All singing, all dancing

Poster advertising the film The Broadway Melody, from which the idiom is derived.

All singing, all dancing is an idiom meaning "full of vitality", or, more recently, "full-featured".[1] It originated with advertisements for the 1929 musical film The Broadway Melody, which proclaimed the film to be "All talking all singing all dancing".[1][2][3]

The term actually predates talking films; it was used in 1895 to describe balladry as "primitive poetry."[4]

20th Century usage

In the height of the 20th century, from 1930 to about 1990, the idiom referred principally to entertainment such as films, musical performances, musicals, early video games, mazes, fictional books, and the like.

Musical theatre and films as escapism

So ubiquitous was the phrase used to describe the Broadway musical itself that it became the title of theatrical agent John Springer's 256-page, hardcover opus on the genre, All Talking All Singing All Dancing.[5][6] Film musicals are all about "All Singing! All Dancing! All Broadway!"[7]

Two retrospective films that covered the Classical Hollywood cinema of 1930s to the 1950s, That's Entertainment! and its sequel That's Entertainment, Part II, were described in 1976 as "all singing, all dancing, all celebrating life," with the focus on "the very epitome of ‘escapist entertainment’ shunning real-life problems, social awareness, you name it."[8] Shown in theaters during the 1973–1975 recession, the first installment was marketed with the tag line, "Boy. Do we need it now," which emphasized the psychological need for escapism that watching nothing but singing and dancing affords, instead of worrying about stagflation, the Vietnam War, and other social problems. That was true from 1929, when the phrase came into popular consciousness: the front page of an article promising an early "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing film" covered the horrific carnage of the Cleveland Clinic fire of 1929.[9]

Unemployed men in 1931. The Great Depression profoundly influenced pre-Code Hollywood both financially and artistically.

By 1930, this genre of films and musicals was described as a bad fad, derided as "meaningless melanges of technicolored chorus girls and mechanical oop-a-dooping with such appalling frequency since the 'Broadway Medody' … a protracted orgy of all-singing, all-dancing, all-colored monstrosities."[10] There was a "glutting [of] the market" by 1930, but by then, the phase was used to describe films that were not musicals.[11] In fact, 1930 was the Dawn of the Decade of Escapism: Alan Brinkley, author of Culture and Politics in the Great Depression, presents how escapism became the new trend for dealing with the hardships created by the stock market crash in 1929: magazines, radio and movies, all were aimed to help people mentally escape from the mass poverty and economic downturn. This was a piece with escapist fiction, which metaphorically is dancing and singing set to words; readers turned to escapist fiction as it provided them a mental escape from the bleakness of the economy during that period of time.[12]

Musical theatre for gay men has always been "an escape from the oppressive life into magic" of all dancing and all singing. In Jerry Herman's I Am What I Am the singer (Albin) celebrates the one place where he's safe.[13] Like many queer phrases, the term "all dancing all singing" can be a double entendre – it means that a hotel is LGBT-safe and that it means it features many modern amenities.[14] In the context of Gay pride, "all-singing, all-dancing" parade refers both to a literal musical parade and a metaphorical safe space for queer people to congregate in public without fear of being labeled criminals.[15] Even when a gay bar is not seen as a safe space, due to racism and harassment, paradoxically disco music and "dancing became the byword for resilience."[16]

Plot, characters, and themes

While serious drama, or even comedy, should have plot and characterization, the whole point to an "all dancing, all singing extravaganza" was that such a "revue leaves little room for plot."[17] Even without plot or development, "singing, dancing extravaganza" can still make room for a wholesome theme, such as "doing things for other is what Christmas is all about."[18] In fact, when it first appeared, Godspell was described as an "all-singing, all-dancing retelling of the Gospel according to St. Matthew."[19]

Late 20th and early 21st Century uses

Starting in the mid-1990s, and continuing for the next three decades, the idiom also has come to be used to describe high tech gadgetry such as smartphones, indicating that the product is very advanced, ambitious, or has an abundance of features.[1][20][21]

Extension of meanings

While originally from show business, such as theatre, stage shows, and movies, by extension to technology,[20] the phrase has been recently "most often applied to some computer wizardry that seems to do everything."[22]

For example, from a 1995 article in The Daily Telegraph:[2]

"Satellites as small as a box of cornflakes can be launched at little cost by riding piggyback with larger satellites. A handful of these 'microsatellites' would be used instead of a single all-singing all-dancing 'platform' bristling with instruments."

