Class Act is a work in progress. In fact, it will probably never be completed. There are simply too many actors, too many musicals, too many songs to ever be compiled into a single source of this nature (except perhaps by a commercial undertaking with a large staff). Even as this web site takes its first baby steps onto the world wild web, it is already nearly five years old.

In fact, I have been working on Class Act for nearly 45 years. I am fortunate enough to have been born into the late years of the "Golden Age" of Hollywood. My interest in musicals started with the second re-release of The Wizard of Oz, in 1955. I was six years old. I doubt it was the first musical I ever saw, but it was the first that made me sit up and take note.

When I was very young, I can remember outdoor movies on Saturday nights in the small midwestern town near my grandparents' farm. A man would show up with a movie projector mounted to the top of his car, and show movies on the wall of one of the old buidings downtown. I don't know how this affair was paid for, but I remember enjoying many movies at that outdoor theater.

The pinnacle of the Golden Age may have already passed by 1955, but the era was yet to produce many of its best masterpieces. The movie musical art form was still growing, and it was during this era that the final coat of polish was being applied. While some of the best offerings of earlier years were being re-screened on television in glorious black and white, the big-production blockbusters were being screened for the first time at theaters in Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope, and Stereophonic Sound. Films like Gigi, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Carousel, Camelot, Oliver, Mary Poppins, Fiddler on the Roof, Finian's Rainbow, My Fair Lady and many, many more.

As the movie studio system began to collapse, many of the actors and actresses from the Golden Age found work in television. Some were regulars on television series, some were guest stars on variety shows, and some even had a series of their own. All of the names we now associate with the Golden Age were still household names in 1955.

I saw many of the big production musicals at the theater in the 1950s and 1960s, and I saw many of the "old" stars on television. I remember "The June Allyson Show", "The Red Skelton Show", "The Danny Kaye Show", "The Judy Garland Show", "The Donna Reed Show"... and many, many others. Variety shows were ever popular in those days, and I remember seeing many guest stars reprising their material from the films of yesteryear. Much of television then was nostalgia aimed at my parents' generation, so I was exposed to a vast array of talent that they grew up with.

The best reference source on movie musicals and actors in those days was my parents and my band teachers. If I wanted to know what movies Frank Morgan had been in, I had only to ask. If I wanted an answer to "Who's that?", I had only to ask. When I was in high school (1964-67), I worked at the local Fox theater (the divestiture was not yet complete). I started as an usher, and moved up to assistant projectionist at another theater when I was in college. I was in band all through junior high and high school, and many of our concerts were "soundtracks" from the hit films of the day, like The Music Man, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Cinderella, and many others.

Sadly, the Golden Age of the movie musicals sputtered and died in the late 1960s. Experts will cite different films as the last of the class, and they will offer up a thousand different reasons why movie musicals began to disappear. I won't echo those thoughts here. Suffice it to say, "They don't make 'em like that anymore." And perhaps they never will. The studio system, steeped in the brew of big profits and a fast-growing technology and mixed with a receptive audience thrived and flourished for two generations - much longer than many industries have lasted. The Freed Unit at MGM was a collision of talent the likes of which had never been seen before, and likely will never be seen again.

It is worth mentioning at this point that while moive musicals were at their peak, Walt Disney picked up the art form and began producing animated musical features, which are going strong again today. Disney's animated features always contained music, but a major turning point (at least in my mind) was the best of the genre at the end of an era in 1967: The Jungle Book. This was Disney's first animated feature to truly integrate major musical numbers into the story-line. It was, perhaps, Disney's Wizard of Oz. Though this form of entertainment lie dormant for many years, the Disney Company finally picked up on it again in 1989 with the release of The Little Mermaid, now well on its way to becoming a classic and the first movie musical of the "Second Age of Disney". Since then, Disney has released an incredible series of fabulous animated musicals including Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Lion King, Pocahontas, and many others. And Former Disney employee, the very talented and very tenacious Don Bluth is giving Disney a run for their money with entries like Anastasia and Thumbelina.

Disney found such a receptive audience for their animated musicals that they have even dabbled with live-action movie musicals, including such entries as Sister Act and Cinderella and even a Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast. Through Disney's efforts, wonderful new talents have become popular with millions of fans who cannot share in the Broadway experience. Talents like Liz Callaway, Jodi Benson, Paige O'Hara, and many others. I, for one, applaud the Disney Company for keeping the movie musicals alive!

