A veritable audiovisual smorgasbord of roughly 100 years of American popular music--from 1848 (the year in which Stephen Foster, who would later die a penniless alcoholic, sold "Oh! Susanna" for $100) to 1954 (when George Cukor's remake of A Star Is Born revived the flagging career of Judy Garland)--The Great American Songbook, hosted by Michael Feinstein, offers more breadth than depth in its near-three-hour running time, but fans of the That's Entertainment series will love this sweeping overview with its near-full-length clips. Minstrel shows, spirituals, ragtime, blues, jazz, big band, Broadway, and Hollywood are all covered in this DVD-only release that effectively captures the melting pot quality of American popular music, featuring works by Fats Waller ("Ain't Misbehavin'"), George M. Cohan ("Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Over There"), Jerome Kern ("Ol' Man River"), Cole Porter ("Anything Goes"), George Gershwin ("They Can't Take That Away From Me"), Irving Berlin ("Puttin' On the Ritz"), Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart (Pal Joey) and Rogers and his later partner, Oscar Hammerstein (South Pacific), among many others, performed by the likes of Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, the Marx Brothers, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Cary Grant. While it's easy to quibble with definitions, omissions, and emphases (the documentary briefly mentions rock 'n' roll though clearly doesn't consider it within the scope of American popular music, chronologically stops before it reaches Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, and devotes the most coverage to the Tin Pan Alley composers), this is an amazing compilation that will have viewers singing along with the stars. DVD extras include audio commentary by Feinstein, as well as the 11-minute Romance of Celluloid featurette "We Must Have Music." Highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)
The Great American Songbook
(2003) 175 min. DVD: $24.98. Warner Home Video (avail. from most distributors). Color cover. Closed captioned. ISBN: 0-7907-7621-9. Volume 18, Issue 4
The Great American Songbook
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