Fred Astaire and the Integrated Musical

Abstract

A considerable literature has grown in the quest for the ideally integrated musical-a musical where song, dance, and story are artfully blended to produce a combined effect. The two parts of this paper seek to add to this literature.l The first part sets out a series of distinctions, suggesting a method for distinguishing the plot relevance of various sorts of musical numbers. The second focuses on the role of dance in the development of the integrated musical and particularly on the contribution of Fred Astaire to that development. It is concluded that Astaire was probably integrating dance numbers into musicals-both on Broadway and in Hollywood-before anybody else and that the contribution of his dances to the story line was often profound.