Page "Musical film" Paragraph 4

Musical short films were made by Lee De Forest in 1923-24.

After this, thousands of Vitaphone shorts ( 1926 – 30 ) were made, many featuring bands, vocalists and dancers, in which a musical soundtrack played while the actors portrayed their characters just as they did in silent films: without dialogue.

The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was not only the first film with synchronized dialogue, but the first feature film that was also a musical, featuring Al Jolson singing " Dirty Hands, Dirty Face ;" " Toot, Toot, Tootsie ", " Blue Skies " and " My Mammy ".

Historian Scott Eyman wrote, " As the film ended and applause grew with the houselights, Sam Goldwyn's wife Frances looked around at the celebrities in the crowd.

She saw ' terror in all their faces ', she said, as if they knew that ' the game they had been playing for years was finally over.

Still, only Jolson's sequences had sound ; most of the film was silent.

In 1928, Warner Brothers followed this up with another Jolson part-talkie, The Singing Fool, which was a blockbuster hit.

Theatres scrambled to install the new sound equipment and to hire Broadway composers to write musicals for the screen.

The first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, included a musical sequence in a night club.

The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than a year all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively.

The Broadway Melody ( 1929 ) had a show-biz plot about two sisters competing for a charming song and dance man.

Advertised by MGM as the first " All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing " feature film, it was a hit and won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1929.

There was a rush by the studios to hire talent from the stage to star in lavishly filmed versions of Broadway hits.

The Love Parade ( Paramount 1929 ) starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton.