Film it With Music: An Encyclopedic Guide to the American Movie Musical (review)

Film It with Music: An Encyclopedic Guide to the American Movie Musical. By Thomas Hischak. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. [x, 464 p. ISBN 0-313-31538-8. $79.50.]

Upon initial examination of this admittedly handsome volume, one is tempted to ask why—specifically, why do we need another reference book on films or musicals? Music libraries already have several such volumes in their collections, most notably Ken Bloom's lavish three-volume Hollywood Song (New York: Facts on File, 1995), while more generalized reference shelves are groaning under a glut of film reference sources bearing such respected names as Ephraim Katz and Leonard Maltin. Of course, over any paper resource looms the long shadow of the Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com (accessed 22 January 2002), a seemingly bottomless (though nonscholarly) repository of titles, dates, cast lists, and other countless bits of esoterica; it is a tool which cannot be ignored despite its frequent idiosyncracies. So, the mere appearance of a slender volume claiming to be an encyclopedic guide to any aspect of film is more than sufficient to engender skepticism.

In the preface, author Thomas Hischak gamely argues that his book is not really as redundant as it might appear. "What has not been available," he claims, "is a reference work that tries to explain the particular talents of a given artist besides just giving statistics. Film guides abound (though few on musicals), but it is hoped that in describing the 383 film musicals included here we have captured the essence of the picture and given the reader a taste of each movie's merits, rather than simply identifying and rating it" (p. x). Hischak does have a point here; reference books on popular film do have a definite tropism toward the presentation of lists, garnished by the inevitable four- or five-star rating systems. Indeed, the Internet Movie Database itself grew from the obsessive listmaking of a handful of amateur filmographers. Nevertheless, it is slightly misleading to imply, as Hischak does, that his book alone takes the less methodical and objective path; a glance through any of the piquantly written reference works of Leslie Halliwell (the film buff's Nicolas Slonimsky) is enough to refute that assumption.

The work itself is principally an alphabetical list of names (performers, composers, directors, etc.) and titles of films. The name entries typically consist of a few sentences of biographical information, followed by a selected filmography. The lists of film credits, of course, are readily available in any number of other reference sources; it is in the opening sentences of each entry that Hischak excels, as he offers succinct, striking characterizations of the creative and performing styles of a multitude of nearly forgotten performers. We learn that Virginia Weidler "specialized in outgoing brats and lovable preteens" (p. 347); that Ernest Truex typically portrayed "meek and henpecked characters" (p. 331); and that Billy Gilbert's trademark was "comic sneezing."

The entries for films are more substantive—often several times longer than the personal entries—and are quite engagingly written. Hischak offers longer and livelier plot summaries than one finds in the typical film reference book; he highlights notable songs and performances, and occasionally remarks on a film's ignominious box office fate. Hischak also includes some intriguing subject entries (such as Frontier Musicals, Sequels, and Rockumentaries), but few readers are likely to notice or utilize them; they are mentioned almost invisibly in the preface (p. x), and are so few in number that anyone casually browsing through this volume will probably miss them, and conclude that this is simply a names-and-titles resource.

It is Hischak's choice of what films to include—and, more significantly, what to designate as a musical—that is a bit disconcerting. He tells us twice in the preface that he has selected exactly 383 films for full entries, and hints that this is merely a representative list, citing...