ABSTRACT
This chapter examines those of Hawks’s films in which music is marked as “music,” rather than as a diegetic communication tool. In A Song Is Born and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes the musical numbers engender a direct dialogue with the audience as the songs leave the screen. Ball of Fire, to Have and Have Not, and The Big Sleep feature diegetic performances of songs set off from the films’ primary narrative thrust. These parenthetical songs bring the audience into dialogue, asking them to engage with music as such as they imagine themselves becoming part of the engaging communities they see on screen.
