The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck

The Gentleman Preferred Blondes

Bernard F. Dick

• Editore: University Press of Mississippi
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781496838643
• Argomento: Media & Performing Arts
• Categoria: Film History & Criticism

Beginning with The Jazz Singer (1927) and 42nd Street (1933), legendary Hollywood film producer Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–1979) revolutionized the movie musical, cementing its place in American popular culture. Zanuck, who got his start writing stories and scripts in the silent film era, worked his way to becoming a top production executive at Warner Bros. in the later 1920s and early 1930s. Leaving that studio in 1933, he and industry executive Joseph Schenck formed Twentieth Century Pictures, an independent Hollywood motion picture production company. In 1935, Zanuck merged his Twentieth Century Pictures with the ailing Fox Film Corporation, resulting in the combined Twentieth Century-Fox, which instantly became a new major Hollywood film entity. The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes is the first book devoted to the musicals that Zanuck produced at these three studios. The volume spotlights how he placed his personal imprint on the genre and how—especially at Twentieth Century-Fox—he nurtured and showcased several blonde female stars who headlined the studio's musicals—including Shirley Temple, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Vivian Blaine, June Haver, Marilyn Monroe, and Sheree North. Building upon Bernard F. Dick's previous work in That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical, this volume illustrates the richness of the American movie musical, tracing how these song-and-dance films fit within the career of Darryl F. Zanuck and within the timeline of Hollywood history.

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• THE GOLDEN AGE MUSICALS OF DARRYL F. ZANUCK
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Writer from Wahoo
• Chapter 2: The Writer in Hollywood
• Chapter 3: The Sound (Literally) of Music
• Chapter 4: The Musical Recession
• Chapter 5: “Naughty, Bawdy, Gawdy, Sporty Forty-Second Street”
• Chapter 6: On the Twentieth Century
• Chapter 7: The Hyphenated Studio: Twentieth Century-Fox
• Chapter 8: The Last Days of Fox Film
• Chapter 9: Zanuck’s First Blonde
• Chapter 10: The Long Goodbye
• Chapter 11: The Zanuck Musical as Woman’s Film
• Chapter 12: The Musicalized Film: Shirley Temple, Sonja Henie, and Centennial Summer
• Chapter 13: Replacement Blonde
• Chapter 14: Zanuck’s Broadway
• Chapter 15: The Lady with the Million Dollar Legs
• Chapter 16: The Pocket Grable
• Chapter 17: The Cherry Blonde
• Chapter 18: Pin Down Girl
• Chapter 19: “I Hated Marilyn Monroe!”
• Chapter 20: The Blonde Exception
• Chapter 21: Four from Rodgers and Hammerstein: State Fair, Carousel, The King and I, and The Sound of Music
• Chapter 22: Richard Zanuck’s Follies: Doctor Dolittle, Star!, and Hello, Dolly!
• Chapter 23: Fade-Out
• Notes
• Filmography
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR