This is the first part of my recent conversation with Geoffrey Block whose latest book is titled:

A Fine Romance — Adapting Broadway To Hollywood In the Studio System Era.

This fascinating new book explores the sometimes successful, but often very rocky relationship between Broadway musicals and the movie studios that brought them to the big screen. He does this by taking an in-depth look at 12 musicals and their film adaptations. These include very famous and familiar ones such as Show Boat, Oklahoma!, West Side Story, and Cabaret as well as several that are much less often discussed (or even seen!), but are no less interesting, such as The Cat And The Fiddle, Cabin In The Sky, and Flower Drum Song.

Along the way he analyses exactly how and why these musicals were changed and revised — sometimes in disappointing and controversial ways, at least for fans of the stage versions. And he even suggests that a few of them were actually improved in the process!

This is my favorite kind of a book — filled with new information and surprising insights, along with some strong opinions as well.

Geoffrey Block is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music History and Humanities at the University of Puget Sound and the author of nine books including Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd-Weber and The Richard Rodgers Reader. He is also the editor of Oxford’s acclaimed Broadway Legacies Series.

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