The phrase also appears in the 1996 novel Fight Club, and the 1999 film based on it, in which the character Tyler Durden excoriates his disciples: "You're the all singing, all dancing crap of the world."[23][24]

A 1998 episode of The Simpsons was titled "All Singing, All Dancing".[25]

By 1999, the phrase was called "hackneyed" and "clichéd", and even extended by meaning to many machines, such as cars,[26] in 2007, "Used jokingly to describe any piece of equipment or technology that is the latest model," but for neurodivergent readers, not to be taken literally,[27] and by 2010 to "an advanced computer or other gadget."[28]

Continued musical use

Meanwhile, the idiom has continued to mean mindless musical merriment on Broadway, such as Tommy Tune's White tie and tales show, "All singing, all dancing Big Band show” of 2002, which was consciously produced with temporarily erasing the 9/11 terrorist attacks from the minds of the audience.[29] This was extended to Off-off-Broadway and marijuana legalization, when La MaMa produced a musical described as "All Singing! All Dancing! All Legal! Cannabis!"[30] The connections between "all-singing, all-dancing" and gay relationships is now explicit on Glee.[31]

Bollywood has become the 21st century headquarters of all-singing, all dancing, which The Guardian, in reviewing a typical "turkey", wrote that they are:

fantastically awful. It's a product of a Bollywood machine that assumes that Indians have a subnormal intelligence and will watch anything. About 80% of all films made here are complete flops. The industry churns out a dizzying number of films, hoping that one will become the blockbuster that makes up for the rest.

— Bollywood nights: An all-singing, all-dancing, counter terrorism turkey[32]
Theatrical release poster for Alam Ara