But, back to Class Act. As the genre of movie musicals was in its final death throes, another technology stepped in to save the day: the video cassette recorder. In 1980, RCA introduced the first VCR priced under $1000, and I finally bought one. Movie musicals began appearing on videotape, slowly at first, but escalating to a frenetic pace in the late '80s. I bought them up as fast as my wallet would allow. Not only did VCRs provide a means of preserving works of an era gone by, but it brought about a kind of rebirth of the Golden Age of Hollywood. And today, we even have an advantage over movie-goers of the Golden Age - we can watch these movies over and over again, any time we want.

From the vantage point of the fan, the Golden Age of the movie musical is here and now. It's nearly as alive and vital today as it was in the 1930s and 1940s. As new "old" musicals continue to become available, I once again finding myself asking "Who's That?" or "What other movies was Carmen Miranda in?" Only now there's no one around to answer those questions. I also discovered a whole new group of entertainers that I don't remember from my childhood. People like Lyn and Lee Wilde, the Blackburn Twins, and Dolores Gray. Wonderfully talented people who may have enjoyed a moment in the sun, but are now all but forgotten after two generations. But their work lives on through the wonder of videotape.

All through the 1980s and beyond, I scoured the bookstores for reference books on movie musicals, actors and music. I found some, but very few were much good for reference. Most were collections of essays, analyses of the genre, nostalgia works, and the like. Good books, but not what I really needed.

So, in the early '90s, I began to compile my own personal reference book. Not a book intended for publication, just a series of notes and lists I could use for my own reference. I drew upon many of the books I'd bought, along with the great movie studio books ("The MGM Story", "When the Lion Roars" and others of their ilk), and wonderful reference sources like Halliwell and Maltin. No film fan should be without Halliwell and Maltin! I have compiled a partial bibliography of my reference books on the Judy Garland Database.

Another important source of information came to my attention in the early '90s - the "fanzines". The heyday of Hollywood induced a boon in the publishing industry in the form of fan magazines. Movie fans were hungry for information about the latest movies and their favorite stars, and magazines like "Photoplay", "Screen Stories", "Modern Movies", "Modern Screen", "Movie Stars Parade" and scores of others produced articles and portraits to satisfy that hunger. Though prices of these magazines have soared from a dime to as much as $150.00, they are still available and provide a vast wealth of information. I've collected a closet full of these magazines!

But, perhaps the single most important resource available today is the films themselves! Though credits were sparse in those days, one can pop in a videotape and learn a lot from the titles and credits, and from just watching the movie. I often take notes while watching a film. Much can be learned about the actors and the music by simply being observant.

A final resource which cannot be overlooked is the Internet. When I first started putting my Judy Garland Database online in late summer 1995, I began meeting people through email. During the ensuing years, I have met fellow fans (older and younger), entertainers, producers and directors, screen play writers, and many others who have been a valuable resource. And during those same years, an abundance of fan sites, film reference sites and other valuable resources have come online.

Class Act is an attempt to share what I have learned with others who enjoy the movie musicals. It is not intended to be an exhaustive source of information (unfortunately, I have to go to work every day to earn money so I can eat!), but I think it is a unique resource. Hyperlinks are a wonderful tool for interconnection of related facts. Class Act allows you to select a movie of interest, read a few facts about it and view a few pictures, then through hyperlinks, you can follow one of the cast members through the other movies he/she made and learn about his/her career (why is it we still don't have a genderless pronoun?!?). You can select a song by title and follow the hyperlink to find out what movies it was performed in and who wrote it. And you can look up an actor and see what he/she looks like. But, perhaps most importantly, I hope the site is just fun to browse around.

A work such as this is a very ambitious undertaking. Class Act was previewed and removed from the web several times before it evolved into what you see here today. In many ways I feel very foolish even attempting such a work. If I could work on it full-time, perhaps it could become at least a limited useful resource. As it is, it will probably never be really useful simply because there is just too much information to compile. But, I find I enjoy following the threads of my interests and uploading them to the web site. And it is my sincere hope that you will find something of interest here and that you enjoy watching it grow.

Liza Minnelli said it all in That's Entertainment! - "Thank God for film!"


- Jim Johnson
July, 1998