ABSTRACT
The dance musical is one of Hollywood's most enduring genres. Wedding familiar faces and predictable plots with the latest technology, the magic of Hollywood musicals has captured the public's imagination with fantasies that appear more real than life. Enormously popular, dance films proved to be a reliable box office formula until the late 1950s. Filmmakers were also uncertain about how to utilize rock in a musical; rock music was difficult to adapt to film narrative. In the late 1950s Stigwood left Australia, at the age of twenty-three, and arrived in England with virtually no money. The Broadway show ran strongly on its advance sales for about eight months before business began to fade in the spring of 1972. Tommy was greeted with critical praise and was considered by many a landmark in rock music. The story, entitled "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", concerned New York's disco subculture. Grease is revisionist history in popular film.
