a trend in musicals
In 1950, 3.8 million households in America had TVs, roughly 9% of homes. By 1952 that number was up to 15.3 million, roughly 34% of households. Fully one third of homes had a television, so film had clear competition. This is just one context in which Singin' in the Rain was released. Like in the film, musicals had emerged almost as soon as talkies had. Feuer (1995) explains: "during the talkie boom that followed [ The Jazz Singer ] (1929-1930), a large percentage of the early musicals took for their subjects the world of entertainment: Broadway, vaudeville, the Ziegfield Follies, burlesque, night clubs, the circus, Tin Pan Alley, and, to a lesser extent, mass entertainment media in the form of radio or Hollywood itself" (p. 441). This is another context in which Singin' in the Rain --or better yet, The Dancing Cavalier --was released. Musicals tended to look at the world of entertainment. Feuer continues: "By the late forties and into the early fifties, a ser...