Once sound came to Hollywood, movie producers faced a dilemma: how to bring popular Broadway musicals to the big screen, without sacrificing realism. To have actors suddenly bursting into song on screen, at first, just seemed unbelievable.
In part three of our series The Great American Songbook, WHQR’s Rachel Lewis Hilburn and Phil Furia explore how Hollywood film-making evolved from silent movies to musical extravaganzas.