Search - Hollywood Singing and Dancing: A Musical History - The 1960s on DVD

Too many holes, too much rock n roll.

Les G. Solomon | NSW, Australia | 08/15/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The 1960s were a fascinating time of change for the movie musical, yet this episode of this series doesn't explore them in any depth and proves to be the most disappointing so far, mainly because of what it omits. The 50s and 70s in this series pretty much covers in one way or another (albeit often briefly)every movie musical made in that decade. This version spends so much time on the rock n roll movies that it fails to examine the effect "the Sound of Music" had on movie musicals, when a multitude of huge copy cart musicals came out and flopped, even though some were good and in some cases very good. Some of the musicals this doco fails to examine or even mention include "Star", "Darling Lili", "Song of Norway", "Goodbye Mr Chips"to name a few, some of which have had a new appreciation built for them since their original release, but this doco spends so much time on bad Elvis Presley movies and Beatles movies, it has no time to examine enough the real movie musicals especially of the latter part of the 60s, of course much time is spent on "West Side Story" etc,but there is so much more of the story to tell and they just dont do it. I see they are releasing a whole set on the rock n roll movie musicals, if they had left all the Beatles and Presley stuff to that doco we might have had a more balanced look at true movie musicals of this era."

Memory Lane, the 60s Musicals

Leonap | Sun City Center, Florida USA | 10/11/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Two hours is not enough time to go into depth about any of the musicals that were popular during the 60s but this DVD gives an excellent overview of most of them. Hosted by Shirley Jones, other stars (Shirley MacLaine, George Chakaris, Rita Moreno, Juliet Prowse, etc)give their comments throughout. I love musicals and this era was a time of change, when teenagers spent more money and the Hollywood system of contracting with certain stars was no longer profitable. Some of the movies covered were "Bells Are Ringing, Can Can, West Side Story, Music Man, Flower Drum Song, State Fair, Gypsy, Hard Days Night, My Fair Lady, Sound of Music, Sweet Charity, Funny Girl", and more). It would be impossible to have any history of Musicals in the 60s and not include the Elvis Presley movies and the Beach ones. If you love musicals you will love this series. It will make you hunger to see each of your favorites in their full editions. Nearly all are now available on DVD."