Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance

John Kobal

*Jacket Description*: Movies learned to sing and dance even before they learned to talk. For years before the arrival of sound, Joan Crawford and other flappers had been dancing the Charleston on the silent screen. Then musical soundtracks were adopted, providing the first 'sounds' of sound films. Later still, and some say by accident, came the talkies. It is said that Al Jolson, while doing the song recording for The Jazz Singer, cried out in a burst of enthusiasm 'You ain't heard nothing yet, folks! Listen to this!' And talking pictures were born. Purists will limit the film musical genre to the half dozen or so that finally fulfilled the highest criteria of cinematic art. But John Kobal is no purist. He is interested in all the torch songs by femmes fatales, the high kicks and shuffles of the chorus cuties, the extravagant set-pieces which relied more on spectacle than on...

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