Through the Screen Door: What Happened to the Broadway Musical When it Went to Hollywood (review)

The Broadway musical, it seems, has long searched to find its image somewhere within the territory between the more highbrow one of the straight play, or "legitimate theatre," and that of popular entertainment such as Hollywood movies and music videos. Numerous stage musicals throughout the past century have evolved into Hollywood musicals, and, especially in recent years, a few movie musicals have found themselves recreated on Broadway. These pieces form the subject of Thomas S. Hischak's book Through the Screen Door: What Happened to the Broadway Musical When It Went to Hollywood, a timely analysis of 176 musicals that have spanned the genres of stage and film.

The book's title suggests potential answers to questions dealing with changes in form and content between genres, the evolving role of the musical as it relates to popular culture, and varying academic and public opinions regarding the legitimacy of the musical as an art form during its transitions from stage to screen and vice versa. Hischak begins to answer some of these questions; however, the book as a whole does not offer significant critical or theoretical analysis of the stage-to-screen phenomenon.

Divided into eleven chapters, Through the Screen Door begins with an introduction in which Hischak establishes his main focus on artistic and entertainment value as the measure of the success of the musicals discussed, stating that his book forms "a highly personal and admittedly opinionated look at what happened to those musicals in terms of artistic achievement and audience satisfaction" (viii). As he discusses the specifics of each one, Hischak provides a short synopsis of the musical, a list of members of the creative team who remained with the piece through the transition between genres, and his evaluation of what elements worked or didn't work as a result. In doing so, he offers a broad and informative summary of the evolution of each musical work, as well as the individual challenges of adapting a musical piece from one genre to the other.

Perhaps the most complex challenge facing creative teams when transitioning between the two genres lies within the musical score. Chapter 1 addresses more than twenty stage musicals by Rogers and Hart, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and Jerome Kern, whose scores were significantly (and unfortunately) cut during the development of the pieces' counterparts on the big screen, thereby manifesting Hollywood's apprehension that musical numbers written for the stage might fall flat on film. Chapter 2 goes on to discuss librettos that were similarly changed—most often, according to Hischak, to accommodate Hollywood's need for a more engaging plot. Chapter 3, titled "Close Copies," describes musicals that made the transition between genres (whether successful or not) with very little manipulation of scores, librettos, or, in some cases, creative teams. This chapter covers musicals such as Damn Yankees and The Pajama Game, which maintained their identities in both genres primarily by carrying over a key creative aspect—in these cases, Bob Fosse's entrancing choreography.

The book then changes its approach slightly in chapter 4 to discuss the role of stage stars versus that of screen stars, including those charismatic aspects that qualify certain performers to carry a star vehicle in one medium as opposed to the other, and how a few stars such as Al Jolson, Julie Andrews, Eddie Cantor, and Barbra Streisand successfully navigated both. Following this, Through the Stage Door discusses a series of musicals that reflect specific styles and sources, including the operetta (by Friml, Romberg, and others); the musical revue (often fashioned after Ziegfeld's Follies and George White's Scandals); the "controversial" musical that addressed topics considered taboo for musicals during certain time periods (Pal Joey, Little Shop of Horrors, and others); and the West End musical that originated in London and made its way from there to the American stage and screen (including the Rocky Horror...