Competing With Motion Pictures
The motion picture mounted a challenge to the stage. At first, films were silent and presented only limited competition. By the end of the 1920s, films like The Jazz Singer were presented with synchronized sound, and critics wondered if the cinema would replace live theatre altogether. The musicals of the Roaring Twenties, borrowing from vaudeville, music hall and other light entertainments, tended to ignore plot in favor of emphasizing star actors and actresses, big dance routines, and popular songs. Florenz Ziegfeld produced annual spectacular song-and-dance revues on Broadway featuring extravagant sets and elaborate costumes, but there was little to tie the various numbers together. Typical of the 1920s were lighthearted productions like Sally; Lady Be Good; Sunny; No, No, Nanette; Harlem; Oh, Kay!; and Funny Face. Their books may have been forgettable, but they produced enduring standards from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, and Rodgers and Hart, among others, and Noël Coward, Sigmund Romberg and Rudolf Friml continued in the vein of Victor Herbert. Clearly, the live theatre survived the invention of cinema.
Read more about this topic: Broadway Theatres
Famous quotes containing the words competing, motion and/or pictures:
“The first wrote, Wine is the strongest. The second wrote, The king is strongest. The third wrote, Women are strongest: but above all things Truth beareth away the victory.”
—Apocrypha. 1 Esdras, 3:10-12.
Referring to “three young men” of the bodyguard of Darius, king of the Persians, competing for his favor.
“There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“With pictures full, of wax and of wool,
Their livers I stick with needles quick;
There lacks but the blood to make up the flood.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)