Music and Sound in Film

Back to Film index page

Abel, Richard, and Rick Altman.  The Sounds of Early Cinema.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Altman, Rick.  Silent Film Sound. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Bandy, Mary Lea, ed.  The Dawn of Sound.  New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989.

Barrios, Richard.  A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Cameron, Evan William, ed.  Sound and the Cinema: The Coming of Sound to American Film.  Pleasantville, NY: Redgrave, 1980.

Eyman, Scott.  The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Faulkner, Robert R.  Hollywood Studio Musicians: Their Work and Careers in the Recording Industry.  Chicago: Aldine and Atherton, 1971.

Gabbard, Krin. Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Gomery, Douglas.  The Coming of Sound to American Cinema: A History of the Transformation of an Industry.  Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975.

Lastra, James.  Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Meckna, Michael. “Louis Armstrong in the Movies, 1931–1969.”  Popular Music and Society 29 (July 2006): 359–73.

Smith, Jeff.  The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Snelson, Tim. “They’ll Be Dancing in the Aisles: Youth Audiences, Cinema Exhibition, and the Mid-1930s Swing Boom.”  Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 37:3 (2017): 455-474.

Spring, Katherine. “”To Sustain Illusion is All That is Necessary”: The Authenticity of Song Performance in Early American Sound Cinema.” Film History: An International Journal 23, no. 3 (2011): 285-299.

Spring, Katherine.  Saying It with Songs: Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema.  New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Stanfield, Peter.  Body and Soul: Jazz and Blues in American Film, 1927-63.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Back to Film index page