Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s

For those who can't belt out "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" or "Some Enchanted Evening" on cue or pick out Oklahoma! and Camelot on a musical theater atlas to save their lives, the musical roadshow was a Hollywood marketing machine juggernaut that treated engagements at local movie theaters like Broadway productions, complete with reserved seating, programs, orchestral overtures, and intermissions. Film historian Kennedy (Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes; Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory), in an erudite yet fetchingly entertaining style, traces the demise of ostentatious budget-busting Hollywood musicals, beginning with the mid-Sixties zenith of the phenomenally successful The Sound of Music and following the inexorable disappointments of, among others, Dr. Dolittle, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Camelot, Man of La Mancha, and—wait for it—Paint Your Wagon. Kennedy juxtaposes the over-the-top theatricality and artifice inherent in these productions with the tumultuous societal and artistically discordant developments in the late Sixties.