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Betty Comden and Adolph Green realized that after On the Town their newfound success as writers required that they attempt devising a second musical. In short order they penned Billion Dollar Baby, with a score by Morton Gould, which opened on Broadway almost one year to the day after their first tuner debuted. The show, though well received, didn’t have the lasting impact of Town, but it did help them secure a gig at MGM, where they were hired to write a screenplay for a new movie version of the Broadway musical Good News. It was the beginning of a bi-coastal existence for them that would last 15 years.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green received a summons in May 1949 to California from MGM producer Arthur Freed about a movie he needed them to start writing immediately. The project, which would become Singin’ in the Rain, would contain a host of the songs he had written with Nacio Herb Brown. They balked at the assignment, believing their contract did not require them to pen movies that used songs by other writers (except for a handful, such as Richard Rodgers or Cole Porter). Their agreement with the studio contained no such clause, and so they developed the now iconic scenario about the transition from silent movies to talkies and early movie musicals. After they finished this assignment they returned to New York to write sketches and lyrics for the revue Two on the Aisle, which starred Bert Lahr and Dolores Gray.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green found themselves in 1952 developing for MGM’s Arthur Freed a screenplay using pre-existing songs by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz. The result was the movie The Band Wagon, which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse and was directed by Vincente Minnelli. Not long after they finished writing this they got an urgent call from Broadway director George Abbott. He was working on a new musical, and the show’s star, Rosalind Russell, did not like the songs that had been penned for it. He wondered if they might be willing to write a new score for the show with Leonard Bernstein. They agreed and in four weeks turned out all of the necessary material for the hit musical Wonderful Town.

In 1949 Betty Comden and Adolph Green discovered that MGM finally wanted to move forward with a screen version of On the Town. Before it could go in front of cameras, though, there were obstacles to overcome, particularly the fact that the studio only wanted to use a few of the original songs that they had written with their friend Leonard Bernstein. Eventually all parties were able to negotiate terms, and Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, making their debuts as co-directors and co-choreographers, were able to start work on the project, which starred, in addition to Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Ann Miller, Vera-Ellen, and Betty Garrett. After they completed work on this screenplay, they attempted to pen a book for the Cole Porter musical Out of This World.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green finally got around to writing the screenplay for a movie that would use a host of Cole Porter’s songs. Called Wonderland and focusing on two hapless screenwriters who are attempting to write a movie that brings together a bevy of unrelated songs, the project became the first that the writers had penned for the studio that went unproduced. It didn’t matter, because they had a new stage musical to work on. They wrote it for their old friend Judy Holliday, and Bells Are Ringing, with music by Jule Styne, became one of their biggest hits. Just after this they and Styne contributed songs for the comedy Say, Darling.

This chapter focuses on some of the earliest Hollywood musicals. It details the stories and people behind films such as The Jazz Singer (1927), The Singing Fool (1928), The Broadway Melody (1929), The Dance of Life (1929), King of Jazz (1930), and Viennese Nights (1930). It highlights two trends paramount in the movie musical's first few years. One trend favors “performance” numbers. The other trend held the Harms group of Broadway's style setters in suspicion. They were experimental to a fault—and experience had taught Hollywood that experiments tend to fail. Another group of songwriters, the composers and lyricists of Tin Pan Alley, were much more agreeable. Their works had mass appeal, from the jaded first audience in the cultural capitals to the third audience in small towns, suspicious of any attempt to change their lives by artistic means.

This chapter presents an excerpt from Alec Wilder's 1972 book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators focusing on his review of the movie musical A Damsel in Distress. Wilder suggests that the most popular tune in this musical was A Foggy Dance composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by his brother Ira. He notes Gershwin's use of repeated notes in this song and argues that it was one of the best-known lyrics by Ira.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green, after finishing work on the screenplay for Good News, began work on their third Broadway musical. It became Bonanza Bound, and the tuner, a comedy set in the 1890s in Alaska, closed during its tryout engagement in Philadelphia. Though critics were chilly toward this show, there were warm notices for the film. It prompted MGM to offer them work on two more movies, and Comden and Green returned to Hollywood to work on the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers picture The Barkleys of Broadway and Take Me Out to the Ball Game, which starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra.

After a false start on one project for MGM (which did ultimately resurface for them a few years later), Comden and Green discovered that Gene Kelly loved an idea they had had for a follow-up to the stage musical On the Town, and that scenario (about three guys reuniting ten years after their service together in World War II) became the basis for their newest film. With music by André Previn, the movie, It’s Always Fair Weather, starred Kelly, along with Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd. Before they completed work on the screenplay a call from Jerome Robbins had them at work on their next stage project; they contributed additional songs to the new version of Peter Pan he was staging. It was the classic that starred Mary Martin.