This really is an almost century of tradition, since Mumbai-based cinema industry has been from the very beginning in 1931 a center of musical dance number movies: the lost film, Alam Ara, directed by Ardeshir Irani, "was advertised as ‘All talking, all singing, all dancing’."[33] A documentary has explored extensively this history of Indian all-dancing and all-singing film-making.[34]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Yao, David (2004). "English Proverbs: A Journey Through Timeless Wisdom". Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  2. ^ a b Martin, Gary. "All singing, all dancing". The Phrase Finder. Retrieved 2009-09-12.
  3. ^ MacDonald, Laurence E. (1998). The Invisible Art of Film Music: A Comprehensive History. Scarecrow Press. pp. 19–20. ISBN 9781461673040. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  4. ^ Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature. Vol. 4–5. Harvard University. 1895. p. 49. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  5. ^ Springer, John (1966). All Talking All Singing All Dancing. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  6. ^ Lewis, Dan (December 25, 1972). "Kelly Back in Movies". Deseret News. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  7. ^ "Theater News All Singing! All Dancing! All Broadway!: An appreciation of the ten best Hollywood film versions of Broadway musicals". Theatre Mania. August 7, 2002. Retrieved November 30, 2024.
  8. ^ "That's Entertainment, that's Cannes". Montreal Gazette. June 5, 1976. p. 39. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  9. ^ "Fox Follies will be seen in Detroit". May 15, 1929. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  10. ^ Shereood, Robert E. (March 30, 1930). "The Moving Picture Album: All Singing, All-Dancing". St. Joseph Gazette. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  11. ^ Bradley, Edwin M. (2004). The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 through 1932. McFarland. p. xx. ISBN 9780786420292. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  12. ^ Cappello, M. (2017). "How We Escape It: An Essay, in JSTOR Daily". Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  13. ^ Summers, Claude J. (2004). The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance, & Musical Theater. Cleis Press. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-57344-198-8.
  14. ^ Vincent, David (March 15, 2012). "Gay and lesbian travel: The Out NYC - New York's new all singing, all dancing gay hotel: There are other gay-friendly hotels in New York, but The Out NYC is the city's first 'straight-friendly resort', with an onsite restaurant and megaclub set to provide a much needed boost to the city's once hedonistic gay nightlife". The Guardian. Retrieved November 30, 2024.
  15. ^ "Pride London returns for another all-singing, all-dancing extravanganza (sic.)". TNT Magazine. 30 June 2011. Retrieved November 30, 2024.
  16. ^ Jeromiah Taylor, Taylor (2023). "Never Stop Dancing: On Dance and Queer Sensibility". Chicago Review of Books.
  17. ^ Wirt, John (April 3, 1992). "Super revue leaves little room for plot: It's full of feathers, sequins, music, dancing". The News-Ledger. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  18. ^ "Every parent knows that children's fascination for dinosaurs seems almost inexhaustible (advertisement for Barney)". The Robesonian. December 6, 1996. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  19. ^ Langken, Dane (May 18, 1973). "Godspell: Musical Gospel". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  20. ^ a b O'Dell, Felicity; McCarthy, Michael (2010). English Idioms in Use: Advanced with Answers. Cambridge University Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-521-74429-4. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  21. ^ Ayto, John (2020). Oxford Dictionary of Idioms. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780192584380. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  22. ^ Quinion, Michael (2009). Why is Q Always Followed by U?: Word-Perfect Answers to the Most-Asked Questions About Language. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780141959696. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  23. ^ Thomas E. Wartenberg, ed. (2013). Fight Club. Routledge. p. 147. ISBN 9781136665639. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  24. ^ Greene, Darragh; Price, Graham (2020). Film Directors and Emotion: An Affective Turn in Contemporary American Cinema. McFarlabd, Inc. ISBN 9781476640082. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  25. ^ Halfyard, Janet K. (2017). Music, Sound, and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. p. 240. ISBN 9781351557023. Retrieved November 29, 2024. The author called this episode "flaunted fakery".
  26. ^ Kirkpatrick, Betty; McLaren Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth (1999). Cliches: Over 1500 Phrases Explored and Explained. St Martin. p. 5. ISBN 9780312198442. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  27. ^ Stuart-Hamilton, Ian (2007). An Asperger Dictionary of Everyday Expressions. p. 16. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  28. ^ Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. Oxford University Press. 2010. p. 12. ISBN 9780199547937. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  29. ^ Kennedy, Mark (December 27, 2002). "Tune thinks it's S'wonderful to be back in New York". Associated Press. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  30. ^ Dale, Michael (July 24, 2022). "Sunday Morning Michael Dale: All Singing! All Dancing! All Legal! Cannabis! A Viper Vaudeville Opens at La MaMa". Broadway World. Retrieved November 30, 2024. Cannabis sativa is the scientific name.
  31. ^ Sherwin, Adam (November 10, 2011). "Get ready to singalong-a teenage sex education". Retrieved November 30, 2024. Things are getting serious for the all-singing, all-dancing school kids in Glee. A controversial episode featuring a straight and a gay couple each losing their virginity has been praised for its mature attitude towards adolescent sexuality.
  32. ^ Dhaliwal, Nirpal (August 6, 2008). "Bollywood nights: An all-singing, all-dancing, counter terrorism turkey: This week our man in Mumbai watches a movie that mixes love, dance, fabulous hair and issues of homeland security". The Guardian. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  33. ^ "10 great Bollywood musicals: Our 10-film tasting menu of some of the most spectacular musicals to come out of India". British Film Institute. November 7, 2019. Retrieved November 29, 2024.
  34. ^ "Shalom Bollywood (Documentary Screening)". The Kingston Library. Retrieved November 29, 2024. A celebration of the all-singing, all-dancing history of Indian cinema, SHALOM BOLLYWOOD reveals the unlikely story of the 2000 year old Indian Jewish community and its formative place in shaping the world's largest film industry.
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