songs that are interspersed with dialogue are marked with an asterisk (*). Table 5.1: Songs performed by title characters in Disney’s 1950s animated features. Table 5.2: Songs performed by supporting characters in Disney’s 1950s animated features. Table 5.3: Songs performed by the offscreen chorus in Disney’s 1950s animated features. Table 5.4: Number of musical performances in Disney's 1950s animated features by type of performer. Songs are included in the tally when a performer or group of performers participate in a substantial portion of the song, such as Lady and the Tramp’s “Bella Notte,” which is split equally between supporting characters and the offscreen chorus. Main and end titles are excluded from this chart. !ix List of Figures Figure 1.1 a—c: The Old Corral (1936), ending: fade from close-up of phonograph to Gene Autry singing. Figure 1.2 a—c: Down Mexico Way (1941), Gene Autry sings for a picnic gathering. Figure 1.3 a—c: Judy Garland sings in windows (a) and door frames (b) in the family home in Meet Me in St. Louis, while Gene Autry avoids such framing positions in a saloon in The Old Corral (c). Figure 1.4 a—b: Down Mexico Way, mingling of past and present in horse and car. Figure 2.1 a—b: (a) Hope as Fearless Frazier in Road to Zanzibar (1941); (b) Hope as Barton the Magnificent in Road to Rio (1947). In both films Hope sports a fitted, white, long-sleeved shirt and tights with embellished collar piece, wrist cuffs, and shiny striped trunks. Figure 2.3 a—c: Road to Morocco (1942), “Moonlight Becomes You” parody. (a) As decoration, Lamour ‘certainly knows the right thing to wear’; (b) Crosby and Hope clown around with switched voices while Lamour plays the straight man; (c) Lamour is the disappearing romantic prize the two men vie for. (As (b) suggests, throughout this scene, Lamour has trouble refraining from laughing.) Figure 2.4 a—b: For Me and My Gal (1942), title song, (a) Kelly and Garland sing in harmony, (b) Kelly mugs and Garland cringes after he tells a bad joke in the patter section. Figure 2.5 a—h: Two-man song-and-patter acts (from top left): (a) “Captain Custard” from Singapore; (b) sidewalk comedy act and cut “Birds of Feather” number from Zanzibar; (c) “(We’re Off on