From Stage to Screen with Brian Rose

The Broadway Musical Goes to Hollywood

For nearly a century, Hollywood has been captivated by the allure of the Broadway musical. From the beginning of talkies up through today, most of the Great White Way’s biggest hits have made the transfer to the movie theater, though sometimes the journey has yielded damaged goods.

For every triumph like My Fair Lady or Cabaret there have been misbegotten flops like Camelot or A Chorus Line. This talk will look at the colorful history of the Broadway-to-movie musical, and trace its development from truncated adaptations, in which most of the songs were abandoned, to glorious reinterpretations like Milos Forman’s Hair or Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story from 2021.

In the series:
Sept. 4: Rock & Roll and Hollywood from Bill Haley to the Beatles
Sept. 11: From Stage to Screen: The Broadway Musical Goes to Hollywood