Hollywood''s conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the heightened experience of song and dance drew attention to the novelty of the technological development. Until the near-collapse of the genre in the 1960s, the film musical enjoyed around thirty years of development, as landmarks such as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Singin'' in the Rain, and Gigi showed the exciting possibilities of putting musicals on the silver screen. The first of three volumes, The Politics of the Musical Theatre Screen Adaptation: An Oxford Handbook traces how the genre of the stage-to-screen musical has evolved, starting with early screen adaptations such as the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie Roberta and working through to Into the Woods (2014). Many chapters examine specific screen adaptations in depth, whil
