About
Matthew Kennedy is a writer, film historian, and anthropologist living in Oakland, California. He is the author of three biographies of classic Hollywood: Marie Dressler: A Biography (McFarland, 1999, paperback 2006), Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory: Hollywood's Genius Bad Boy (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), and Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes (University Press of Mississippi, 2007), and the genre study Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2014). His latest book is On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide (Oxford University Press, 2024). He has contributed to four anthologies: Strategies in Teaching Anthropology (Pearson Prentice Hall, first and fourth editions, 2000 and 2006) and The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance & Musical Theater and of Film and Television (Cleis Press, 2004 and 2005). He is film and book critic for the respected Bright Lights Film Journal, a member of the Writers Group of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and his articles have appeared in The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Performing Arts, San Francisco Chronicle, and the TCM Classic Film Festival program book. Kennedy is a former modern dancer, arts administrator, concert producer, and contracted writer for George Lucas Books, and has taught anthropology and film history at the City College of San Francisco and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has been a guest speaker at a number of venues, including the Museum of Modern Art, Pacific Film Archive, and UCLA Film Archive, and is presently curator and host of the CinemaLit film series at the Mechanics' Institute Library. His book Roadshow! was the basis of a film series on Turner Classic Movies. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship and a San Francisco Cable Car Media/Journalism Award. He holds a BA in theater arts from UCLA and an MA in anthropology from UC Davis, is a member of The Authors Guild, and is represented by Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists.
Featured Work
Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s
What happened to film musicals? In Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, film historian Matthew Kennedy explores the steep decline of a beloved genre in an era fated to reinvent American art and culture. Roadshow! is the story of deeply talented but often misguided men and women who went in search of “the next Sound of Music” and glutted the American film market with a spate of appallingly expensive and financially ruinous musicals between 1967 and 1972: Camelot, Doctor Dolittle, Half a Sixpence, The Happiest Millionaire, Finian's Rainbow, Star!, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Sweet Charity, Paint Your Wagon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Hello, Dolly!, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Darling Lili, Song of Norway, The Great Waltz, and Man of La Mancha. The successes, including Oliver!, Funny Girl, Fiddler on the Roof, and Cabaret, could not mitigate the disaster. “It would be difficult not to come to the conclusion that the American film industry is coming apart,” wrote Vincent Canby in The New York Times by way of noting the musicals’ contribution to the Hollywood recession beginning in 1969. But Roadshow! is not another book making easy mock of movie flops. It rather offers an alternative view of a time too often reduced to love beads and sit-ins. Though routinely overlooked by cultural and film historians, these films matter in the story of America in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Told in swift chronology with interweaving narratives, Roadshow! tells of the studios' death grip on the film business, done in largely by expensive reserve-seat tickets to these ill timed, overproduced après garde musicals.
Other Works:
Marie Dressler: A Biography (1999, McFarland)
Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory: Hollywood's Genius Bad Boy (2004, University of Wisconsin Press)
Joan Blondell: A Life between Takes (2007, The University Press of Mississippi)
On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide (2024, Oxford University Press)
