The Golden Age of the MGM Musical

Available for over a year

Musician and broadcaster Neil Brand charts the rise and fall of the MGM movie musical. He celebrates the golden years of lavish movie musical production from the 1930s to the late 1950s, when MGM "all the stars in heaven" set the gold standard for music and dance excellence under the leadership of Louis B Mayer and the legendary Arthur Freed. Freed's music Unit employed the top musicians of the time - Conrad Salinger, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Kurt Weill - many of whom had fled war-torn Europe and rising anti-Semitism. From the early days of sound, MGM became synonymous with the spectacular, technicolour musical - the first studio to integrate music, plot and dance in film in an intelligent way. Over the years, with huge successes like Meet Me In St Louis, The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain, they became the 'Faberge Egg' of movie production. And these hits often coincided with moments of huge social and political turbulence, offering audiences fantasy and escape from the Great Depression, war and prejudice. With archive and original interviews including Alicia Mayer - grand-niece of Louis B, film music historian Jon Burlingame and conductor John Wilson, Neil Brand explores this extraordinary period in film history. "Beautiful pictures about beautiful people" was Louis B Mayer's mantra, "A nation's dreams set to music". Producer: Maggie Ayre, BBC Audio Bristol