ABSTRACT
The huge success in 2013 of Disney’s Frozen (Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee), and especially the popularity of the hit song ‘Let It Go’, has seen a renewed interest in cinema singing, with special sing-along CD and DVD releases, sing-along screenings, and Frozen sing-along theme park presentations. The importance of illustrated songs in nickelodeons and the involvement of audiences in singing along with them has been highlighted by a number of writers, including Richard Abel and Rick Altman. A number of writers have already examined particular examples of cinema singing in the late 1920s that will be addressed in the conclusion, yet there was substantial activity throughout the intervening decade that will be examined. In Britain, a single figure (Gibson Young) and a single newspaper (the Daily Express) were able to rapidly establish a coherent cultural movement between 1925 and 1926, based in London but with reach into the provinces.
