Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 126

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Popular Culture Review

Yet, these racially-motivated, violent actions are suggested, stylized, choreographed
and done to music— indeed undermining the utopian mythology of both the musical
and the American dream. Taboo sex, violence, profanity, juvenile delinquency was
permitted because of the prestige gained from the Broadway stage adapting
“realism” as a pre-sold commodity to navigate around censorship constraints. In
the banner period that was “Camelot,” West Side Story swept ten Academy Awards
and grossed $19.5 million in North American rentals—it was the biggest film of
1961 (Finler, 277).

Epilogue: The Legacy of West Side Story & “Camelot”
In retrospect, West Side Story's film production surprisingly captures the spirit
of both the rise and the fall of “Camelot” in early 1960’s America. As West Side
Story was adapted to the screen in October 1960, Mailer and others campaigned to
glamorize Kennedy prior to his national Presidential election in November; the
film was released just months after Kennedy’s inauguration in early 1961. While
the stark thematics and unhappy ending of West Side Story became a model for
future dark/serious musicals on the Broadway stage, the film version’s critical
accolades and profitable reception did not generate a dark musical film cycle later
in the 1960s. Why? Bob Fosse (a protege of West Side's Robbins) would resume
this trend of dark musicals in the 1970s. But what happened in the 1960s? West
Side Story was a dark blockbuster musical in 1961. Hollywood seemed to pick up
the “blockbuster” and drop the “dark” in later musicals of the decade. Did the
serious social climate following Kennedy’s assassination and violence later in the
1960s (deaths, protests, Vietnam war) encourage a nostalgic trend to more escapist
fantasy musicals and discourage consideration of darker subjects more suited to
this early Camelot period? Did the musical films take a while to catch up with
social and culture events? Was it because Sondheim, Laurents, Robbins and
Bernstein stayed on Broadway, while Wise made other Hollywood projects? Or,
had darker topics on the New York stage been whitewashed onscreen by postwar
HU AC blacklisting of hard-hitting creative talent in a sanitized film industry? (Brian
Neve provides an insightful discussion of film noir in relation to Leftist writers in
Hollywood and FIUAC’s purging of radical—often noir—talent in Film and Politics

in America.)
Perhaps industrial considerations intervened. Hollywood’s big-budget
blockbuster phenomenon may have significantly deterred consideration of dark
musicals because of their questionable potential to guarantee hefty profits in line
with the industry’s push toward inflated musical budgets during this 1960’s period.
Notably, Fosse’s 1970’s dark musicals Cabaret (1972) and All That Jazz (1979)