The Hollywood Musical, A Four-Part Class & Movie Experience: The Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Description

This early “backstage musical” features Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler and the astounding staging and camera work of Busby Berkeley, who reinvented the movie musical in the 1930s with 6 major films for Warner Brothers.

Part history class, part film festival, Town Hall Theater’s Director in Residence Doug Anderson takes you through the glorious history of the Hollywood musical. Each session will begin with Doug lecturing about the studios, the directors and the stars who defined each era, followed by one of the key films of those years, shown the way they were meant to be seen, on the big screen in the THT Rothrock Mainstage.

The 4-session Fall course will explore the early years, when Hollywood searched for ways to transfer the success of Broadway musicals into film, only to realize that film – and especially the moving camera – opened up entirely new possibilities for the musical. This course will be followed by a spring series focused on Broadway in film.