This chapter analyzes some of the more recent Hollywood musicals, including Grease (1978), Hair (1979), Annie (1982), Fantasticks (1995) The Phantom of the Opera (2004), Les Misérables (2012), and Into the Woods (2014). It then addresses the following questions: How well did the Harms group colonize Hollywood to exploit the unique advantage of the camera? Did any of the Broadway songwriters in this study create a movie career as distinguished as their stage career? And has a Hollywood version of a stage show ever improved on the original? It argues that not a single one of the Broadway songwriters conquered Hollywood in any real sense, because movies are not a writer's medium the way theatre is. The American musical—at least from something like 1925 on—was written for New York, with the strong possibility of a post-Broadway tour to first- and second-audience towns.

This chapter focuses on the musicals of songwriting teams Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Loewe. Rodgers and Hammerstein's influence on Broadway was immense. Their format of “musical play” was all the rage at one point, and even daffy musical comedy became rationalized. Some shows seemed to be their work in all but name; Loewe and Lerner's Brigadoon (1947) was the main one, with its powerful sense of community, its long first act and short second, its Agnes de Mille choreography, and its thematic richness—all elements of Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. The remainder of the chapter details the stories behind the making of Rodgers and Hammerstein's State Fair (1945), Oklahoma! (1955), Carousel (1956), The King and I (1956), South Pacific (1958), The Sound of Music (1965); and Lerner and Loewe's Brigadoon (1947), Gigi (1958), and My Fair Lady (1964).

This chapter examines the lyrics and musical structure of the three ballads that Porter wrote in the fall of 1939 for the movie musical Broadway Melody of 1940. It underscores Porter's attention to detail not only in his intricate texts and musical designs but also in his consideration of plot, story, and dramatic impulse. Even in the filmic medium, where Porter had a great deal less control over the final product than in his more native Broadway context, his work reveals an interconnectedness that allows for a deeper understanding of the film. Although the film's plot hardly represents high drama, the musical questions set up by the opening two ballads, “Between You and Me” and “I've Got My Eyes on You,” are answered in a beautiful and quite serious manner by “I Concentrate on You,” a Porter masterwork of the highest order.

This chapter examines Broadway's obsession with revivals, which began in the 1970s. Some were at least relatively faithful to the original work while others were heavily rewritten, in a form termed the “revisal.” Yet all revivals essentially admit that worthy new work has become so hard to find—or hard to sell to the public—that, to keep theatres open, old standbys must be refitted, one way or another. Most of the classics, at least, remained unscathed, such as Gypsy, Porgy and Bess, Fiddler on the Roof, and The King and I. But perhaps the worst aspect of Broadway's attempt to revive bygone art amid a shortage of new work was the staging of movie musicals.

This chapter focuses on the Hollywood musicals of Jerome Kern. From about 1915 to his death in 1945, Kern was the Harms Group's artistic leader. For youngsters like Gershwin and Rodgers, Kern was also the great begetter: of melody, yes, but also of extended musical scenes; of tiny orchestral bits between vocal phrases to soothe or excite a tune; and an extensive use of the major seventh interval in the vocal line, unheard of at the time in popular music. Hollywood's first sound adaptation of a Kern was Sally (1929). His other movie credits include Fox's Music in the Air (1934), MGM's The Cat and the Fiddle (1934), Warner Bros.' Sweet Adeline (1935), and RKO's Roberta (1935).

This chapter focuses on Hollywood's treatment of Broadway musicals. Hollywood initially purchased stage properties with the express intention of altering them in various ways. Then, suddenly, it launched a cycle of stage shows filmed with respect—Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Call Me Madam (1953), Kiss Me, Kate (1953), and Guys and Dolls (1955). As Hollywood pursued this semi-purist approach, it developed a set of Commandments for adaptations from the stage, adhered to more often than not: I: Thou shalt cast by talent rather than by fame, if practical with the original Broadway star. II: Thou shalt retain the original narrative structure and all or most of the score, without interpolations. III: Thou mayest interpolate, but thou shalt let the original creators make the new numbers.

This chapter focuses on the Hollywood musicals of composer and lyricist Irving Berlin. When Berlin began his association with Hollywood, he was not just a writer of (countless) song hits but a maker of musicals. And he took an active interest in every aspect of production, from the concept to the casting. The chapter considers films such as Warner Brothers' Mammy (1930) and United Artists' Puttin' On the Ritz (1930). In Mammy Berlin created a generic Al Jolson number, “Let Me Sing and I'm Happy.” Puttin' On the Ritz gave Berlin more of a showcase, though he contributed only three numbers and had to contend with egocentric star, Harry Richman. Berlin also wrote three Astaire-Rogers films: Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), and Carefree (1938).

This chapter focuses on the Hollywood musicals of Cole Porter. Porter's homosexuality made him perfect for sexy, crazy musical comedy. A composer-lyricist, he wrote with the clear-eyed perspective of the outsider who learned to imitate the “normal” folk in order to survive, giving him comprehension of their ways that they themselves could not understand. Porter came from a wealthy Midwestern family with access to the fabled elite. He lived a post-Yale youth largely in Europe. He also had some classical training, was ambitious and artistic, and wanted popular success above all. The chapter considers films such as Anything Goes (1936), Born To Dance (1936), Broadway Melody (1940), Something To Shout About (1943), and High Society (1956).