Free and Easy?

Sean Griffin is a Professor of Film and Media Arts at Southern Methodist University. He is the author of Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out (1999). He is the editor of Hetero: Queering Representations of Straightness (2009) and What Dreams Were Made of: Movie Stars of the 1940s (2011). He co-edited Queer Cinema, The Film Reader (with Harry M. Benshoff, 2005), and co-authored America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies (Wiley Blackwell , 2009) and Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America (2006).

• Acknowledgments viiIntroduction 11 Overture: Musical Traditions before Cinema 112 You Ain’t Heard Nothin’ Yet: The Sound Revolution 353 Face the Music and Dance: The Depression 674 Singing a Song of Freedom: World War II 975 There’s Beauty Everywhere: MGM and the Freed Unit 1256 Something’s Gotta Give: The Postwar Musical 1477 Bustin’ Out All Over: The Rise of the Musical Blockbuster 1758 In a Minor Key: The B Musical and Beyond 1979 The Sound of Money: Musicals in the 1960s 22510 Whistling in the Dark: A Genre in Crisis 25111 Can’t Stop the Music: Musicals and the New Hollywood 27912 Just Like Scheherezade: Reviving the Musical Film Genre 307Index 335