Merging Genres in the 1940s: The Musical and the Dramatic Feature Film

By David Neumeyer

After the introduction of sound to feature films in 1927, it took nearly a decade before music scoring practices settled down.1 One result of this process was that, by the end of the 1930s, scoring a film was strongly codified by genre. Technological limitations of recording and reproduction dictated that most sound films employing music in any significant way before 1932 were musicals‹that is, feature-length films belonging to the romantic comedy genre but highlighting (not merely including) musical performances. Famous early examples are Broadway Melody (1929), Applause (1929), and Forty-Second Street (1932). The reciprocal influence of radio, a commercial medium that was growing rapidly at the same time, meant that some musicals were loosely structured in the form of variety shows (such as RKO Studio�s Broadway Melody series, which ran in yearly installments throughout the 1930s, beginning in 1932).