Why a book about Summer Stock? That’s the question we received, often with a quizzical look, from many people—directors, actors, musicologists, and even hard-core fans of musicals—when we said we were writing C’mon, Get Happy: The Making of Summer Stock. The book is about the 1950 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios musical film, which starred Judy Garland and Gene Kelly and that many felt was a bit old-fashioned even upon its release, more than 70 years ago.
In fact, no less a legend than Broadway producer-director Hal Prince questioned our choice of Summer Stock as the subject for a book in an e-mail to us not long before he died, in 2019. We had reached out for comment from Prince’s wife, Judy, the daughter of Saul Chaplin, who served as one of the music directors and composers on Summer Stock.
