Over the past forty-plus years British film director Tony Palmer has established himself as one of the country's foremost directors of documentary and factual based films. One of Tony Palmer's first successes was the film All My Loving, which was released in 1968. Some seven years later Tony had the idea, encouraged by John Lennon, to document the history of popular music. The result was the groundbreaking and award-winning series of films made for television under the title All You Need Is Love.
The full series of films was released in 2008 to great critical and commercial acclaim.
This is a story of how a remarkable and very different number of theatrical elements were welded together into something also remarkable and very different called 'the musical.' From operetta, vaudeville, variety, burlesque, revue and most importantly, British music hall came the musical. But it did not come about by accident. It was the deliberate and conscious achievement of lyricist Oscar Hammerstein (who wrote, among others, Showboat and Oklahoma) and the director Rouben Mamoulian. Against considerable opposition, both critical and commercial, they created a new art form that was unique and yet familiar.
This episode includes interviews and performances from some of the genres main movers including Bob Fosse, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rogers, Oscar Hammerstein Jr., Glynis Johns and Lionel Bart.
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